Palace: The Best Open-Source HFSS Alternative

I’ve been recently exploring Palace—an advanced electromagnetic finite element method (FEM) software developed by AWS Labs—and I’m genuinely impressed with its potential as a game-changer in the world of open-source EM simulation.

Specialized Electromagnetic Capabilities

Many open-source FEM solutions exist, but few are tailored specifically to electromagnetic (EM) applications.

The main difficulty in adopting open-source FEM solvers for fields like photonics, RF, and power electronics has historically been implementing specialized “port” boundary conditions yourself.

While general-purpose tools like Elmer and FeniCS only provided frameworks where you could theoretically implement these boundary conditions, Palace comes with built-in lumped ports and numerical wave ports—a key applications-enabling feature.

High-Performance Computing Ready

Designed with performance in mind, Palace efficiently supports large-scale, detailed simulations. Built on the foundations of MFEM and libCEED—modern libraries targeting parallel architectures from the start—Palace can harness any available hardware at no extra cost.

Whether running on HPC clusters, GPU-powered workstations, or cloud-based infrastructures, Palace handles computationally intensive tasks by default, allowing users to achieve accurate and high-fidelity results quickly.

Embracing Integration and Innovation

While at the present moment, Palace (v0.13) can be a little bit rough around the edges and is missing a few bells and whistles, it already offers most of HFSS’s core functionalities without the hefty price tag and with far more flexibility.

Beware that adopting a tool like Palace isn’t just about switching software—it’s about rethinking your simulation environment, or even setting one up from scratch if you’ve been neglecting simulations due to prohibitive software costs.

The journey involves integrating CAD systems, mesh generation, navigating complex software and hardware integration, and leveraging cloud computing to its fullest potential.

Getting Started with Palace

If you’re interested in leveraging the power of open-source technology for electromagnetic modeling, Palace is certainly worth exploring.

You can head over to the repo and the documentation, and give it a try. But buckle up, it can be a wild ride even to get this software installed on your system! The capabilities and flexibility it unlocks make the effort worthwhile.

What do we do at Epsilon Forge?

At Epsilon Forge, our mission is to empower companies of all sizes to adopt open-source technologies like Palace for their R&D efforts.

We understand that commercial simulation companies often gatekeep critical tools behind steep price tags, keeping the most innovative minds of small and medium enterprises at a disadvantage.

We’re here to change that, ensuring that groundbreaking simulation capabilities are accessible to those who need them most.