-------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sim4Life V8.0.0 Release Notes -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Release Date: 14.03.2024 Sim4Life V8.0.0 offers new features and major enhancements that strengthen the world's leading in silico toolset for computational life science research, device design and optimization, and safety and electromagnetic compliance evaluations. The highlights of Sim4Life V8.0.0: - Multi-GPU support for the thermal solver, providing a massive 50x speed up. - Generalized multiport simulations (now supporting low-frequency EM and thermal solvers, in addition to FDTD) - Cutting-edge 3D visualizations with the new VULKAN renderer - Rapid prediction of neural recruitment with Generalized Activating Function (two orders of magnitude speedup) - Updated AI image segmentation tools to generate best in class personalized anatomical head models - New modeling and mesh-handling capabilities This document summarizes the features, modules, enhancements, known bugs, and other important issues to be aware of in this release. -------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Installation Requirements 2. Supported OS 3. New Features & Enhancements 3.1. Modeling 3.2. Simulation 3.3. Analysis 3.4. Modules 3.5. ViP & ViZoo 4. List of Main Bugs (Selection) Fixed Since Last Release 5. Known Issues -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Installation Requirements -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Administrator rights are required during the installation process. - NVIDIA graphics card, with support for OpenGL versions higher than v3.3. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Supported OS -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Windows 11 (64 bit, x64) - Windows 10 (64 bit, x64 - EOL) Acceleware libraries: - Deprecated library 11.1.13 Erbil: Uses CUDA 11.1 Supports: Kepler (K20) to Ampere (40 and RTX) architectures CUDA computing capability: sm_35 up to sm_86 - Current library 11.4.1 Funafuti: Uses CUDA 12.2 Supports: Maxwell 5.2 and 5.3 up to Ada L40, RTX Ada and Hopper H100 (No longer supports Kepler) CUDA computing capability: sm_50 up to sm_90 https://www.acceleware.com/fdtd-11-4-1 CUDA library: - Uses CUDA 11.8 Supports: Kepler (k20) to Ada/Hopper CUDA compute capability: sm_35 up to sm_9 Please note that only NVIDIA GPUs with CUDA Compute Capability 5.0 or higher are supported by both the Sim4Life CUDA and AXE solvers. For the CUDA-based solvers (CUDA P-EM-FDTD, P-THERMAL, P-ACOUSTICS), Sim4Life supports NVIDIA GPU models equipped with CUDA compute capability 3.5 up to 9.0, and requires device drivers that support the CUDA toolkit 11.0 and above. Note that NVIDIA may choose to discontinue certain drivers for specific operating systems, e.g., CUDA 11.0 drivers may not be available for Windows 8.1 for certain GPU series. In such a case, an update to Windows 10 or 11 may permit further usage of the GPU with Sim4Life. Please visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA#GPUs_supported for details about the cards' compute capability and CUDA toolkits. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. New Features & Enhancements -------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.1. Modeling - New Vulkan Renderer: It provides cutting-edge 3D visualizations. Graphics and compute API provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs, allowing for superior rendering control, performance and speed when visualizing highly complex scenarios (shading, transparency, number of elements, etc.) - Sim4Life V8.0 now streamlines the process of defining and modifying surface patches with an interactive, step-by-step approach. Users can start by defining a patch on a surface, either by selecting triangles directly or through region growing techniques. Next, a closed line is drawn which is then imprinted onto the surface. This allows for the extraction and extrusion of the patch surface, facilitating tasks such as assigning material parameters or other properties - Updated AI-based head segmentation: Differentiation of 30 tissue classes, including brain structures, eyes, mucosa, internal air, and different skull and scalp layers - Added locking feature in the faceted mesher to allow patches or surfaces to be preserved, while still allowing other parts of the surface to be re-meshed - Added parallel SurfaceNets as method to extract surfaces 3.2. Simulation - Generalized Activation Function for the rapid estimation of nerve stimulation thresholds and recruitment curves, e.g., for optimizing stimulation selectivity of bioelectronic implants or for minimizing unwanted PNS stimulation by MRI gradient coil switching - Multi-GPU support for the thermal solver resulting in massive 50x speed up supports a wide array of NVIDIA GPU architectures, including the cutting-edge Ada Lovelace architecture (e.g., RTX 4080) - Multi-port Thermal and LF simulations: The support for multi-port FDTD has been extended to low-frequency solvers, the thermal solver, and linked simulations. V8.0 provides a comprehensive toolset for advanced device optimization across various applications, e.g., for performance, safety, and efficacy optimization of multi-channel devices, such as antenna arrays, parallel transmit (pTx) coils, wireless power transfer (WPT) systems, and multi-contact electrodes. 3.3. Analysis - Added configurable constraints for DTI-to-conductivity filter 3.4. Modules 3.4.1 IMAnalytics & MRIxVIP - Arbitrary shaped head SAR limit region-of-interest masks - IMAnalytics Python API now works on Linux operating systems - Extraction of vector E field along multiple splines together with the tangential E field, and total E field components along routings - Tier 2 values can be retrieved as Pandas data frames - Total E field components along L2 can be retrieved as Pandas data frames - Total E field components along routings; can be retrieved as Pandas data frames - Input validation for .sat or .sab files for both Tier2 and Tier3 workflows - API: parsing of lead names from .sat or .sab files - API: splitting extracted routing files into subgroups of specific leads (the latter being the extractions made with the study.extract function) - API: calculating and plotting the achieved B1 values for purely SAR-based operating limits - API: possibility to plot Etans only until length where transfer function ends - Update to the new SQS keys for crash reporting - Upgrade Python version from 3.6 to 3.8.10 - Upgrade Pandas to 2.0.0 - Axes in plots of field slices now correspond to absolute grid coordinates Refer to IMAnalytics Release Notes for more details and list of fixed bugs 3.5 ViP & ViZoo - Modernized the default color presets for the ViP models -------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. List of Main Bugs Fixed Since V7.2.4 Release -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Case 52326: Fixed the issue where a lossy metal was not being assigned the correct material type when selected from the material database - Case 169714: Fixed the issue of the Sweeper not working with imported sources - Case 170598: Fixed the issue of an unnecessary low level error message that could be produced by a slice field viewer - Case 174395: Fixed the issue of a crash caused when displaying edges of multi domain mesh with a patch - Case 178959: Fixed the issue of IMSAFE not showing the 2D plot of Etan on splines - Case 187353: Fixed the issue in the Acceleware library for some hardware configuration when subgridding used - Case 187357: Fixed the issue of the grid not showing up when switching between different 2D views - Case 188711: Fixed the issue of non-recorded source signals for some GPU types - Case 189208: Fixed the issue with the Helix tool that could lead to a crash - Case 189536: Fixed the issue of the 'Show Edges' option of a surface viewer, which was not working when using OpenGL rendering - Case 188971: Fixed the issue of the Slice Model option which produced errors instead of warnings - Case 188957: Fixed the issue of the Controller visibility, which could dynamically change, shrinking in size over time and requiring scrolling to see previously visible options - Case 189125: Fixed the issue of FDTD edge source drop-down menu, which could incorrectly be hidden after item selection - Case 192433: Warning message implemented to warn the user when the material properties reset to the database default values after cloning a simulation - Case 193442: Fixed the issue of model-to-grid operations making the application hang when using a very small maximum edge length values -------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Known Issues -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Case 32807: Instability for some rare dispersive material configurations - Case 40481: Python memory usage occasionally still occupied after resetting analysis - Case 47035: Random problems in visualization of Dispersive Viewer - Case 54000: Random element appearing in Gridder - Case 61881: Rare issue with distribution of the simulation job to the GPUs when using CUDA - Case 86865: Job priorities may not correspond to the job execution - Case 98764: Potentially decreased accuracy in rare specific events for sensor combiner of Far-field sensor