Cascading models for optimization of fabrication and design of a physical device

At least one non-transitory machine-accessible storage medium that provides instructions that, when executed by a machine, will cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

• executing a fabrication simulation of a physical device with a fabrication model that receives a fabrication specification as input and outputs a structural design for the physical device in response to the fabrication simulation, wherein the fabrication simulation simulates fabrication steps for making the physical device;
• executing an operational simulation of the physical device with a design model that simulates a field response propagating through a simulated environment of the physical device;
• forward cascading the structural design output from the fabrication model to the design model to establish the simulated environment for the operational simulation;
• backpropagating a performance loss error through the design model, the performance loss error generated based upon a performance loss function used to determine a performance loss value;
• reverse cascading an output from the backpropagating of the performance loss error to the fabrication model;
• backpropagating a structural design error through the fabrication model to generate one or more first gradients, wherein the structural design error is generated based on the output from the backpropagating of the performance loss error through the design model;
• and
• revising the fabrication specification, based upon the one or more first gradients to generate and output a revised fabrication specification for use by a fabrication process of the physical device,
• wherein the physical device comprises a photonic or electromagnetic device.