Silicon photonics grapples with 3D packaging demands

Hesham Taha (pictured), CEO of start-up Teramount, is more upbeat about silicon photonics than ever. But, as he outlines, challenges remain.

Hesham Taha is putting in the miles. The CEO of Teramount has been travelling to the East and West to meet with companies.

Termount is working closely with customers and partners adopting its technology that adds fibre to silicon photonics chips. 

"We're shipping units to customers and partners, and we need to be close to them as they integrate our components and address the challenges of integration," says Taha.

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Crossing oceans: Loi Nguyen's engineering odyssey

Loi Nguyen arrived in the US with nothing but determination and went on to co-found Inphi, a semiconductor company acquired by Marvell for $10 billion. Now, the renowned high-speed semiconductor entrepreneur is ready for his next chapter.

Loi Nguyen, high-speed semiconductor entrepreneur at Marvell and an award-winning wildlife photographer

"What is the timeline?"

It's a question the CEO of Marvell, Matt Murphy, would pose to Loi Nguyen each year during their one-on-one meetings. "I've always thought of myself as a young guy; retirement seemed far away," says Nguyen. "Then, in October, it seemed like the time is now."

Nguyen will not, however, disappear. He will work on specific projects and take part in events, but this will no longer be a full-time role.

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Podcast: Is AI driving a new wave of photonic innovation?

AI is still in its infancy, but it’s already pushing the photonics and computing industries to rethink product roadmaps and drive new levels of innovation.

Adtran's Gareth Spence talks with authors and analysts Daryl Inniss and the editor of Gazettabyte about the fast pace of AI development and the changes needed to unlock its full potential. They also discuss the upcoming sequel to their book on silicon photonics and its focus on AI. 

To listen to the podcast, click here.

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By invitation: Professor Roel Baets on Silicon Photonics 4.0

Roel Baets, Emeritus Professor at Ghent University and former Group Leader at imec gave a plenary talk on 'Silicon Photonics 4.0' at the recent ECOC conference. "It will be important for silicon photonics to make use of smart and agile manufacturing, a notion associated with Industry 4.0," said Professor Baets, explaining the title.

In a guest piece, he explains his thoughts and discusses what he saw at ECOC. He also has a request.

Source: ECOC

One of the things I discussed in my ECOC plenary talk was the large gap between research and product development for new applications of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) on the one hand, and product sales and new industrial process flows on the other.

Among many reasons for this gap, one stands out: the major barriers that fabless start-ups face when developing a product based on a still immature industrial supply chain.

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Users embrace OpenLight's silicon photonics platform

OpenLight, the open silicon photonics platform provider, can point to a successful 2024 signing up new customers. 

In 2023, OpenLight had three customers bringing photonic integrated circuit (PIC) designs to market. OpenLight has since added 14 more.  

OpenLight was formed in 2022 when Juniper Networks carved out its silicon photonics arm. Synopsys acquired a three-quarters stake in OpenLight, while Juniper retained a quarter.

“In the past, the company hadn’t really done any revenue, including when they were in Juniper,” says Adam Carter, OpenLight’s CEO (pictured). “We’ve seen a ten times increase and shown that we can be very profitable.”

The start-up has been creating industry partnerships to better serve its customers' circuit design, chip manufacturing, and packaging needs.

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Using LED-based parallelism for fast optical interconnects

Avicena Tech has demonstrated what it claims is the world's smallest one-terabit optical transceiver. And the company will reveal more about how it is advancing its optical technology for volume production at the upcoming OFC event in San Diego in March.

Christoph Pfistner demonstrating the microLED-based 1Tbps interface at Supercomputing 23 in Denver, Colorado.

The interface technology uses compact light emitting diodes (LED). The interface uses an array of these microLEDs that emit light vertically into a bundle of multimode optical fibres.

Avicena demonstrated its 1 terabit-per-second (Tbps) interface at the recent Supercomputing 23 show in Colorado last November. Its interface used 304 LED-based optical channels, each carrying 3.3 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) of data for a total bandwidth of one terabit.

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The APC’s blueprint for silicon photonics

The Advanced Photonics Coalition (APC) wants to smooth the path for silicon photonics to become a high-volume manufacturing technology.

Jeffery Maki

The organisation is talking to companies to tackle issues whose solutions will benefit the photonics technology.

The Advanced Photonics Coalition wants to act as an industry catalyst to prove technologies and reduce the risk associated with their development, says Jeffery Maki, Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks and a member of the Advanced Photonics Coalition's board.

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