Heterogeneous integration comes of age

Silicon photonics luminaries series

Interview 7: Professor John Bowers

August has been a notable month for John Bowers.

Juniper Networks announced its intention to acquire Aurrion, the US silicon photonics start-up that Bowers co-founded with Alexander Fang. And Intel, a company Bowers worked with on a hybrid integration laser-bonding technique, unveiled its first 100-gigabit silicon photonics transceivers.

Professor John BowersBower, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), first started working in photonics in 1981 while at AT&T Bell Labs.

When he became interested in silicon photonics, it still lacked a good modulator and laser. "If you don't have a laser and a modulator, or a directly modulated laser, it is not a very interesting chip,” says Bowers. "So I started thinking how to do that."

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Intel's 100-gigabit silicon photonics move

Intel has unveiled two 100-gigabit optical modules for the data centre made using silicon photonics technology.

Alexis Bjorlin

The PSM4 and CWDM4/CLR4 100-gigabit modules mark the first commercial application of a hybrid integration technique for silicon photonics, dubbed heterogeneous integration, that Intel has been developing for years.

Intel's 100-gigabit module announcement follows the news that Juniper Networks has entered into an agreement to acquire start-up, Aurrion, for $165 million. Aurrion is another silicon photonics player developing this hybrid integration technology for its products. 

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Juniper Networks to acquire Aurrion for $165 million

The announcement of the acquisition was low key. A CTO blog post and a statement that Juniper Networks had entered into an agreement to acquire Aurrion, the fabless silicon photonics start-up. No fee was mentioned.

However, in the company's US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Juniper values the deal at approximately $165 million. "The Company believes the acquisition will help to fuel its long-term competitive advantage by enabling cost-effective, high-density, high-speed optical networks," it said. The deal is expected to be closed this quarter.

Source: Gazettabyte

At first glance, Juniper is simply the latest in a series of systems vendors bringing silicon photonics in-house. Silicon photonics is a technology that allows photonic devices to be made on a silicon substrate, fabricated in a CMOS facility.

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X-Celeprint brings printing technology to silicon photonics

X-Celeprint's micro transfer printing technology. Source: X-Celeprint

• X-Celeprint has a printing process that places individual 'chiplets' of III-V material onto silicon 
• The micro transfer printing technique can be used to make silicon photonics circuits
• X-Celeprint will work with silicon photonics companies interested in licensing its technology

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Is silicon photonics an industry game-changer?

Briefing: Silicon Photonics

Part 3: Merits, challenges and applications   

Shown in blue are the optical waveguides with their tight bend radius while the copper wires carrying high-speed electrical signals is shown in orange. Source: IBM

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Aurrion mixes datacom and telecom lasers on a wafer

Silicon photonics player, Aurrion, has detailed the making of multiple laser designs for datacom and telecom on a single wafer. The multiple designs on one wafer benefit the economics of telecom lasers by manufacturing them alongside higher-volume datacom sources.

"There is an inevitability of the co-mingling of electronics and optics and we are just at the beginning"

Eric Hall, Aurrion

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Q&A with Kotura's CTO: Integration styles and I/O limits

The second, and final part, of the Q&A with Mehdi Asghari, CTO of silicon photonics start-up, Kotura. 

Part 2 of 2

"When do the big players adopt a new technology and go from an electrical to an optical solution? In my experience, usually when they absolutely have to."

Mehdi Asghari, CTO, Kotura

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