ECOC 2024 industry reflections - Part II

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent 50th-anniversary ECOC show in Frankfurt. Here are contributions from Nubis Communications' Dan Harding, imec's Peter Ossieur, and Chris Cole.

Dan Harding, CEO, Nubis Communications

Our biggest takeaway from ECOC is the increased confidence not just in 200-gigabit electrical and optical interfaces but also in 400 gigabit. It is becoming clear that in 2025 and 2026, the industry will broadly launch platforms using a 200 gigabit per lane serdes [serialiser/deserialiser interfaces] that will connect to 200 gigabit per lane optics.

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imec's novel ADC promises faster sampling rates

The analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converters (ADCs/DACs) are like the equals sign in mathematics.

Joris Van Driessche

The equals sign is taught as showing two sides of an equation being the same. But really, it is a gateway between two worlds. The same applies to the ADC and DAC, which equate between the analogue and digital worlds.

Progress in wireline communications, whether client-side optics or coherent optical modems at 800 gigabits and soon 1.6 terabit, means converters must sample at higher rates.

In February, at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, imec detailed a proof-of-concept chip design that promises to advance high-speed ADCs.

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Do optical DACs have a role in future coherent modems?

• A proposed optical digital-to-analogue converter (oDAC) concept offers several system benefits, including better signal performance, higher bit rates and lower power consumption.
• The oDAC design benefits coherent optics but can also be used in direct-detect designs. This article focusses on coherent optics.
• Coherent system vendors are aware of oDAC technology but it is not part of their current roadmaps. 

A 256-QAM constellation using a conventional coherent transmitter (left) and using the oDAC. Note there is no modulator loss (the full area is used) nor any optical warping using the oDAC. Source: Tomkos and Nazarathy.

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imec’s research work to advance biosensors

Part 3: Biosensor developments

• Pol Van Dorpe discusses the institute’s use of photonics and silicon to develop new designs for medical diagnostics.
• imec has designed a breathalyser that detects the coronavirus with the accuracy of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, a claimed world first.

Pol Van Dorpe, an imec Fellow

Optics and photonics are advancing medical diagnostics in two notable ways.

The technologies are helping to shrink diagnostic systems to create new types of medical devices.

"Going from big lab equipment to something much smaller is a clear trend," says Pol Van Dorpe, a Fellow at imec, the Belgium R&D nanoelectronics and nanotechnology institute.

Photonics and silicon also benefit central labs by creating more powerful test instruments. More functionality and detectors can be integrated in a given area enabling multiple tests in parallel, a technique dubbed multiplexing.

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Silicon photonics' second wave

• “I believe the field of silicon photonics is at a pivotal point of change and acceleration.” 

• Professor Roel Baets, the winner of the 2020 John Tyndall Award, talks about what motivates his research and his interests.

Two concentric circles drawn in chalk are shown on-screen. So Professor Roel Baets open his plenary talk at the European Conference on Integrated Optics (ECIO) 2020, asking the online audience what is being shown.

Professor Roel Baets

Suggestions come flooding in: the cross-section of an optical fibre, a silicon wafer, a ring resonator optical component and - the correct answer - a doughnut.

The image is from the front cover of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth, a UK professor of economics.

The author discusses how continual economic growth is out of kilter with the planet’s well-being and details alternative approaches. The “doughnut” represents a sweet-spot region ensuring sustainable growth.

Baets applied the book’s thinking to his plenary talk on the topic of silicon photonics research.

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Imec eyes silicon photonics to solve chip I/O bottleneck

In the second and final article, the issue of adding optical input-output (I/O) to ICs is discussed with a focus on the work of the Imec nanoelectronics R&D centre that is using silicon photonics for optical I/O.

Part 2: Optical I/O

Imec has demonstrated a compact low-power silicon-photonics transceiver operating at 40 gigabits per second (Gbps). The silicon photonics transceiver design also uses 14nm FinFET CMOS technology to implement the accompanying driver and receiver electronics. 

Joris Van Campenhout“We wanted to develop an optical I/O technology that can interface to advanced CMOS technology,” says Joris Van Campenhout, director of the optical I/O R&D programme at Imec. “We want to directly stick our photonics device to that mainstream CMOS technology being used for advanced computing applications.”

Traditionally, the Belgium nanoelectronics R&D centre has focussed on scaling logic and memory but in 2010 it started an optical I/O research programme. “It was driven by the fact that we saw that electrical I/O doesn’t scale that well,” says Van Campenhout. Electrical interfaces have power, space and reach issues that get worse with each hike in transmission speed.

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IoT will drive chip design and new styles of computing

Looking back 20 years hence, how will this period be viewed? The question was posed by the CEO of imec, Luc Van de hove, during his opening talk at a day event imec organised in Tel-Aviv.

For Van den hove, this period will be seen as one of turbulent technological change. “The world is changing at an incredible rate,” he says. “The era of digital disruption is changing our industry and this disruption is not going to stop.”

Luc Van den hove

It was the Belgium nonoelectronics R&D centre’s second visit to Israel to promote its chip and systems expertise as it seeks to expand its links with Israel’s high-tech industry. And what most excites imec is the Internet of Things (IoT), the advent of connected smart devices that turn data into information and adapt the environment to our needs.

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