Open-Access Silicon Photonics: Current Status and Emerging Initiatives

Abstract

Silicon Photonics is widely acknowledged as a gamechanging technology, driven by the needs of datacom and telecom. Silicon Photonics builds on highly capital-intensive manufacturing infrastructure, and mature open-access silicon photonics platforms are translating the technology from research fabs to industrial manufacturing levels. To meet the current market demands for silicon photonics manufacturing, a variety of openaccess platforms is offered by CMOS pilot lines, R&D institutes and commercial foundries. This paper presents an overview of existing and upcoming commercial and non-commercial openaccess silicon photonics technology platforms. We also discuss the diversity in these open-access platforms and their key differentiators.

Digital Electronics and Analog Photonics for Convolutional Neural Networks (DEAP-CNNs)

“…In order to realize a physical implementation, there are a number of issues that still need to be solved. Packaging a silicon photonic with an electronic chip with high I/O count is a challenging RF engineering task, but it is a central thrust in the roadmap for silicon photonic foundries [21]. There also needs to be control circuitry that routes the outputs of the SDRAM into the relevant DACs and from the ADCs into the SDRAM.…”

“…Such silicon waveguides can be manufactured to have a width of 500 nm while having a thickness of 220 nm. These waveguides have a bend radius of 5 µm and can support TE and TM polarized wavelengths between 1.5 µm and 1.6 µm [21]. The single waveguide configuration is called an all-pass MRR, see Fig.…”

“…assuming that each φ i corresponds to a weighting of w * i . This electronic gain can be performed using a transimpedance amplifier (TIA), which can be manufactured in a standard CMOS process [24] and packaged or integrated with the photonic chip [21]. A diagram of the electro-optic architecture described in this section is presented in Fig.…”

Opportunities for photonic integrated circuits in optical gas sensors

“…With three MPW foundries, namely SMART Photonics, Fraunhofer HHI and LioniX International, Si 3 N 4 and InP based PICs are supported [61,75,92,130]. Rahim et al gave an overview of the existing open access platforms for Si-Ph PICs [131]. CMC Microsystems brokers MPW services to Canadian universities, research institutions, and industry [132].…”

Open-Access Silicon Photonics Platforms in Europe

“…This allows silicon photonics to benefit from the existing and well-established Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) manufacturing technology, which results in the lowcost manufacturing of PICs through economics of scale [7], [9]. The cost-effectiveness of silicon photonics even holds for modest volumes by using the existing CMOS-fabs that are fully loaded with electronics CMOS manufacturing [6].…”