Photonic Integrated Circuit Design in a Foundry+Fabless Ecosystem

Khan, Umar; Xing, Yufei; Ye, Yinghao; Bogaerts, Wim

doi:10.1109/jstqe.2019.2918949

Cited by 29 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Programmable PICs, because they are conceived as a generic chip, will almost always be overdimensioned in one or more functions, and this will in most cases induce higher optical losses and higher power consumption than in an optimized ASPIC. But even an ASPIC will require driver electronics to tune its functionality, because purely passive silicon photonic chips generally suffer quite a lot from fabrication variation [80]. While the programmable PIC will not outperform a tuned ASPIC, it could well, for many functions, outperform an ASPIC without built-in tuning capabilities.…”

Section: More Than Just Photonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Programmable Photonics: An Opportunity for an Accessible Large-Volume PIC Ecosystem

Bogaerts

Rahim

2020

IEEE J. Select. Topics Quantum Electron.

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We look at the opportunities presented by the new concepts of generic programmable photonic integrated circuits (PIC) to deploy photonics on a larger scale. Programmable PICs consist of waveguide meshes of tunable couplers and phase shifters that can be reconfigured in software to define diverse functions and arbitrary connectivity between the input and output ports. Off-the-shelf programmable PICs can dramatically shorten the development time and deployment costs of new photonic products, as they bypass the design-fabrication cycle of a custom PIC. These chips, which actually consist of an entire technology stack of photonics, electronics packaging and software, can potentially be manufactured cheaper and in larger volumes than application-specific PICs. We look into the technology requirements of these generic programmable PICs and discuss the economy of scale. Finally, we make a qualitative analysis of the possible application spaces where generic programmable PICs can play an enabling role, especially to companies who do not have an in-depth background in PIC technology.

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Section: More Than Just Photonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Programmable Photonics: An Opportunity for an Accessible Large-Volume PIC Ecosystem

Bogaerts

Rahim

2020

IEEE J. Select. Topics Quantum Electron.

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“…One key challenge is the lack of a defined strategy that a firm can follow due to the uncertainty, FIGURE 2 | Exemplary pipeline from idea to a unique microfluidic, e.g., "Lab-on-a-Disc" product. The proprietary part underpinning the Unique Selling Points (USPs) comprises of the original idea of an assay protocol, its reagents, or application including specific optimization cost, performance, productization, and marketing; the embedded, shared part comprises of a library of fluidic designs, testing, and manufacturing methods that are sourced from a common, multi-party RTD and supply chain, e.g., following foundry-type business models that are, for instance, well-proven in the electronics/MEMS (Ersland and Somisetty, 2012) 15 or photonics (Khan et al, 2019) industries.…”

Section: Supply Chainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open Platform Concept for Blockchain-Enabled Crowdsourcing of Technology Development and Supply Chains

et al. 2020

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We outline the concept of an open technology platform that builds upon a publicly accessible library of fluidic designs, manufacturing processes, and experimental characterization, as well as virtualization by a "digital twin" based on modeling, simulation, and cloud computing. Backed by the rapidly emerging Web3 technology "Blockchain," we significantly extend traditional approaches to effectively incentivize broader participation by an interdisciplinary "value network" of diverse players. Ranging from skilled individuals (the "citizen scientist" and the "garage entrepreneur") and more established research institutions to companies with their infrastructures, equipment, and services, the novel platform approach enables all stakeholders to jointly contribute to value creation along more decentralized supply chain designs including research and technology development (RTD). A blockchain-enabled token economy efficiently leverages the "Wisdom of the Crowds" and secures "trust" and transparency by reputation systems requiring "skin in the game" from contributors. Prediction markets are created for guiding decision making, planning, and allocation of funding; competitive parallelization of work and its validation from independent participants substantially enhances quality, credibility, and speed of project outcomes in the real world along the entire path from RTD, fabrication, and testing to eventual commercialization. This novel, Blockchain-backed, open platform concept can be led by a corporation, academic entity, a loosely organized group, or even "chieflessly" within a smart-contract encoded Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). The proposed strategy is particularly attractive for highly interdisciplinary fields like microfluidic Lab-on-a-Chip systems in the context of manifold applications in the Life Sciences. As an exemplar, we outline the centrifugal "Lab-on-a-Disc" technology. Rather than engaging in all sub-disciplines themselves, many smaller, highly innovative actors can focus on strengthening the product component distinguishing their unique selling point (USP), e.g., a particular bioassay, detection scheme, or application scenario. In this effort, system integrators access underlying commons like fluidic design, manufacture, instrumentation, and software from a more resilient and diversified supply chain, e.g., based on a verified pool of community-endorsed or certified providers.

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“…The sensitivity to nanometer-scale variations in a submicron silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform is generally not acceptable for a lot of applications using dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). 1…”

Section: Fabrication Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Silicon photonics is undoubtedly becoming an increasingly prominent technology for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) with the application base expanding from optical communications to sensing. 1 There are two main contributing factors in this success i.e. use of the existing complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) infrastructure for manufacturing and the high material index contrast between the guiding silicon and the cladding which allows for sub-micron waveguides and a high integration density.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental phase-error extraction and modelling in silicon photonic arrayed waveguide gratings

Khan

Fiers²,

Xing

et al. 2020

Silicon Photonics XV

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We present a detailed study of parameter sweeps of silicon photonic arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG), looking into the effects of phase errors in the delay lines, which are induced by fabrication variation. We fabricated AWGs with 8 wavelength channels spaced 200 GHz and 400 GHz apart. We swept the waveguide width of the delay lines, and also performed a sweep where we introduced increments of length to the waveguides to emulate different AWG layouts and look into the effect of the phase errors. With this more detailed study we could quantitatively confirm the results of earlier studies, showing the wider waveguides reduce the effect of phase errors and dramatically improve the performance of the AWGs in terms of insertion loss and crosstalk. We also looked into the effect of rotating the layout of the circuit on the mask, and here we could show that, contrary to results with older technologies, this no longer has an effect on the current generation of devices.

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Photonic Integrated Circuit Design in a Foundry+Fabless Ecosystem

Cited by 29 publications

References 69 publications

Programmable Photonics: An Opportunity for an Accessible Large-Volume PIC Ecosystem

Programmable Photonics: An Opportunity for an Accessible Large-Volume PIC Ecosystem

Open Platform Concept for Blockchain-Enabled Crowdsourcing of Technology Development and Supply Chains

Experimental phase-error extraction and modelling in silicon photonic arrayed waveguide gratings

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