Page 57 - EE Times Europe Magazine – June 2024

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THE INDUSTRY
A Blueprint for the Integrated Photonics

Industry?

By Rebecca Pool
A roadmap from PhotonDelta and MIT
Microphotonics Center is set to help PIC
players navigate the tech complexities
and build a global supply chain.

arlier this year, Netherlands-based integrated photonics
industry hub PhotonDelta and Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology’s (MIT’s) Microphotonics Center published the latest
EIntegrated Photonics Systems Roadmap—International (IPSR-I).
Put together with input from more than 400 industry players, including
Airbus, Meta, NASA, Dupont Electronics, General Motors, the European
Space Agency and VodafoneZiggo, the roadmap identifies technology
challenges and lays out how to build a global supply chain to drive A new integrated photonics roadmap from PhotonDelta and the
volume photonic integrated circuit (PIC) manufacturing forward. As MIT Microphotonics Center is ready to drive PIC manufacturing
PhotonDelta CTO Peter van Arkel put it, “Reaching a consensus was forward. (Source: PhotonDelta)
challenging … [but] has definitely been worth it.”
The last IPSR-I before this version was delivered in 2021. According So where are the big market drivers for PICs? Van Arkel pointed to
to van Arkel, the new version follows rapid PIC development and pro- datacom and AI data centers and noted that “every telecoms provider is
vides insight into many industries, including aerospace, datacom and currently working with integrated photonics” for these applications. He
the up-and-coming agrifood and 3D sensing-LiDAR sectors. Looking at also reckons that the rise of autonomous vehicles and accompanying
the roadmap, van Arkel also said technology bottlenecks “are every- demand for LiDAR sensors could trigger significant market growth for
where”, and it is clear that heterogeneous integration remains a thorny, PICs in the next few years.
and pervasive, issue. Falkiner also expects that growing demand for LiDAR will drive
“We’re talking lasers, detectors, waveguides and modulators, but PIC manufacturing, as will 5G telecom. However, he believes the real
also photonics and electronics in general; these all need to come closer market wins center on today’s unprecedented demand for high-
together— and that’s across all applications,” he said. “This is one of performance transceivers, which are based on silicon photonics and
the core messages of the roadmap.” PICs and can support the massive data rates required by AI accelerators
According to van Arkel, the roadmap also shows that tackling and data centers. Key industry players, such as Jabil-Intel, Coherent
wafer-level testing and packaging challenges will be instrumental to and Infinera, are using PICs in their transceivers, while China-based
driving manufacturing volumes forward, and the maturation of silicon Innolight has already reached blisteringly fast, 1.6-Tbps speeds with its
photonics process design kits (PDKs) is necessary to accelerate chip PIC-based transceivers.
and packaging developments. “These transceivers can hit the top end of 800G and by early next
year will transmit data at speeds of 1.6 Tbps, reaching 3.2 Tbps by
CHARTING THE FUTURE 2026,” Falkiner said. “They are facilitating efficient, high-bandwidth
The IPSR-I roadmap will be welcomed by many in the industry, as communications between the large racks of AI accelerators that power
tech analysts expect robust growth for silicon photonics and PICs. ChatGPT [and] Microsoft Copilot—and are seeing billions and billions
IDTechEx, for example, predicts the global market will more than of dollars of investment.”
double and top US$22 billion across the next decade. Falkiner expects PIC technologies to continue to be used in
IDTechEx technology analyst James Falkiner believes such a road- high-performance transceivers, the demand for which will persist into
map provides critical insight for any organization deciding whether to the future. As he noted, Nvidia’s GPUs are all oversubscribed, with each
invest in the photonics industry. “It’s also a good idea to try to bring one requiring approximately two 800G transceivers to convey data.
everyone together globally [in a roadmap],” Falkiner said. “We have “We’re looking at around 15,000 data centers globally, and each one
design houses in the U.S., talent in Europe and photonics manufactur- will use hundreds of thousands of units of accelerators, culminating in
ing in Asia—with, say, GlobalFoundries and Samsung. At the end of the a massive increase in transceiver demand,” he added.
day, this industry is global.” Given these industry developments, scaling the manufacture of PICs
In line with van Arkel, and as outlined in the roadmap, Falkiner surely lies ahead. As van Arkel put it, “We already have foundries full of
pointed out the need to ensure that PDKs and the manufactured prod- [photonics] wafers [and] manufacturing at full capacity; I consider this
uct actually match and to address the photonics industry’s relatively to already be quite high-volume. … You can easily imagine that there’s
long manufacturing turnaround times. going to be many, many billions of dollars of revenue coming from
“If you can reduce a one-year cycle time to three months—like the photonic chip manufacturing soon.”
electronics industry—then you can start getting improvements in your And of course, the IPSR-I global roadmap can help to drive industry
chips much, much faster,” he said. “We really need more cooperation in the right direction. “We know there’s been a lot of interest in this,”
between electronics manufacturing and foundries and photonics. van Arkel said. “It has sparked a lot of discussion on integrated pho-
Industry needs to find a solution together, and having a roadmap … is tonics … and at the heart of the roadmap is a global approach for the
important here.” photonics industry to rally behind to meet the core challenges.” ■

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