The 50 year anniversary of the publication of Moore’s Law was recently celebrated, highlighting the tremendous advances in the Microelectronics Era of the period in human history known as the Information Age. However, the technical and economic challenges currently faced by the microelectronics industry are bringing into question the pace at which product innovations realized under Moore’s Law can continue. Nevertheless, the sheer data volume and demand for information processing throughput is accelerating.

.....The demand for faster signal communication in short-reach applications – e.g., both within and between compute servers in data centers – will rapidly transition from lossy copper to optical fiber connectivity, utilizing photonic integrated circuits (PIC’s).

Photonics is a broad term, which encompasses the use of light (photons) to represent information, spanning photon generation through transmission to detection. Optical signaling technology has been the backbone of the telecommunications industry for decades. Optical image sensors are the heart of numerous consumer and industrial product sectors. The utilization of optical communication for data system applications is relatively new, and is expected to grow rapidly.

......The fabrication of (discrete) PIC’s is also current rather specialized, typically leveraging unique III-V materials suitable for laser generation, waveguide implementations, and photon detection.

The growing demand for photonics is also driving unique implementations, such as the integration of separate (Si and III-V) signal processing and electro-optical conversion parts in a multi-die packaging solution. And, there’s extensive research underway to investigate fully-integrated, monolithic silicon photonics fabrication, extending existing CMOS process technology to include generation and detection feature. (The difference in refractive index between Si and SiO2 makes embedded silicon waveguides very feasible.) Indeed, several leading research teams have recently published promising results, in terms of potential aggregate bandwidth and low power dissipation per transmitted bit.

Full Article Link - https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/5336-%C2%93era-photon%C2%94-here.html

COMMENT - Adele Hars By way of information, pretty much all photonics programs are on SOI -- because "The difference in refractive index between Si and SiO2 [[AKA SOI]] makes embedded silicon waveguides very feasible...". The holy grail is getting the (III-V) laser integrated on an SOI substrate with the waveguides. A quick search seems to indicate that this now seems to be feasible, too...