Jean-Louis Malinge - EEWeb

What Is Silicon
Photonics?
Jean-Louis Malinge -
CEO and President at Kotura
Ever since the invention of the
transistor more than 60 years ago,
semiconductor chips have used
electrons for communications.
Each new generation of devices
offered more transistors in a smaller
area, operating at faster speeds.
Today, the semiconductor industry
exceeds $250B per year with a
single CMOS chip containing as
many as a billion or more transistors.
These complex circuits are still 100
percent electrical.
Meanwhile, during the 1980s,
optical communications based
on lasers and optical fiber was
introduced for long distance
telecommunication. Instead of lowcost
silicon, optical communication
required exotic material systems for
lasers, detectors, filters, isolators,
modulators, and switches. Optical
transceivers were hand assembled
from hundreds of piece parts and,
in many cases, still are today. Even
though it was expensive, optical
communication had the advantage
of being able to transmit huge
amounts of data over long distances.
The Internet was built using the
back bone of telecommunications
optical networks.
Silicon photonics brings
optical communication into the
semiconductor industry, enabling
a whole new range of applications.
Opto-electronic functions are
fabricated on the same CMOS
wafers using the same equipment
and methods as electronic chips.
The wafers are processed in
the same fabs as those running
electronics chips. The wafers are
diced into chips just like electrical
ones. Optical chips can be just
as inexpensive as their electrical
cousins. When mass volumes are
needed, the wafer fab simply runs
more wafers of the same recipe.
Silicon photonics eliminates
the need for hand assembly of
hundreds of parts. Silicon photonics
chips are much, much smaller than
the optical subassemblies they
replace. A silicon photonics chip
can support 100 gigabits per second
transmission on a chip less than half
EEWeb | Electrical Engineering Community Visit www.eeweb.com 8