imec
Next-generation Silicon Photonics
Fromimec
Following Moore’s law, the compute power of logic chips and the capacity of memory have been scaling exponentially over the past few decades. As a result, demand for I/O bandwidth is following a similar exponential trend, soon requiring in the order of Terabyte-per-second I/O aggregate bandwidth.
Join our industrial affiliation program on advanced optical I/O to explore and enable future system-level performance scaling using fully CMOS-compatible silicon-based optical links for datacom network, backplane, board, interposer and chip-level interconnects.
In particular, our research comprises:
- System level studies
- Optical I/O system roadmaps
- Optical link architecture and benchmarking
- Si Photonics Integration Technology
- Silicon-based Photonic Integration Platform (PIC)
- High performance Si Photonics devices
- Yield, Reliability Assessment
- Packaging and Assembly
- CMOS to Si Photonics 3-D integration
- Laser on Si Photonics hybrid integration
- Fiber connectivity to the package/chip
- System Demonstrators & Benchmarking
- CMOS TxRx circuit optimization for optical ICs
- Silicon prototypes for proof of concept
- Exploratory Devices and Materials
- Explore novel devices and materials beyond Si: monolithic III-V, advanced Ge(Si), graphene and others