Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli contract manufacturer of semiconductor solutions, announced that it has partnered with Teramount to integrate a quantum dot laser for the first time on its SiPho contract manufacturing platform.
Tower Semiconductor makes integrated circuits for sensing and communication, using silicon photonics and other semiconductor combinations. Teramount specializes in connecting optical fibers to silicon chips. They announced a partnership between Tower Semiconductor's SiPho Bump-ready wafers and Teramount's PhotonicPlug technology.
The Bump-ready wafer combines Tower Semiconductor's PH18 silicon photonics technology with the ability to simultaneously connect large amounts of fiber to the chip, greatly simplifying assembly to provide the ultimate high-speed data transfer solution for data centers and telecommunications networks as well as emerging applications in artificial intelligence and sensing.
Tower Semiconductor makes Bump-ready wafers that, when integrated with Teramount's connectors, address what the partners call a "key bottleneck" in the widespread use of silicon photonics.
"By making this feature available to the industry, Teramount addresses one of the major barriers to further the adoption of optical connectivity in many applications that require high-speed data transfer," commented Hesham Taha, CEO of Teramount.
"This feature is a strong addition to Tower Semiconductor's comprehensive portfolio of photonics technologies, which includes our high-capacity PH18 platform, as well as our unique heterogeneous integrated III-V technology," said Dr. Ed Preisler, Director of Technical Development at Tower Semiconductor.
In another collaboration, Tower Semiconductor and Quintessent, which develops optical connectivity solutions for large-scale computing and artificial intelligence applications, announced the first heterogeneous integration of a gallium arsenide quantum dot laser and a contract silicon photonics platform (Tower's PH18DB).
The PH18DB platform is designed for optical modules in data centers and telecommunications networks, artificial intelligence, machine learning, lidar, and other sensors. The silicon photonic transceiver market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24%, reaching a total market size of $9 billion by 2025, according to LightCounting, a market research firm.
The new PH18DB platform offers GaAS-based quantum dot QD lasers and Semiconductor optical amplifiers based on Tower Semiconductor's PH18M silicon photonics foundry technology. The platform will enable dense photonic integrated circuits to support higher channel numbers at smaller sizes.
"The open foundry availability of this 220nm SOI platform will provide access to a wide range of product development teams to streamline their PIC designs through the use of lasers and SOA Pcells," Tower Semiconductor said.
The initial process design kit for the PH18DB has been offered in collaboration with DARPA under the General Purpose Microscale Optical System Laser (LUMOS) program, designed to bring high-performance lasers to advanced photonics platforms for commercial and defense applications. Multi-project wafers are planned for production in 2023 and 2024, Tower added.
Source: OFweek
