silicon photonics
Technavio: Silicon Photonics market estimated to grow at ~25% CAGR from 2024-2028
The global silicon photonics market size is estimated to increase by $5.24 billion from 2024-2028, according to Technavio. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of almost 24.88% during the forecast period. Increasing need for higher bandwidth is driving market growth, with a trend towards emergence of optical data centers. However, lack of global standards and guidelines poses a challenge.
The decades old global Silicon Photonics market is now experiencing significant growth due to the increasing demand for high-speed data transfer in various industries. With Internet traffic from cloud computing, 5G technology, IoT, and AI-powered devices, there is a need for more efficient and low-power solutions.
Silicon photonics uses integrated circuits (ICs) for optical communications, thereby reducing power consumption compared to electronic technologies.
Key components of silicon photonics include transceivers, optical interconnects, lasers, modulators, and photodetectors. These are used in data centers, telecommunication networks, and interconnection networks. The market is also driven by the adoption of 5G network, self-driving cars, and high-speed kits for point-of-care testing and imaging data. Silicon photonics uses optical waveguides, optical modulators, and photodetectors made from silicon, silicon nitride, and other photonic components. These components are more compact and less susceptible to thermal effects compared to traditional fiber-optic solutions. Additionally, the use of high-powered laser sources, thermal stress management, and liquid-crystal cladding helps mitigate thermal effects and improve performance.
The market for silicon photonics is expected to grow in IT & telecommunications and consumer electronics sectors, with applications in broadband services, telecom service providers, and broadband connections. This growth is driven by the need for high-speed data transfer and low power consumption, making silicon photonics a promising solution for the future of optical communications and data storage systems.
Silicon photonics is now targeted at optical data centers, providing enhanced capabilities for data transmission, processing, and storage. By integrating high-speed, high-bandwidth optical interconnects directly onto silicon chips, silicon photonics enables seamless communication between different data center components. This results in faster data transfer rates, lower latency, and increased scalability, making it an ideal solution for modern applications like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics. The continuous growth in cloud-based applications and big data analytics has significantly expanded the scale of data center networks. Silicon photonics, with its advantages over traditional copper-based interconnects, is a crucial technology in addressing the demands for faster and more efficient data center infrastructure.
The communications industry’s growth is driving the demand for silicon photonics due to its ability to transmit wider bandwidth signals with low latency and maintain signal quality during long-distance communication with minimal loss. Silicon photonics is a key technology in optical communication systems, enabling the transfer of large amounts of data at high speeds. Increased bandwidth and low latency requirements have fueled the demand for silicon photonics-based devices such as receivers, transmitters, and modulators.
Communications Industry – Market size and forecast 2018 – 2028 (USD Mn):
The global silicon photonics market is experiencing significant growth due to increasing demand for high-speed data transfer in various industries. With the Internet traffic from cloud computing, 5G technology, IoT, and AI-powered devices, there is a need for more efficient and low-power optical communications solutions.
The proliferation of data centers and cloud computing infrastructure is a major factor driving the market’s growth. Vendors like Cisco Systems Inc. And Intel Corp. Offer silicon photonics solutions for high-speed data transmission in data center environments. The evolution of 5G networks is another significant factor, as silicon photonics supports 5G networks with low latency and high capacity at a low cost and power per bit. With the increasing investment in 5G networks, the demand for silicon photonics is also expected to rise, boosting the growth of the global silicon photonics market through the communications segment.
Silicon photonics vendors include: AIO Core Co. Ltd., ams OSRAM AG, Broadcom Inc., Corning Inc., Hamamatsu Photonics KK, II VI Inc., Infinera Corp., Innolume GmbH, Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., IPG Photonics Corp., MACOM Technology Solutions Inc., NKT Photonics AS, Nokia Corp., NVIDIA Corp., OpenLight Photonics Inc., OSCPS Motion Sensing Inc, RANVOUS Inc., Sicoya GmbH, TRUMPF SE Co. KG, and Cisco Systems Inc.
Market Challenges:
- Lack of global standards and guidelines
- Availability of substitute technologies for silicon photonics
- High heat generation by photonic components
Silicon photonics offers a promising solution with its integration of photonics and electronic components on a single silicon chip. However, challenges such as thermal effects, power consumption, and thermal stress in high-powered laser sources remain. Transceivers, optical interconnects, and lasers are key components in this market, along with modulators, photodetectors, and optical waveguides. Data centers, telecommunication, and IT and telecommunications are major end-users, with consumer electronics and automotive industries also adopting silicon photonics for high-speed kits in self-driving cars and point-of-care testing. Optical network infrastructure, including fiber-optic and active optical cables, is a significant application area. The market is expected to grow further with advancements in silicon nitride, optical multiplexers, attenuators, and other photonic components.
The absence of standardized protocols and specifications in the silicon photonics market poses challenges for both manufacturers and customers. Without universally accepted standards, the integration of silicon photonics components into existing optical communication systems and networks becomes complicated. Compatibility issues arise, product development and manufacturing processes are complicated, and implementation costs increase. Furthermore, the lack of clear standards results in inconsistent performance metrics, making it difficult for customers to compare and evaluate different silicon photonics solutions effectively. Standardization is crucial for the widespread adoption of new technologies, and its absence in the silicon photonics market hinders its growth and potential impact on the optical communication industry.
References:
LightCounting: Silicon Photonics chip market to hit $3 billion in 2029
Light Counting on Silicon Photonics and Optical Switching at SC22
Synopsys and Juniper Networks form new company to pursue “open” silicon photonics platform
LightCounting: Q1 2024 Optical Network Equipment market split between telecoms (-) and hyperscalers (+)
https://viodi.com/2013/11/08/silicon-photonics-cisco-intel-see-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel/
LightCounting: Silicon Photonics chip market to hit $3 billion in 2029
Light Counting on Silicon Photonics and Optical Switching at SC22
Silicon photonics continues to progress but is yet to be adopted for high-performance computing and server architectures, according to market research firm Light Counting.
However, the Super Compute 2022 (SC22) conference hosted two silicon photonics firsts:
- Professor Keren Bergman of Columbia University reported a working 5Tbit/s transmitter optical chiplet implemented using 80 channels and 3D packaging. The accompanying receiver chip is working and is being lab-tested.
- Ayar Labs demonstrated its 2Tbit/s TeraPHY chiplet in an end-to-end link, sending and receiving data.
During the panel discussion on high-performance computing and silicon photonics, Intel’s Fabrizio Petrini addressed head-on why optics had such a low profile at the show. “The reality is there is a lot of skepticism about this technology. The adoption is not going to happen anytime soon,” he said.
Systems designers don’t see the implications until they embrace this technology. But factors are aligning for change, and a transition point is being approached in how systems are built, he says; the implications for systems and disaggregation are enormous.
Optical switching is another technology that has been on the fringes of the market for decades. It was all the rage from 1998-2001, but then fizzled out as there weren’t any large scale commercial deployments of photonic switches.
LightCounting reported in August that Google had been using photonic circuit switching in its cloud resident data centers for several years. The 136×136 port optical circuit switch is Google’s own design.
At SC22, a start-up, Drut Technologies, demonstrated its interface card working with a photonic switch at the top of a SuperMicro server rack. The system allows the server’s CPUs to dynamically configure the resources they need (memory, GPUs) tailored for workloads.
Synopsys and Juniper Networks form new company to pursue “open” silicon photonics platform
Synopsys Inc. and Juniper Networks announced that they have closed a transaction to form a new, separate company that will provide the industry with an open silicon photonics platform to address the growing photonic requirements in applications such as telecom, data communications, LiDAR, healthcare, HPC, AI, and optical computing. The new company’s open silicon photonics platform will include integrated lasers, optical amplifiers, and a full suite of photonic components to form a complete solution that will be accessible through a Process Design Kit (PDK). The platform will enable a new level of integration at an unmatched price point, with the lowest power consumption for high-performance Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs). The name of the new company will be announced at a later date.
The terms of the agreement have not been disclosed at this time. The new company will be jointly owned by Synopsys and Juniper, with Synopsys as the majority owner. The new company’s results will be consolidated into Synopsys financials. While Synopsys expects the investment to be slightly dilutive to fiscal 2022 earnings, the investment is not material and will not affect Synopsys’ fiscal second quarter and full year 2022 guidance ranges provided on February 16, 2022. There is no change to Juniper’s full year financial outlook as a result of this transaction.
The new company is being formed, in part, from the carve-out of integrated silicon photonics assets from Juniper, which includes more than 200 patents on photonic device design and process integration. While part of Juniper, the new company has closely collaborated with Tower Semiconductor to develop and qualify Tower Semiconductor’s PH18DA process technology to enable the industry’s first “laser-on-a-chip” open silicon photonics platform. To demonstrate capabilities of this platform and accelerate customer adoption of the technology, the new company has created 400G and 800G photonics reference designs with integrated lasers and expects first samples to be available in summer 2022.
“Silicon photonics is a rapidly growing market that is transforming many industries and creating exciting opportunities for new applications in the future,” said Sassine Ghazi, president and chief operating officer at Synopsys. “The new company’s open silicon photonics platform, combined with Synopsys’ existing investment in a unified electronic photonic design automation solution consisting of OptoCompiler™, OptSim™, PrimeSim™, Photonic Device Compiler and IC Validator™ products, will help reshape the optical computing industry, enabling companies to cost-effectively shift to integrated lasers and significantly accelerate development of photonic IC designs.”
“This revolutionary technology will change the economics of how people are going to build photonic systems,” said Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks. “We have been strong supporters of integrated silicon photonics and we believe the new company will drive development of these systems by using an advanced open platform that will dramatically reduce costs and increase the performance and reliability of designs across multiple use cases. We are excited to continue to collaborate with the new company to enable a broad ecosystem to efficiently develop next-generation optical transceiver and co-packaged designs.”
A key challenge for silicon photonics has been the cost of adding discrete lasers, which includes the manufacturing as well as the assembly and alignment of those lasers onto the photonic chip. This becomes more important as the number of laser channels and the overall bandwidth increases. By processing the Indium Phosphide (InP) materials directly onto the silicon photonics wafer, the PH18DA platform reduces the cost and time of adding lasers, enabling volume scalability and improved power efficiency. In addition, monolithically integrated lasers on silicon wafers improves overall reliability and simplifies packaging. This “Laser-on-a-Chip” open silicon photonics platform will bring integrated photonics to a host of new applications and markets that were previously not thought possible. The first Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) is scheduled to be taped out in Q2 2022.
“We have had a long history of successful collaboration with Juniper Networks on integrated photonics. The new company formed by Synopsys and Juniper will strengthen and accelerate the adoption of the silicon photonics platform,” said Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Tower Semiconductor. “Providing an open silicon photonics platform consisting of integrated lasers that has been qualified on Tower’s process will enable customers to create innovative products with the potential to transform the industry.”
Editor’s Note:
Intel has been working on Silicon Photonics for almost two decades.
- In 2004, Intel scientists created the first transistor-like device able to encode data onto a light beam.
- In 2011, the company announced a 50 Gb/s silicon photonics link created by multiplexing four hybrid silicon lasers.
- In December 2021, the company launched a Research Center for Integrated Photonics for Data Center Interconnects. The center’s mission is to accelerate optical input/output (I/O) technology innovation in performance scaling and integration with a specific focus on photonics technology and devices, CMOS circuits and link architecture, and package integration and fiber coupling.
“At Intel Labs, we’re strong believers that no one organization can successfully turn all the requisite innovations into research reality. By collaborating with some of the top scientific minds from across the United States, Intel is opening the doors for the advancement of integrated photonics for the next generation of compute interconnect. We look forward to working closely with these researchers to explore how we can overcome impending performance barriers.” –James Jaussi, senior principal engineer and director of the PHY Research Lab in Intel Labs
Intel has recently demonstrated progress in critical technology building blocks for integrated photonics. Light generation, amplification, detection, modulation, CMOS interface circuits and package integration are essential to achieve the required performance to replace electrical as the primary high-bandwidth off-package interface.
Additionally, optical I/O has the potential to dramatically outperform electrical in the key performance metrics of reach, bandwidth density, power consumption and latency. Further innovations are necessary on several fronts to extend optical performance while lowering power and cost.
The Intel Research Center for Integrated Photonics for Data Center Interconnects brings together universities and world-renowned researchers to accelerate optical I/O technology innovation in performance scaling and integration. The research vision is to explore a technology scaling path that satisfies energy efficiency and bandwidth performance requirements for the next decade and beyond.
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About Synopsys:
Synopsys, Inc. is the Silicon to Software™ partner for innovative companies developing the electronic products and software applications we rely on every day. As an S&P 500 company, Synopsys has a long history of being a global leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP and offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of application security testing tools and services. Whether you’re a system-on-chip (SoC) designer creating advanced semiconductors, or a software developer writing more secure, high-quality code, Synopsys has the solutions needed to deliver innovative products. Learn more at https://www.synopsys.com
About Juniper Networks:
Juniper Networks is dedicated to dramatically simplifying network operations and driving superior experiences for end users. Our solutions deliver industry-leading insight, automation, security, and AI to drive real business results. We believe that powering connections will bring us closer together while empowering us all to solve the world’s greatest challenges of well-being, sustainability, and equality. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net) or connect with Juniper on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Juniper Networks, the Juniper Networks logo, Juniper, Junos, and other trademarks listed here are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
References:
Silicon Photonics – Cisco and Intel see “Light at the End of the Tunnel”