Synopsys and Juniper Networks form new player in silicon photonics market

There will be a new player in the dynamic silicon photonics sector, as Synopsys and Juniper Networks announce a partnership to form a new, separate company, with Synopsys as the majority owner.

As yet, unnamed, the company will offer an open silicon photonics platform (integrated lasers, optical amplifiers) and photonic components.

The companies believe that this platform will lower the price point for silicon photonics integration in telecom datacom, high performance computing (HPC), AI, optical computing, lidar and healthcare applications. It will, said the company, also enable the “lowest power consumption for high performance photonic integrated circuits (PICs).

Juniper Networks will provide integrated silicon photonics assets, which include over 200 patents on device design and process integration. The new company has also collaborated with Tower Semiconductor to develop and qualify its PH18DA process technology to enable what is believed to be the industry’s first laser-on-a-chip open silicon photonics platform. The Synopsys-Juniper company has already created 400G and 800G photonics reference designs with integrated lasers to accelerate adoption of this technology. First samples are expected to be available in summer 2022.

Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys’ president and CEO, commented: “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.”

Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks, said he believed the technology will change the economics of building photonic systems. “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 . . . enable a broad ecosystem to efficiently develop next-generation optical transceiver and co-packaged designs.”

The PH18DA technology processes the indium phosphide (InP) materials directly on to the silicon photonics wafer which reduces the cost, and time it takes, to manufacture, assemble and align discrete lasers onto the chip. This also enables volume scalability and improves power efficiency, said Synopsys. The monolithically integration also improves reliability and simplifies packaging.

The first Multi-Project Wafer is scheduled to be taped out in Q2 2022.

The silicon photonics market has grown as a result of an increase in demand for high bandwidth and high data transfer capabilities in HPC, telcom, datacom, lidar and healthcare equipment. Yole Développmentexpected the total silicon photonics die market to exceed $1bn in 2026, boosted by consumer healthcare, automotive and autonomous vehicle sensing applications. In 2020, Intel commanded 53% market share in silicon photonic transceivers for datacom, while Apple introduced biosensors using silicon photonics in its smart watch.