Imec Demonstrates 896Gb/s Silicon Photonics Transceiver

At OFC 2017, the largest global conference and exposition for optical communications, imec presents a 896Gb/s silicon photonics transceiver of just a few mm2, targeting future Tb/s optical links. This achievement highlights the scalability of imec’s iSiPP50G silicon photonics platform, paving the way for next-generation short-reach optical interconnects.
 
Driven by exponential demand for interconnect bandwidth in datacenters, single-mode optical transceivers will need to scale to Tb/s capacity and be tightly integrated with network switches. Silicon photonics (SiPh) has been identified as a promising technology platform to realize such aggressive bandwidth and integration targets, substantially going beyond 100Gb/s technology available today.
 
In the work presented at OFC, imec combines recently developed 50GHz active optical components with a multi-core fiber interface to showcase a proof-of-concept 896Gb/s spatial-division multiplexing SiPh transceiver.         
 
The GeSi EAM and PD components are available for evaluation by companies and academia through imec’s silicon photonics prototyping service and the iSiPP50G multi-project wafer (MPW) service provided by Europractice.