TowerJazz, a specialty foundry, has announced a new silicon photonic process (SiPho) to complement its SiGe BiCMOS processes used for the manufacture of optical transceiver electronics.
Further, TowerJazz is collaborating with PhoeniX Software to provide
process design kits (PDKs) for its customers who are developing optical networking and data center interconnects applications. Silicon photonics holds the potential to become a cost-effective, scalable technology for the production of photonic integrated circuits and addresses the high-performance requirements of these applications.
TowerJazz’s foundry SiPho process offering is built to enable a wide range of optical fibre interconnect Tx and Rx front-end optical ICs. The process includes several versions of single-mode silicon waveguides, high speed germanium photodetectors, p-n junction modulators and enablement for edge and grating couplers.
PhoeniX Software’s PIC design solution, OptoDesigner 5.1, uses a process known as photonic synthesis to map design intent into a design-rule clean circuit layout targeted to the TowerJazz SiPho process. Designers can use OptoDesigner’s parametric object oriented scripting environment and its integrated photonic simulators to optimize their designs to achieve an optimal layout that meets their performance and design requirements while also ensuring robust design manufacturability.
“We are excited to be entering the silicon photonics foundry space in order to provide solutions to a greater portion of the optical transceiver market for our customers,” said Marco Racanelli, senior VP and general manager of RF & High Performance Analog Business Unit, TowerJazz. “As a pure-play foundry, design enablement plays a critical and complementary role to the manufacturing process and we are excited to have partnered with PhoeniX Software which has extensive experience in the silicon photonics space to bring high-value PDKs to our customers.”
“PDK-based design is key to achieving greater designer productivity and we are very excited to be working with TowerJazz to make their SiGe BiCMOS PDKs available to the datacom market”, said Twan Korthorst, CEO of PhoeniX Software. “We are especially pleased to be working with TowerJazz as they offer world-class production capabilities to our mutual customers in the integrated photonics market.”