April 29,2025, There is a report on this OFC in EETimes titled: "Silicon photonics and CPO are shining at OFC 2025" . Yesterday we talked about CPO, and today we'll talk about silicon photonics.
The article in EETimes mainly introduced several silicon photonics technology companies around OFC 2025 from the perspective of financing, including Celetial, Lightmatter, and Retym (a start-up company specializing in coherent DSP). The article also mentioned Lumai, a start-up optical computing company with a background in Cambridge, UK. The technical backgrounds of these companies are basically based on silicon photonics.
The mass media and investors pay more attention to next-generation technologies like OIO. In fact, in the editor's opinion, one of the most noteworthy topics at this OFC should be that the silicon photonics technology we have been expecting for years has matured. There are several reasons for this.
First of all, almost all the leading optical module companies have launched silicon photonics products. This is the result of the competition among EML, LiNbO3, and silicon photonics modulator technologies. At the 1.6T stage, obviously, silicon photonics is winning. As early as last year's OFC, Silith launched the 1.6T DR8 product.
Secondly, the first-generation silicon photonics companies have matured. We not only see the continuous development of the first-generation silicon photonics companies like SiFotonics (both the PIC and PD with 200G per lane have made great progress), but also the second-generation companies like Silith and X-phor. The booths of these two latter companies are adjacent and in prominent positions. Especially Silith's slogan, "Silicon photonics is SiLith".
Thirdly, the industrial ecosystem of silicon photonics is close to being complete. There are quite a few Foundry factories, Fabless design companies, software companies, manufacturing equipment companies, and packaging service providers at the OFC.
Fourthly, there are two pieces of news about OpenLight. Firstly, all the active components in its Photonic Design Kit (PDK) based on Tower Semiconductor's PH18DA process have successfully completed the Telcordia GR-468 certification. Secondly, OpenLight and Tower Semiconductor successfully demonstrated a 400G per-channel modulator based on heterogeneous integrated silicon photonics technology. Just before the end of the exhibition, Lilian introduced the editor to their CEO at the OpenLight booth. I truly think these two pieces of news are of great significance.
A few years ago, the editor was somewhat pessimistic about the development prospects of silicon photonics technology, mainly because of the insufficient cooperation of domestic Foundry factories. However, with the efforts of generations of entrepreneurs, silicon photonics technology has been continuously developing. The day before yesterday, at Dalian YouOpto, General Manager Liao told the editor that they have made great progress in silicon photonics engines based on their own packaging capabilities. Now we can say that in the era of 1.6T, silicon photonics will shine brightly.
