Driven by Data Center Business,

Driven by Data Center Business, Silicon Photonics

Industry Enters Early Explosive Stage

                                  ——In-depth report of optical communication industry

At

present, the silicon photonics market is not too big. It is estimated that

sales in 2015 will be less than 40 million US dollars. In fact, only a few

companies have begun to ship products in the open market. According to market

research company Yole Développements, the data center and several other new

applications will bring a multibillion-dollar market for silicon photonics

technology by 2025. Yole analysts pointed out that investment from venture

capitalists (VCs) and several start-up companies in these fields has increased,

showing that silicon photonics technology has reached the tipping point before

the forthcoming large-scale growth.

Silicon photonics technology is

still in its infancy in the country. Future optical communications vendors and

semiconductor manufacturers are likely to benefit from the industry outbreak.

It is recommended to pay attention to the optical device manufacturer Ascension

Technology, China International Equipment (to be acquired by Suzhou Xuchuang),

etc.; semiconductor manufacturers SMIC, Changjiang Electronics, and Tongfu

Microelectronics. ν Data center traffic growth pushes the internal chip level

of the data center into copper retreat: At present, the data center is mainly

based on 40G and 100G modules. Cisco data shows that data center traffic will

reach 5 times in 2020, and demand will drive data center to 200G and 400G. And

other high-speed transmission evolution. The 50Gb/s copper circuit is close to

the limit of transmission, and it is inevitable that the copper level at the

chip level falls into the copper.

Compared to III-V materials,

silicon photonics technology utilizes CMOS technology, which has cost

advantages and is very promising in the future. ν The difficulties in the

development of the industry are gradually being broken and may break out in the

next two years: In the case of silicon-based lasers, the hybrid products of

III-V materials and silicon optical circuits have been commercialized, and pure

silicon lasers have already achieved laboratory breakthroughs; The problem of

the power consumption of light instead of electricity was initially solved by

IBM; both laid the foundation for the commercial use of silicon photonics

technology. We are optimistic about the development of the industry. At

present, Acacia 2016Q3 revenue reached US$135 million, and SiFotonics silicon

PD/APD chip has shipped nearly 1 million units. Intel announced in August that

100G silicon photonics module was officially put into commercial use. The next

two years will usher in an outbreak of high probability.

YOLE predicts that in 2018, the

global optical chip and its packaged device market will reach 120 million U.S.

dollars, and in 2024 it will exceed 700 million U.S. dollars, with a compound

annual growth rate of 38%. ν The stronger the properties of industrial

electronics, the trend of downstream customers entering the R&D

manufacturing process: Si photonic technology involves production links such as

“design-manufacturing-encapsulation”. At present, the entire industry has not yet

formed a stable competitive landscape. Chips and packaging are the core links.

The advantages of silicon photonics technology are even more evident in greater

output and higher transmission requirements. The properties of industrial

semiconductors are getting stronger and stronger. The input of electronics

giants Intel, IBM, Cisco, STMicroelectronics, NEC, and Huawei Hass will

determine the speed of development of the industry. There is a trend for

downstream customers to enter the middle and upper reaches of the manufacturing

process. Huawei, Facebook, Ciena and others also join the industry. ν Risk

Warning: The progress of silicon photonics technology research and development

is less than expected, and the risk of defeat in the competition with III races;

IDC business development is less than expected risks.

Yole Développement shared the latest findings in its research report

“Silicon Photonics for Data Centers and Other Applications”. The experts

including Eric Mounier, senior technology and market analyst at Yole, and

Jean-Louis Malinge, former chief investment officer at ARCH Venture Partners,

and other experts all conducted in-depth analysis of the silicon photonics

industry. At present, the silicon photonics market is not too big. It is

estimated that sales in 2015 will be less than 40 million US dollars. In fact,

only a few companies have begun to ship products in the open market, including

Mellanox, Cisco, Luxtera. Intel, Intel, STMicroelectronics, Acacia and Molex

are all leading players in this market.

However, silicon photonics

technology has continued to develop for many years. Today, this technology is

highly favored by large network companies such as Facebook and Microsoft, and

it is actively promoting it. "Silicon photonics technology has reached the

tipping point before large-scale growth," said Eric Mounier. "In

fact, we estimate that the transceiver market encapsulated with silicon

photonics technology will grow rapidly to a market value of $6 billion in the

next decade." Silicon photonics is an exciting technology that combines

optics, CMOS technology, and advanced packaging technology. This combination is

driven by the scalability of semiconductor wafer fabrication, which can reduce

costs. According to Yole, before 2020, silicon photonics chips will far exceed

the capabilities of copper wiring, and its solutions are expected to be

deployed in high-speed signal transmission systems. In 2025 and beyond, this

technology will be more widely used in applications such as interconnected

multi-core and processor chips. Yole analysts believe that, at the chip level,

this market is expected to reach 1.5 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

Today, for silicon photonics technology, the data center is clearly its best opportunity. Of course there are many other new applications that silicon photonics can use, including high-end applications such as high-performance computers, telecommunications, sensors, life sciences, and quantum computing. In addition, there are two emerging applications that are also particularly interesting for silicon photonics - Lidar for automated vehicle applications, as well as biochemical and chemical sensors, both from integrated optical functions and further Benefit from miniaturization.

Everbright is still a very

expensive and cumbersome instrument, which poses challenges when it comes to

integration into vehicles. However, Yole expects that in 2017, the ADAS market

with development prospects will reach US$3.9 billion, of which, Guangda, based

on silicon photonic technology, will play a key role. In August of this year,

the Photonic Microsystems Group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(MIT) released a successful DARPA program that uses silicon photonics to

achieve controlled launch and receive phase arrays and chip stacks ( Ge)

Lidar-on-a-chip photodetector.

We are in front of a large-scale

deployment Yole believes that the industry is close to the critical point of

large-scale deployment of highly integrated devices around the world. Judging

from the recent dynamics of semiconductor foundry giants, such as the

cooperation between TSMC and Luxtera, GlobalFoundries and Ayar Labs have played

an important role in promoting silicon photonics business. STMicroelectronics

is currently the main silicon photonics manufacturer. In the development of

"Zero-Change" zero change is feasible, because the manufacture of

silicon optical devices do not need to change the CMOS process, which

facilitates the creation of large-scale market applications in the inter-chip

optical interconnection field. Silicon photonics was mature in the electronics

industry as early as the 1980s, but there are still some challenges to overcome

in the optoelectronics industry. These challenges require the technology to

overcome the following:

  1. Light source: low cost, low speed <50Gb/s 2. Smaller Modulators: Cheaper, Better Peak Drive Performance, Low Power Consumption 3, horizontal packaging, wafer scale testing 4, design and software: optical software customization and customization, 5, mature supply chain 6, manufacturing: CMOS process zero change is a new trend.

2017-2021 Silicon Photonics Roadmap From data communications to other applications In addition to the data center, silicon photons are also needed in other areas. High performance computing usually refers to aggregating computing power in a more performance-like manner than a typical desktop computer or workstation can solve to solve problems in science, engineering, or business. Due to the accelerated growth of microprocessor performance and the recent emergence of chip multiprocessors (CMPs), key performance bottlenecks in high performance computing systems have shifted from processors to communications infrastructure. Therefore, by exploring the parallel and capacity of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology, optical interconnects can provide higher bandwidth, low latency solutions and solve the large bandwidth challenges of future computer systems. High bandwidth capability, energy-saving transparency, and TOF delay can maintain optical link memory system performance. .

The telecom market is also a potential market for silicon photonics, especially metropolitan area networks ranging from 80km to 1500km. For example, Acacia is developing carrier-grade silicon photonic modules. Coherent technology was first deployed on long-haul networks, and Acacia's coherent technology reduced polarization dispersion and loss, and also reduced the channel band. Fiber to the home (FTTH) is also an indispensable application scenario for silicon photonics, especially the second-generation Gigabit optical network (GPON2). Silicon photonics can play an important role in upgrading from FTTH 10G to 25G, because it has more required functions such as wavelength tuning and switching. In other areas, sensors such as biomedical devices and sensors; future vehicles will require higher levels of safety, and their rapid response will require lower delays; silicon photonics is also very attractive for radar applications, IMEC is developing related technologies, and some R&D The project has been launched; in the case of aerospace, the dimensional weight is as stringent as reducing power consumption, and silicon photonics can be improved.

In addition, according to Yole's

silicon photonics study, before 2025, the application of these non-data centers

will reach a market size of approximately US$300 million.