G. de Valicourt
The field of silicon photonics is rapidly expanding, similarly to electronics in the 1970s, and much of the knowledge of this mature platform is applicable to photonics. As in electronics, the need for reduced footprint and cost as well as large-scale production pushed for higher levels of integration in photonic devices. In this paper, we will focus on fiber optic communication applications for this technology. On one side, coherent technologies have spurred a revolution in optical core networks and are expected to conquer a large market share in metropolitan and inter-datacenter networks in the very near future; however, these segments are particularly sensitive to cost, and therefore to footprint and power consumption, while still requiring high transmission performance. In order to contain cost, several chips can be co-packaged in the optoelectronic transmitter. For example, in [1], co-packaged laser and modulator chips produced optical data at 32 GBaud; however, monolithic integration is expected to provide even greater cost savings than co-packaging. In fact, novel integrated transceivers have been recently proposed and are being commercially deployed [2]. On the other side, on-chip optical interconnects require extremely low power and compact optical devices, which can be integrated closely with integrated circuits (ICs). Emerging silicon photonics technology has demonstrated low-power optical devices [3] that can operate in combination with energy-efficient CMOS drivers and amplifiers.
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