Tower begins producing 1.6T transceivers on latest silicon photonics platform
The foundry says its newest platform supports data rates of 200G per lane, helping to double rates compared with current 800G high-volume products, with customers including Coherent now ordering production quantities
Tower Semiconductor has announced the start of volume production of 1.6T silicon photonic products for multiple lead customers based on its latest silicon photonics platform. According to the company, its latest platform includes innovations that have helped double data rates relative to its current 800G high-volume products. Tower says that these innovations have been developed in close collaboration with several Tier 1 customers that have designed breakthrough 1.6T products on this enhanced platform and have now begun to order production quantities.
Describing the process, Tower says it supports data rates of 200G per lane, of which eight are built in parallel to achieve the total 1.6T transceiver throughput. This is in contrast to the 100G-per-lane data rates of existing high-volume silicon photonic technology as used in today’s high-volume 800G products.
“We have recently announced 1.6T optical transceivers based on silicon photonics technology in addition to ramping up our silicon photonics based 8x100G transceivers,” said Jack Xu, VP of Transceiver Engineering at Coherent Corp. “We are very happy to have a strong partner in Tower. Tower can help innovate and bring to market advanced technology and also has the experience to ramp silicon photonic products to high-volume thereby benefiting our mutual customers.”
Tower adds that its high-volume silicon photonics platform delivers all of the key enabling features required for high-data-rate optical transceivers, including high-bandwidth optical modulators and low-loss edge coupling from lasers, and to optical fibres. These features play a vital role in the development of high-speed data communication components and aim to support the industry shift from 100G per lane to 200G per lane and beyond.
“We are thrilled to announce this achievement and to see it deployed by esteemed companies like Coherent, a leader in high-speed data communications,” said Marco Racanelli, president of Tower Semiconductor. “As always, Tower is dedicated to delivering cutting-edge technology solutions that empower our customers to shape and advance their respective markets.”
