We understand the challenges in PIC testing and focus on PIC R&D market. “MLP was founded by silicon photonic designers who needed an efficient way to test their own PICs.
They accomplish this by solving the most costly and time-consuming tasks in PIC testing, namely aligning fibers to on-chip circuits and orchestrating automated tests involving bench-top test instrumentation. Their vision is to accelerate PIC development by lowering the barrier to entry for tests throughout the product design cycle. Maple Leaf Photonics has solved this issue with its family of innovative and customizable photonic probe stations. Customizing traditional and existing CMOS test tools is either not possible or involves exponential costs, which is often prohibitive for R&D test budgets. Manually aligning fibers and programming the bench-top laser sources, detectors, modulators, and analyzers to test optical circuits can take hours or days. This is especially true for R&D environments where photonic designs are being realized for the first time and optimized prior to high-volume fabrication and testing. Progress has been slow and little standardization exists for photonic integrated circuit-based design flows, including testing and characterization.Ī basic and challenging aspect of PIC testing involves getting light on and off the chip and controlling the various instrumentation required for measurements. This is not the case with photonic integrated circuits. The design, verification, and test tools are mature and well understood, providing high confidence in realizing complex products the first time. CMOS chip designers can leverage established process design kits (PDKs) provided by foundries to build complex circuits. The integration of light into CMOS chips has created unique test challenges for developers and manufacturers. Other markets, like quantum computing, LIDAR, and a wide range of sensing and healthcare applications have also reaped the benefits of integrated photonics as well. In the last decade, integrated photonics has fundamentally improved efficiencies in data centers by replacing copper wires with high-speed optical cables.
PICs allow transistors (electrons) and photons (light) to be manipulated simultaneously, creating fast, complex systems in a small and power-efficient footprint. For example, high-speed data communications brought about by optical fiber networks and discrete photonics can now be integrated into a single, monolithic device called Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC). This technology, often referred to as silicon photonics, has caused a revolution in traditional optical-based systems. In addition to allowing more power-efficient and faster electronic circuits, the SOI platform also allows near-infrared (NIR) light to be confined and manipulated in small silicon wires, called waveguides, on chip. One of the more recent advancements has been the introduction of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers into the manufacturing process. Shon Schmidt, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO Semiconductor technology has been the cornerstone for innovation in computing for seven decades now.
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