OpenLight proliferates PDKs to address photonic IC markets

Photonics IC developer OpenLight Inc. (Goleta, Calif.) is producing multiple physical design kits (PDKs) to ramp customer engagement as it looks for its customers to go into volume in 2025.

Adam Carter CEO told Peter Clarke about progress for his company’s approach to enabling photonic ICs.

Founded in 2022 a 2022 joint venture between Juniper Networks and Synopsys Inc., OpenLight has a process for integrating indium-phosphide lasers on silicon substrates that host waveguides. OpenLight claims the process is closer to a photonic ASIC (PASIC) than to an optical subassembly. The process has been installed at foundry Tower Semiconductor.

OpenLight’s business model being to provide the building block component IP and physical design kit (PDK) that enables customers to design their own PASICs and pay royalties on units shipped.

Carter said: “It is starting to accelerate. We have customers designing PASICs who are starting to engage in the data center and with AI.” He added: “It has taken a while for people to understand what we offer.”

OpenLight portfolio includes active components such as tuneable lasers, optical amplifiers, distributed feedback (DFB) lasers, modulators and photodetectors. The methodology calls for multiple bars of InP to be bonded to the silicon wafer which contains Si/SiN waveguides. High-performance active components are then characterized in the InP and coupled to the waveguides using tapered structures and evanescent-node coupling

Carter made the point that the loss between active components and waveguides is of the order of 10 percent compared to 70 percent losses for more conventional coupling. The OpenLight technique does require the use of pick-and-place positioning of InP bars but produces good results for multiple applications, Carter said.

One aspect of OpenLight’s mission is the need to develop a supporting ecosystem. Parent company Synopsys is part of that support but open is in the name and OpenLight is open to engagement with other EDA companies works with Luceda Photonics and design services company Epiphany Design. Other partnerships include Jabil, VLC Photonics and Spark Photonics.

The only foundry that OpenLight’s process is installed at is Tower. “It is only at Tower but it could go elsewhere. The job is to expand sales to be big enough for more than one foundry,” said Carter. “We will succeed if our PDK is relevant and if it is accurate,” said Carter.

To help ensure this OpenLight is creating multiple parallel PDKs. “Our standard PDK includes a tunable laser. The second PDK targets FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) lidar applications. The third PDK includes DFB lasers.”

Carter added: “Over time we will make more PDKs for more market verticals.”

Right now, OpenLight has about 26 circuits in design. “Six of those are being designed on their own and 20 by us.” He continued: “We are still in qualification but we expect customers to go into production in 2025.”

Chiplets are another application that OpenLight is ready to address possibly through he design of high-performance optical interposers. “It has potential and we are talking to one or two companies. We’ve got the majority of the building blocks required and we’re in discussions about what the architecture would look like.”