GLOBALFOUNDRIES launches next-generation silicon photonics platform

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that it is collaborating with companies including Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Inc, Marvell and NVIDIA, as well as breakthrough photonics leaders including Ayar Labs, Lightmatter, PsiQuantum, Ranovus and Xanadu, to deliver innovative, unique, feature-rich solutions to solve some of the biggest challenges facing today’s data centers.

More than 42 billion connected IoT devices generate approximately 177 ZB of data per year, which, combined with rising data center power consumption, is driving the need for innovative solutions to move and compute data faster and more efficiently. These key market trends and influences have driven GF’s focus on breakthrough semiconductor solutions that harness the potential of photons rather than electrons to transmit data and position GF to continue to be a manufacturing leader in the optical network module market, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 26% between 2021 and 2026, reaching approximately $4 billion by 2026.

Yesterday, GF was proud to announce the next generation of its broadly disruptive silicon photonics platform, GF Fotonix. GF has aggressive design wins with major customers, has captured significant market share today, and expects to outpace the market in this area.

GF also announced a collaboration with industry leader Cisco Systems to customize silicon photonics solutions for DCN and DCI applications, including interdependent process design kits (PDKs) developed in close collaboration with our GF Manufacturing Services team.

GF Fotonix is ​​a monolithic platform and the first in the industry to integrate its differentiated 300mm photonics features and 300GHz-class RF-CMOS on a silicon wafer, delivering best-in-class performance at scale. GF Fotonix combines photonic systems, radio frequency (RF) components and high-performance complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic on a single silicon chip, consolidating complex processes that were previously distributed across multiple chips onto a single chip.

GF is the only pure-play foundry with a 300mm monolithic silicon photonics solution that demonstrates the industry’s highest single-fiber data rate (0.5Tbps/fiber). This enables 1.6-3.2Tbps optical chips to deliver faster, more efficient data transmission, as well as more efficient signal integrity. In addition, the system error rate is improved by up to 10,000 times, enabling the next generation of artificial intelligence.

GF Fotonix enables the highest level of integration on photonic integrated circuits (PICs), so customers can integrate more product features and simplify their bill of materials (BOM). End customers can achieve higher performance by increasing capacity and capabilities. The new solution also supports innovative packaging solutions such as passive connectivity for large fiber arrays, 2.5D packaging, and on-chip lasers.

GF Fotonix solutions will be manufactured at the company's advanced manufacturing facility in Malta, New York, and PDK 1.0 will be available in April 2022. EDA partners Ansys, Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Synopsys provide design tools and flows to support GF's customers and their solutions. GF ​​provides customers with reference design kits, MPW, testing, pre- and post-processing, and semiconductor manufacturing services to help customers get to market faster.