PTB >>Demystifying Electro-Photonic Integrated Circuits

Fiber optic interconnects have enjoyed a relatively long history in long haul telecommunications due to their ability to transmit large quantities of data across great distances. As our society’s insatiable demand for communications bandwidth grows, we have seen the emerging necessity of optical solutions for ever shorter links, and at a much larger scale. Whereas conventional optical systems were used predominantly for links spanning thousands of kilometers, today’s state-of-the-art data centers require them for most links greater than 5 meters in length. With no signs of the rapid increase for bandwidth diminishing, within a few years the need for optics will take its next big step beyond the enterprise world and into the mainstream consumer markets.

Despite steady growth of the optical industry, the majority of the design practices have remained the same. Optical systems historically have been assembled out of a collection of discrete components, and integrated photonics solutions have seemed as elusive as the monolithic integrated circuits that appeared in the middle of the 20th century. In response to this limitation, we have seen the emergence of a CMOS photonics industry, which has revolutionized the high-speed interconnect industry through integrating optical functions into conventional CMOS processes. Beyond being able to integrate a family of optical components, CMOS photonics design platforms have enabled the design of full Electro- Photonic Integrated Circuits (EPICs) and systems. The benefits of EPICs are many and continuously unfolding, but their biggest impact is the ability to drive significant costs savings, both when employed in place of discrete optical solutions in a standard space, or when pulled into systems that otherwise could not have accommodated optical systems. By enabling fabrication in conventional CMOS foundries, EPICs can reap the scalability and cost benefits inherent to the semiconductor industry, as well as leverage all the advances realized in that industry to push the technologies ever further.

Figure 2. EPIC Layout and Schematic.

Fabrication of an EPIC
While many EPIC solutions have been demonstrated using post-processed silicon wafers, the most significant technologies enable full integration into a CMOS foundry flow. There are two general approaches for such solutions: front end of the line (FEOL) and back end of the line (BEOL) integration, although thus far only FEOL integration has been demonstrated at production scale. FEOL integration uses an SOI substrate to enable integration of optical components in the same active silicon as electronic components, where the SOI substrate is necessary to provide a bottom cladding for optical structures. The two major benefits of FEOL integration is that it can use the same doping steps employed in electronic component design to generate active optical components as well as enable very small scale integration between electronic and optical components (compared to the larger geometries required in BEOL routing).

A cross section of FEOL CMOS Photonics integration can be seen in Figure 1. The key optical components of a CMOS photonics EPIC are all based on the basic waveguide structure, which is etched into the active silicon layer within a given integrated circuit. Out of that, modulators and photodetectors can be built (the latter using a germanium deposition process), as well as vertically incident optical I/Os constructed using reflective gratings in the same active silicon layer. While not employed in all CMOS photonic processes, the last component is vital to ensure a full EPIC solution. It is the only way to enable wafer scale electro-photonic tests and the only solution that doesn’t violate long term IC reliability rules for a secure IC guard ring. While simple in concept, CMOS photonics solutions have needed to overcome a number of challenges to become product worthy, most of them attributed to the requirement to maintain compatibility with a standard silicon foundry. While deviations in the fabrication modules do exist (most notably for germanium deposition to create photodiodes), every customization must be possible using the standard foundry tool sets and without interrupting the foundries ability to fabricate non-photonic technologies.

Design of an EPIC
Electro-Photonic Integrated Circuits are designed in much the same manner as any integrated circuit, with a design environment that goes beyond the standard electrical components and offers seamlessly integrated optical libraries. Similar to how most existing foundries offer different variants of their design kits, as might be seen in analog and digital offerings of a particular node, an optical variant can be enabled in much the same way with few additional design rules necessary to aid in the design process. Consistent with the physical design, full electro-photonic schematic design and verification is possible, enabling anyone familiar with IC design to function as an efficient optical designer. An example of an EPIC design can be seen in Figure 2. The benefits of electro-photonic design cannot be overstated because the integration of electronic and photonic components enables manners of design impossible to any other technology. Classical optical system design requires a discrete divide between optical and electrical components, which is unnecessary in EPICs. By using electro-photonic design, electrical interfaces to photonic elements can be distributed as needed throughout a system, reaping tremendous performance and functionality benefits over discrete optical systems. This benefit has already enabled dramatic power reductions in high speed optical modulators as well as new and unique optical monitoring functions to ensure interconnect security.

Die shot of a Luxtera Electro-Photonics Integrated Circuit.

EPIC Applications
Electro-Photonics Integrated Circuits have already begun to see broad adoption in the data-communications market; however this initial foray represents just a small step into a much larger, longterm CMOS photonics market.

While a scale of technology adoption similar to that of conventional semiconductor solutions is still years off, the ability of CMOS photonics to dramatically reduce the costs of optional systems is enabling it to make initial product penetrations, while rewriting the rules of transceiver markets long dominated by discrete optical solutions. Leading the data-communications market are InfiniBand systems. Used in many of the world’s most advanced computers with quad data rate (QDR) systems, InfiniBand systems have successfully employed production grade CMOS photonics chips in high-performance data clusters already.

This market is expected to grow and employ hundredsof- thousands of CMOS photonics ICs per year. While InfiniBand is the leader in performance, larger datacom markets exist in the form of Ethernet and Fibre Channel interconnects. Both of these alternatives are expected to drive larger adoption of CMOS photonics for solutions at, or above, 10 Gbps. With the near-term adoption of 40G and 100G Ethernet solutions, 16G and 32G Fibre Channel, EDR InfiniBand, and other proprietary backplane solutions, the market for CMOS photonics ICs is expected to surpass 1 million units within the next 3 years. While data-communications is a high growth market for CMOS photonics and vital to its adoption as the long term interconnect of choice, the real value proposition for CMOS photonics is its ability to be integrated into any silicon IC. These applications could range from high performance computers that integrate the optical I/O directly into the CPU, obviating the need for a power hungry interconnect fabric (or several), to high speed consumer optics, enabling the growing demand for high bandwidth multimedia and advanced video interconnectivity. These steps will advance the market for CMOS photonics adoption, likely reaching the hundreds of millions of units and with growth limited only by the size of the semiconductor industry.

This article was written by Brian Welch, Technical Marketing Engineer, Luxtera (Carlsbad, CA). For more information, contact Mr. Welch at bwelch@luxtera.com, or visit http://info.hotims.com/28053-200.