GloFo sets up GF Fotonics

 GlobalFoundries has set up a dedicated photonics unit called GF Fotonix.

GloFo is collaborating with Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Marvell, NVIDIA and photonics specialists Ayar Labs, Lightmatter, PsiQuantum, Ranovus and Xanadu, to deliver the advantages of photonics.

 GloFo says it has active design wins with major customers, significant market share today and expects its growth in this segment to outpace the market.    

GLoFo is partnering with Cisco on a custom silicon photonics solution for DCN and DCI applications, including an interdependent PDK.

“NVIDIA interconnect solutions manufactured with the monolithic GF Fotonix platform will boost high performance computing and AI applications,” says Nvidia svp Edward Lee.

“We are happy to see Global Foundries extend their investments for enabling a photonics ecosystem across components and integrated solutions,” says Broadcon vp Liming Tsau. 

“The demands of today and tomorrow’s networking and communications infrastructure are requiring higher performance technologies for the design and manufacture of our optical transceiver modules,” says Cisco svp Bill Gartner.

   “GF’s latest silicon germanium technology enables us to achieve the high bandwidth speeds and power efficiencies that our customers require,” says Narvell evp Lou Nguyen.

 “The combination of our leading monolithic electronic/photonic solution and GF Fotonix unlocks a tremendous market opportunity for chip-to-chip optical I/O and sets the stage for us to deliver substantial volume shipments by year end, says Ayar CEO Charles Wuischpard.

“Our next-generation technology is made possible by GlobalFoundries’ best-in-class photonic foundry technology and together we’re changing the way the world thinks about photonics. This is just the start,” says Kightnatter CEO Nicholas Harris.

“Our telecoms, defense and data center customers need innovative new ways to transmit, connect and compute data at the speed of light,” says Macon vp Martin Zirngibl.  

“We are leveraging GF’s new Fotonics platform to develop custom silicon photonics chips that meet our  quantum computing requirements,” said Fariba Danesh, COI of PsiQuantum.  

“We are delighted to share our multi-disciplinary silicon-photonics IP cores and chiplets, and advanced packaging solutions with our customers who are driving the adoption of novel data center architectures based on integrating best-in-class chiplets and co-packaged optics,” says Hojjat Salemi, chief business development officer of RANOVUS.

“Many chips, operating in parallel and networked together, are required to process the large number of qubits involved in fault-tolerant quantum computing algorithms,” says Zachary Vernon, head of hardware at Xanadu, “leveraging an advanced 300mm platform like GF Fotonix gives us a huge advantage in the race to deliver a useful, error-corrected quantum computer.”  

The GF Fotonix monolithic platform combines its differentiated 300mm photonics features and 300GHz-class RF-CMOS on a silicon wafer.

It  consolidates complex processes that were previously distributed across multiple chips onto a single chip by combining a photonic system, RF components and high-performance CMOS logic on a single silicon chip.   

The platform has shown a data rate per fiber (0.5Tbps/fiber). This enables 1.6-3.2Tbps optical chiplets, which deliver faster, more efficient transmission of data, more efficiently with better signal integrity.

In addition, the up to 10,000x improvement in system error rate enables next generation artificial intelligence (AI).  

The platform  enables innovative solutions such as the passive attachment for larger fiber arrays, support for 2.5D packaging, and on-die lasers.  

GF Fotonix solutions will be manufactured at the company’s manufacturing facility in Malta, N.Y., with the PDK 1.0 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, MPWs, testing, pre- and post-fab, turnkey and semiconductor manufacturing services to help customers get to market faster.   

In addition, for customers needing discrete, high-performance RF solutions for optical systems, Glof Fo is adding new features onto the GF SiGe platform.

 For more information visit gf.com/siliconphotonics