The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Institute of Microelectronics (IME) has inked a strategic partnership with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories and GLOBALFOUNDRIES to commercialize advanced silicon chips that were designed as part of its Silicon Photonics research platform to promote high-bandwidth and high-speed optical communications.
Through this strategic partnership, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories will further improve these silicon chips. Alcatel-Lucent and IME will work closely with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to commercialize these advanced silicon component designs in the near future. They plan to offer these cost-saving and expandable silicon building blocks to photonics developers to fabricate novel products and promote the advantages of radically improved processing power and data rate, at a lower cost to the industry.
This partnership enables the combination of IME’s development expertise and advanced research capability and far-reaching design expertise of Bell Labs to fabricate a portfolio of silicon photonics devices, including waveguides, germanium photo-detectors, future-generation high-speed optical modulators and other photonic circuits used in networking devices, with required process design kits and process control monitors.
IME’s Executive Director, Dim-Lee Kwong stated that this partnership emphasizes silicon photonics’ ever-increasing commercial importance. The institute will continuously work for the advancement of its Silicon Photonics technology platform and propagate the advantages of silicon photonic devices to the industry globally through the collaboration with its strategic partners.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ General Manager for Singapore and Senior Vice President for 200mm Business Unit, Raj Kumar commented that the company is happy about the collaboration with IME to offer photonics systems to clients like Alcatel-Lucent. Alice White, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs’ Chief Scientist stated that she is excited about the company’s partnership with GLOBALFOUNDRIES and IME to promote the innovations in silicon photonics technology.
Source: http://www.ime.a-star.edu.sg