Nov 19 2010
Kotura, Inc., a leading provider of Silicon Photonics products, today announced that it has demonstrated an ultrafast, submilliwatt, broadband 2 x 2 optical switch. With switching speeds of 6 ns and power consumption of only 0.6 milliwatts, the 60 nm bandwidth means the device could more than cover the entire C-band range.
“We are putting all the building blocks in place for Optical Interconnects,” reported Mehdi Asghari, CTO at Kotura. “We previously demonstrated high-speed, low-power modulators, high-speed detectors with record performance, and low-loss wavelength division multiplexers and de-multiplexers. With our new 2 x 2 switch we will be able to support more complex silicon photonic circuits and enable more flexible interconnecting architectures. The switching power of 0.6mW achieved by this free carrier current injection device represents, to our knowledge, a world record and the speed of 6ns is amongst the fastest ever reported.”
“Because the device is broad band, it is very generic,” added Jean-Louis Malinge, President and Chief Operating Officer of Kotura. “The ultra low power of the switch enables us to integrate large numbers of our 2 x 2 switch modules to create complex switch fabrics. This is a very exciting development.”
Kotura’s low-power high-speed switch was developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Ultra-performance Nano-photonic Intrachip Communications (UNIC) program in conjunction with Oracle Corporation, under the leadership of Dr. Jagdeep Shah, DARPA Program Manager. A paper, “Submilliwatt, ultrafast and broadband electro-optic silicon switches” by Po Dong, et al. was recently published in the prestigious OSA Journal Optics Express.
Source: http://www.kotura.com/