Silicon Photonics is up for bigger impact

For the bandwidth hungry internet, the electrical communication over wire is severe limitation for GHz and above frequency not only off-chip but also on-chip. The chip-to-chip and inter-chip data transfer need optical interconnect to rise the speed of computing as well as communication to serve the needs of today's demanding high-definition media rich applications. Silicon is not so good material for converting electrical signal into light and vice versa. But the silicon is best material for mass manufacturing high speed computing chips. Researchers now able to integrate light emitter and light receivers which can work seamlessly with electrical signal on silicon wafer. They (silicon foundries) add bond III-V semiconductor materials for laser emission and epitaxially overgrow Germanium on top of silicon to detect light. A complex procedure!!. Intel, Cisco and Mellanox are said to be leading in offering Silicon photonics based devices and systems in the market. The other players include Lightwire, Luxtera, and Chiral Photonics. MarketsandMarkets has forecasted the total Silicon Photonics market is expected to be worth $2.02 Billion by 2015 with a CAGR of 78.2% from 2010 to 2015. Mellanox has acquired privately held IPtronics A/S by paying approximately $47.5 million. IPtronics’ high-speed transmitter and receiver devices to help Mellanox in offering 100Gb and b...