Silicon optical technology is one of the core technologies of the post-Moore era. It is a combination of semiconductor technology and optical technology, and its impact on the communication industry will be disruptive.

Silicon optical technology has entered the stage of large-scale integration:

Source: Chinese Society of Communication, Yole

With the development of 5G communication technology towards mass connection and large capacity, optical communication devices need to be equipped with a large number of optical modules in order to achieve comprehensive signal coverage. Optical modules need to achieve high-density connection to drive optical modules towards high integration.

Optical chip is the core component of optical module, and its cost ratio increases with the increase of transmission rate. It is at the commanding point of the value of the industrial chain and has the highest competition barrier.

The silicon optical integration technology combines data exchange, storage and processing, which is the trend of the next generation optical communication technology.

Silicon optical chip has the unique advantages of low cost, low power consumption, high speed, ultra-miniaturization, ultra-light and ultra-thin while maintaining the high sensitivity of optical devices.

The highly integrated nature of silicon optical technology has greater demand in the consumer sector which is more sensitive to size. Consumer electronics, intelligent driving, quantum communication and other fields have greater development space.

Silicon-based optoelectronic integrated chip concepts:

Silicon Photonics is currently most mature in the field of connectivity including data center interconnection (DCI) transceivers, involving data centers, high-performance data exchange, long-distance interconnection, 5G infrastructure, etc.

With the vertical division of labor in the industrial chain, the following fields such as lidar, wearable devices and AI photon computing based on silicon light will break out one after another.

According to Gartner, the application scale of silicon-based optical chips will reach $2.615 billion by 2025, with a compound growth rate of 38% between 2020 and 2025. By 2025, the total market size of silicon optical modules will reach $1.891 billion, accounting for nearly 72.3% of silicon optical chip applications. At the same time, the overall proportion of silicon optical technology in optical modules will increase from 5.7% in 2020 to more than 15% in 2025.

Source: Gartner

From the perspective of the industrial chain, silicon photonics technology involves the production links of "design-manufacturing-packaging". From the perspective of the industrial chain, it includes raw material suppliers (fabs, etc.), designers, manufacturers, packaging manufacturers, system integrators, etc. Currently, there are few commercial products, and the whole industry has not formed a stable competition pattern.

At present, due to the immature development of silicon photonics, the industrial chain of silicon photonics has not completely formed the industrial pattern of the separation of Foundry factory and silicon photonics design company as in the microelectronics industry. Besides, the integration degree of silicon photonics is not high, and the IP of silicon photonics devices is not fully formed and mature, so the optical devices are generally designed by Fabless themselves.

As silicon photonics gain market acceptance, downstream customers (large Internet companies, carriers, communications equipment manufacturers, etc.) move into the middle and upstream manufacturing process.

The three most important applications of silicon photonics are:

In telecommunications, silicon optical technology helps reduce the size and cost of optical modules; In the field of digital communication, silicon optical technology helps to further improve the yield, and has obvious advantages in high-speed application scenarios.

The mature commercialization of silicon photonics mainly lies in the optical connection field of data center, high-performance data exchange, long-distance interconnection, 5G infrastructure and so on. 800G and later silicon optical modules are more cost-effective.

At present, silicon-optical integration technology is still in the early stage of development. Photonic chip needs to be integrated with mature electronic chip technology. Advanced manufacturing process and modular technology of electronic chip are used.

Silicon photonics is the development trend of deterministic technology. Giant companies at home and abroad aim at silicon photonics track and acquire frequently.

Not only Mellanox, Luxtera, Acacia, Finisar, Avago, but also semiconductor companies like Intel, IBM, Cisco, Imec, and equipment makers like Huawei.

Domestic manufacturers such as Guangxun Technology, Xinyisheng, Tianfu Communication, Zhongji Xuchuang, Bochuang Technology, etc., have entered into the field of silicon optics from the separate optical module market. However, the packaging process in the manufacturing process of traditional optical modules is more complicated, and the BOM and labor cost need more investment. In addition, CPO technology using silicon optics is expected to become the mainstream mode in the future. Traditional optical module manufacturing enterprises will face great technical challenges and need to keep track of the progress of silicon optical product research and development and customer verification of domestic optical module manufacturers.

Domestic startups in the silicon photonics industry mainly include Xizhi Technology (AI photonics chip), micro-source Photonics (Silicon Photonics Lidar, wearable), and Guoke Photonics (silicon Photonics Lidar).

These manufacturers are closest to the telecom market and data center market, the two major application areas of silicon photonics communication. In the current competitive landscape has not been determined, these manufacturers are also the future development of silicon photonics industry greatly.

As the integration of silicon photonics increases in the future, Foundry Silicon Photonics service provider will fully provide PDKS including advanced optoelectronic devices (modulators and detectors, etc.), which can be used to design devices with higher performance or complex silicon-based photonic integrated system chips containing more components.

At that time, silicon photonics circuit design companies only need to pay attention to their application requirements to carry out circuit design simulation, which will promote the development of silicon photonics in many fields including optical interconnection on chip, optical sensing, lidar, consumer optoelectronics and other fields besides optical communication, and greatly expand the silicon photonics market space.