TowerJazz expands its Silicon Photonics Technology

23 March, 2017

TowerJazz Announced a new Foundry Silicon Photonic (SiPho) Process Targeting Optical Transceiver Electronics. Collaborates with PhoeniX Software to provide PDKs for the development of new optical integrated circuits

The global specialty foundry from Israel, TowerJazz, announced a new silicon photonic production process (SiPho) which complements its SiGe BiCMOS processes utilized to manufacture optical transceiver electronics. TowerJazz also revealed a collaboration with PhoeniX Software to provide design kits (PDKs) for the development of optical networking and data center interconnects solutions. SiPho PDKs for TowerJazz’ SiPho process will be available Q3 2017.

The announcement strenthen TowerJazz in one of the emerging markets of communication. With the enormous surge in datacenter traffic, servers and storage designs must support much higher bandwidths at lower power, and optical high speed links are today’s solutions to support these demands. According to Keysight Technologies, optical networking and communications market is growing exponentially and is forecast to be worth $25 Billion by 2020.

TowerJazz’s SiPho process is built to enable a wide range of optical fiber interconnect Tx and Rx front-end optical ICs.  The process includes several versions of single-mode silicon waveguides, high speed germanium photodetectors, p-n junction modulators and enablement for edge and grating couplers.

PhoeniX Software’s OptoDesigner 5.1 solution, uses a unique process known as photonic synthesis to map design intent into a design-rule, targeted to the TowerJazz SiPho process.  Designers can use its parametric object oriented scripting environment and its integrated photonic simulators, to optimize their designs and to ensure its manufacturability.

“We are excited to be entering the silicon photonics foundry space in order to provide solutions to a greater portion of the optical transceiver market for our customers,” said Dr. Marco Racanelli, Sr. Vice President at TowerJazz. “As a pure-play foundry, design enablement plays a critical and complementary role to the manufacturing process. PhoeniX Software has extensive experience in the silicon photonics space.”

 TowerJazz manufactures integrated circuits, offering a broad range of customizable process technologies including: SiGe, BiCMOS, mixed-signal/CMOS, RF CMOS, CMOS image sensor, integrated power management (BCD and 700V), and MEMS. It operates two manufacturing facilities in Israel (150mm and 200mm), two in the U.S. (200mm) and three additional facilities in Japan (two 200mm and one 300mm) through TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Co. (TPSCo), of which TowerJazz has the majority holding. Through TPSCo, TowerJazz provides 45nm CMOS, 65nm RF CMOS and 65nm 1.12um pixel technologies.

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Posted in: News , Semiconductors

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