Silicon Photonics for Optical Interconnects

Abstract

The current trend in optics toward higher levels of integration, leading to smaller footprint and lower cost, is pushing to a need for a large-scale production technology platform. Silicon photonics is currently at the same early stage of expansion as electronics was in the 1970s and expecting to benefit from such already existing platforms. At the same time, optical interconnects promising scalable capacity, low latency and low energy per bit need novel devices with strict requirements on cost and power consumption. In this article, we review some of the key silicon photonic devices toward an integrated optical link for next generation of optical interconnects. The integration of laser sources, modulators, detectors and switches are discussed as well as more advanced photonic integrated circuits including such building blocks. Several realizations toward final system demonstrations are described, reducing the gap between aspiration and real-life applications.