Keysight Technologies, Inc., FormFactor, Inc., and CompoundTek have joined forces to accelerate integrated photonics innovations.
Integrated photonics, also called silicon photonics, is a technology that multiplies data transfer capacities while reducing power consumption and cost. While photonics integrated circuits (PICs) offer an exciting alternative to the limitations of traditional data center networking, they also introduce new design and test challenges for component and device manufacturers. Adoption of PICs is primarily dependent on an industrial ecosystem comprised of new foundries, commercial modeling tools, and photonic test capabilities.
Keysight, FormFactor and CompoundTek, have jointly developed an advanced photonics on-wafer testing solution that delivers capabilities including automated alignment, simultaneous optical-optical and optical-electrical device tests.
The joint solution, to be offered by CompoundTek includes:
- The FormFactor CM300xi-SiPh, with automated wafer level photonics positioning combined with Keysight's IL/PDL engines and N7700A Photonics Application Suite (PAS), to support wavelength repeatability of ±1.5 pm at two-way sweeps up to 200 nm/s within 1240nm to 1650nm to ensure accuracy and repeatability from O-band to L-band.
- Keysight's N4373E 67 GHz Lightwave Component Analyzer which delivers the bandwidth necessary for both optical receiver testing and optical transmitter testing with guaranteed specifications for electro-optical S-parameter measurements for device traceability.
- Keysight's PathWave software platform which provides a consistent user experience, common data formats and control interfaces.
- FormFactor's SiPh software that enables automated calibrations and alignments and simplifies integration with Keysight's PathWave software platform, as well as optical instrumentation, to ensure ease of use.
Silicon photonics also delivers benefits for industrial segments such as intra data center communication and data center interconnects (DCI), telecom, 5G, automotive connectivity, high-performance computing, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), as well as sensing and medical applications.
"Innovation in optics is critical to connect the world and help the industry to monetize 5G, as well as data center and telecom services," said Dr. Joachim Peerlings, vice president of Network and Data Center Solutions at Keysight Technologies. "Advancing in speed as well as power and cost efficiency requires a tightly connected eco-system to jointly solve the challenges ahead. We are pleased with our partnerships and progress of enabling this eco-system through our unmatched photonics test expertise."