Kotura establishes fabless silicon-photonics model, announces relationships with Mindspeed and BinOptics

Anaheim, CA--At OFC/NFOEC 2013 (March 17-21), silicon-photonics developer Kotura announced an agreement with a large semiconductor foundry, as well as relationships with two strategic partners: semiconductor processor and device provider Mindspeed Technologies (Newport Beach, CA; NASDAQ: MSPD) and monolithically-integrated-laser supplier BinOptics (Ithaca, NY).

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Kotura lined up the arrangements to create a supply chain to commercialize Kotura's 100G optical engine, which is at the heart of Kotura's just-announced 100 Gbit/s (4x25 Gbit/s) wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) module, which comes in a 3.5 W so-called "quad small form-factor pluggable" (QSFP+) package -- a small-footprint form.

The foundry is in Japan, which Kotura says complements its existing in-house fab. "This foundry partnership offers Kotura the fastest and most reliable path to mass production and the ability to scale to meet this demand," says Jean-Louis Malinge, Kotura president and CEO.

Working with Mindspeed enables Kotura to meet the low-power requirements of the QSFP package. "Integrating 25G quad drivers and TIAs [transimpedance amplifiers] can be quite a challenge," notes Marek Tlalka, director product marketing at Mindspeed. He adds that it is the combination of Mindspeed's high-speed, low-power electronics and Kotura's silicon photonics optical engine that will help meet the stringent power-consumption constraints of the 100 Gbit/s QSFP module.

Kotura partnered with BinOptics to develop laser arrays that are passively flip-chip bonded onto Kotura's optical engine, producing a high-volume, low-cost, electronics-style assembly. "BinOptics' etched-facet technology allows III-V photonic device facets to be formed with lithographic precision, enabling low-cost passive alignment with silicon photonics," says Alex Behfar, CEO and cofounder of BinOptics.