Luxtera unveils CMOS fiber-to-the-chip transceiver

Aug. 22, 2006
August 22, 2006, Carlsbad, CA--Luxtera Inc., a developer of CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) photonics, has unveiled the industry's first single-chip integrated photonics-electronics device implemented in a standard CMOS process. The technology integrates high-performance optics and mainstream electronics on a single die, bringing fiber connectivity directly to the chip.

August 22, 2006, Carlsbad, CA--Luxtera Inc., a developer of CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) photonics, has unveiled the industry's first single-chip integrated photonics-electronics device implemented in a standard CMOS process. The technology integrates high-performance optics and mainstream electronics on a single die, bringing fiber connectivity directly to the chip. Fabrication takes place using a standard, high-volume 0.13-micron silicon-on-insulator CMOS process. Additional digital logic can be integrated into the same chip with optical devices, further reducing overall size, power consumption, and cost.

Silicon photonics, integrated with fiberoptic transmission, will bring the cost of extremely high-capacity data transmission down, making today's typical Ethernet data-transmission rates seem tortoiselike in comparison to affordable future rates.

Luxtera is sampling prototype devices for preliminary testing by strategic-development partners. The technology incorporates two lasers and photodetectors mounted directly on a monolithic CMOS die that also includes all logic equivalent to two complete small-form-factor pluggable (XFP) modules including transimpedance amplifiers, Mach-Zehnder modulators, and transmit and receive clock-and-data-recovery circuits. This complete single-chip device is one-quarter the size of existing XFP modules.

The company will launch a commercial transceiver product line based on this underlying technology early in 2007. Initial product offerings will consist of multiport transceivers for communications, storage, and computing applications. Additionally, Luxtera is currently working with customers to develop new applications for CMOS photonics.

The first commercial application is expected to be high-speed, high-bandwidth enterprise data communications. Driven by the high bandwidth capabilities of new multicore high performance processors, the need for low-cost, low-latency, and low-power 10G and faster interconnects is here. CMOS photonics technology will enable the widespread adoption of 10G interconnects, which today are very expensive to deploy, by driving the cost of 10G optical ports to well below $100.

As a result of Luxtera's technology, the cost of optical interfaces are reaching those of copper with the added benefits of lower power, lower latency, smaller footprint, longer reach and less expensive cabling. For complete links, the technology provides a 7X power reduction, 40X longer reach, and 100X lower latency with scalability to 1000X the bandwidth of 10GBASE-T.

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