PHOTONIC INTEGRATED CIRCUITS (‘PIC’)

Etaphase HUDS-centric THz optical transceiver

A model of an Etaphase HUDS-centric THz optical transceiver for datacenter customers. The market is in need of a set of design solutions to enable THz speed with low power, stable, and cost-effective devices to meet the explosive demand in datacenter loads.

High speed, low energy data transfer devices – whether within a chip, between chips or between servers, achieving high data transfer rates with minimal energy expenditure is becoming the primary bottleneck in the continued growth of large scale computing and storage that is critical for cloud computing data centers, next generation high performance computers, and “big data”.  Etaphase enables optical data transfer devices with orders of magnitude higher speed, smaller size and lower power consumption than current devices.

For example, we are developing optical modulators that are 10 to 100 times smaller than other products on the market, with significantly lower power usage.  Our devices can be manufactured using typical high-volume CMOS industry processes and we have designed, built and tested functional optical components.

Etaphase is developing a full collection of passive and active photonic components for the photonic integrated circuit market.

These high performance HUDS-based components can allow for order-of-magnitude performance improvements.  Etaphase components  can help deliver a THz transceiver for datacenters layer-interconnection. Current industry performance levels are in the tens of GHz, limited by challenges in size, power draw, and temperature instability. HUDS brings a number of advantages that can overcome these obstacles.

Etaphase advances in photonic integrated circuit elements lead to a family of product opportunities in other devices and systems as well.  Optical datacom devices such as backplanes, optical interconnects, and free-space data communications are expanded system-level opportunities for Etaphase’ HUDS elements.

Photonic integrated circuits for optical logic and full processors are additional vectors of opportunity for Etaphase’ HUDS technology. Among the prospective high value applications of HUDS designs and components are chip-chip and intrachip optical interconnects, optical memory elements using HUDS to slow light, HUDS-based silicon lasers to eliminate the need to adhere III-V material lasers onto an otherwise all-CMOS (silicon) device.