Cadence 5th Annual Photonics Event

Coming up on December 1 - 3 is the 5th annual Cadence Photonics event, although it is now under the CadenceCONNECT brand. Of course, it will be a virtual event. Unlike in previous years, the logistics make it impossible to have a hands-on workshop as we have in previous years. The title this year is Photonics Contribution to High-Performance Computing.

Driven by the exponential growth in data and the need for high performance with low power, photonics is becoming a disrupting force in high-performance computing (HPC) architectures. The unique properties of light make it possible to create innovative low-power processing chiplets. However, these need to be connected to traditional electronics systems to realize their true potential. 

This is the 5th Photonics Summit. Each has had a different focus:

• 1st year: Basic datacom
• 2nd year: Datacom and a little about integration
• 3rd year: Impact of photonics on everyday life, plus sensors and lidar workshop
• 4th year. Analog datacomm, RF
• This year: Putting together a system with photonics elements

The format of the meeting is that each day there will be a morning session (Pacific time) from 8:00am to 11:00am. Then, since everything is recorded, the session will be repeated from 5:00pm to 8:00pm (Pacific time), which is the morning in Asia (9:00am in China, Taiwan, and Singapore, or 10:00am in Japan). The one difference is that the third day ends with a  30-minute live Q&A which won't be repeated for the afternoon session. So the morning session will end at 11:30am and the evening session will be 5:00pm to 8:00pm, the same as the other days.

December 1

The day opens with a keynote: Photonic Integration – From Switching to Computing by Odile Liboiron-Ladouceur of McGill University. Professor Liboiron-Ladouceur holds a Canadian Research Chair in the area of Photonic Integration for data communications and emerging applications such as computing for AI. She leads the photonic datacomm team (pictured).

Programming General-Purpose Photonic Processors, by Daniel Pérez López of iPronics

The Transition to Chip-to-Chip Optical I/O, by Mark Wades of PAyar Labs

Embedding Photonics into DRAM – Motivation, Lessons, and Leftovers, by DongJae Shin of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology

December 2

Near-Term Photonic Quantum Computing on the Cloud, Zach Vernon of Xanadu

Quantum Integrated Photonics, by Michael Fanto of AFRL

Design and Simulation of Quantum Photonic Circuits by James Pond of ANSYS. James was the CTO of Lumerical (that Ansys acquired) and I interviewed him a couple of years ago during that year's summit, which you can read about in my post An Illuminating Chat with Lumerical's CTO.

Analog Optical Accelerators for Neuromorphic Computing, by Bert Jan Offrein of IBM

December 3

Efficient Assembly and Packaging for Photonics, by Alexander Janta-Polczynski of IBM

Photonic Wirebonds for Silicon Photonics: Early Results From SiEPICfab, by Lukas Chrostowski of University of British Columbia

Optical Connections with Polymer Ribbons, by Thomas L. Koch of University of Arizona

Rochester Test Assembly Packaging Facility for Photonics Systems - Research Project Update, by Ed White of AIM

Foundations for Scalable Chip-to-Chip Connectivity, by Hesham Taha, of Teramount Ltd.

As I mentioned above, the morning will end with a live panel Q&A, but there will be no Q&A for the evening session.

More Details

All the details including biographies for all the speakers and a link for registration are on the Event Page.

Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.