Breakfast Bytes Blogs

I was planning to publish this post on Diwali, the annual Indian festival of lights, but that was a bit too cute and it never happened. The 6th annual Photonics Summit is on December 7 and 8. It will be virtual, and like last year it will be run twice to cater to different time zones, with the first session for North America and Europe, and the second for Asia. This year's summit is titled Fostering a Photonics Ecosystem for Sustainable Adoption.

UPDATE: Due to web outages, the event never took place as advertised here. The new dates are now January 19th-21st 2022.

On both days, the event will be from 9:00am-12:00pm PST (California), which is 6:00pm-9:00pm in Europe (5:00pm-8:00pm in UK). The Asia version is 9:00am to 12:00pm BJT (which is an hour later 10:00am-1:00pm JST and KST). If you are in India, all times are poor, but you can be an early bird or a night owl.

For the past two decades, integrated photonics has made tremendous progress and is now offered by industry-leading semiconductor companies. However, outside of its most common use in data communications, adoption is still slow and uneven, especially with applications where photonics should have a clear advantage such as sensors and lidar, and with many well-funded startups. What will it take for photonics to become a “standard” technology in the toolbox of system designers? 

The summit will look at what’s needed to foster the photonics ecosystem for sustainable adoption. Is it too hard to design? Too expensive? Not enough yield? What's missing? 

Detailed Agenda

These times are for the US/Europe edition. For Asia, add on 9 hours or so (depending on exactly where you are).

Day 1 (December 7th)

9am-9.40am:  Keynote: Transitioning from Electrical to Optical I/O by James Jaussi, Intel Labs

9.45am to 10.25am: Panel Discussion with moderator Robert Blum, Intel. Panellists, Gilles Lamant, Cadence; Lionel Kimerling, MIT; James Pond, Lumerical; Anuradha Murthy Agarwal, MIT; Richard Trihy, GlobalFoundries; Frank Tolic, NY CREATES

10.30am to 11am: Advances in Silicon Photonics Foundry Process Technology and Design Enablement by Samir Chaudhry, Tower Semiconductor

11.05am to 11.35am: Monolithic Silicon Photonics: A Foundry Perspective by Vikas Gupta, GlobalFoundries

11.40am to 12.10pm: Integrating Design and Test Solutions into an InP PIC Foundry by Ardy Winoto, Infinera

12.15pm to 12.45pm: Manufacturable Silicon Photonics PDK by David Ngo, CompoundTek; Federico Duque Gomez, Lumerical

12.50pm to 1.30pm: Beyond Datacom – Building a Broad Silicon Photonics Ecosystem at AIM Photonics by Nicholas Fahrenkopf, AIM Photonics

Day 2 (December 8th)

9am to 9.30am: Current Trends and Challenges in Vertical Optical Interconnects by Drew Weninger, MIT and Anuradha Murthy Agarwal, MIT

9.35am to 10.05am: Silicon Nitride Photonics with Optical Switches: From Concept to Integrated Product by Philippe Babin, AEPONYX

10.10am to 10.40am: A Novel Photonic Bump Technology for Seamless Photonics and Semiconductor Integration by Hesham Taha, Teramount

10.45am to 11.15am: Integration of Co-Packaging Technologies in Next Generation System Architectures by Christopher Blackburn, TE Connectivity

11.20am to 11.50am: Accelerate Photonic Integrated Circuits Physical Design Implementation Based on Process Design Kit Methodology by Ahmadreza Farsaei, Intel

11.55am to 12.15pm: Multiplanar Photonics for Artificial Intelligence by Jeff Chiles, NIST

12.30pm to 1pm: Seamless Photonic Component Design through Ansys Lumerical and Virtuoso Layout Suite Interoperability by Zeqin Lu, Lumerical

1.05pm to 1.50pm: Q&A moderated by Jeremiah Cessna, Cadence

Diwali

Here's a bit more about Diwali:

Deepawali or Diwali is the festival of lights and is one of the most celebrated festivals of the year. As per the Hindu epic Ramayana, it is a day when Lord Rama, Goddess Sita, Lakshmana, and Hanuman returned to Ayodhya after spending 14 years in forests. Apart from it, it is also believed that Goddess Lakshmi was born on Diwali during the churning of the cosmic ocean (Samudra Manthan). Thus, Goddess Lakshmi is the most significant deity during Diwali Puja.

As it happens, when I ran Custom IC at Cadence twenty years ago, my finance guy was called Lakshmi. As a result, I know that Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth, she is the finance person, too.

Learn More

See the event page. You can register there. Or just click below.

And there is a Cadence Photonics page.

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