Abstract

Recent technical and commercial milestones in Silicon Photonics technology including its introduction into commercial foundries, and successful integration of most optical components, as well as the choice of single mode fiber in some mega data centers have prompted the speculation that Si photonics is the new low cost solution for optical interconnects and that it may replace multi-mode vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (MM VCSEL). We show that the dominant technology has to offer the lowest cost for the single channel transceiver application, which represents 90% of the data center market and which historically dominates sales. We show that Si photonics is currently significantly more expensive than MM VCSEL for single channel, but that it can make a successful entry into the four channel single mode market with significant growth, capturing 20% of the data center market. We discuss the challenges with Si/InP integration; i.e., hybrid lasers for breaking the cost barrier and to enter the market. We show that both MM VCSEL and Si photonics technologies can operate at 50 Gb/s. We discuss the transmission reach limitations of Si photonics and MM VCSEL and show an example of reach extension for 100 Gb/s using MM VCSEL to 300 m of MM fiber. In addition we show that MM VCSEL has fundamentally lower power consumption than Si photonics and is a good candidate for super-computing applications.

© 2015 IEEE

Flip-chip integration of tilted VCSELs onto a silicon photonic integrated circuit

Huihui Lu, Jun Su Lee, Yan Zhao, Carmelo Scarcella, Paolo Cardile, Aidan Daly, Markus Ortsiefer, Lee Carroll, and Peter O’Brien
Opt. Express 24(15) 16258-16266 (2016)

Performance analysis of communication links based on VCSEL and silicon photonics technology for high-capacity data-intensive scenario

A. Boletti, P. Boffi, P. Martelli, M. Ferrario, and M. Martinelli
Opt. Express 23(2) 1806-1815 (2015)

Techno-economic Evaluation of Open Access on FTTH Networks

Marlies Van der Wee, Koen Casier, Abhishek Dixit, Bart Lannoo, Sofie Verbrugge, Didier Colle, and Mario Pickavet
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 7(5) 433-444 (2015)

Integration of an O-band VCSEL on silicon photonics with polarization maintenance and waveguide coupling

Yisu Yang, Gligor Djogo, Moez Haque, Peter R. Herman, and Joyce K. S. Poon
Opt. Express 25(5) 5758-5771 (2017)

Enabling VCSEL-on-silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits with micro-transfer-printing

Jeroen Goyvaerts, Alexander Grabowski, Johan Gustavsson, Sulakshna Kumari, Andim Stassen, Roel Baets, Anders Larsson, and Günther Roelkens
Optica 8(12) 1573-1580 (2021)