Douglas Yu, a TSMC executive, The biggest chips manufacturer on the planetwith responsibility in the field of systems integration Explain clearly The disruptive capacity of integrated photonic circuits: “If we manage to implement a good system of integration of silicon’s photonics We will trigger a new paradigm. We will probably be placed at the beginning of a new era. “
The photonic silicon seeks to develop the technology of this chemical element to optimize the transformation of electrical signals into light pulses. The most obvious field of application of this innovation is the implementation of high performance links that, on paper, can be used both to solve communications between several chips and to optimize the transfer of information between several machines.
Advanced packaging technologies with which the main semiconductor manufacturers work, such as TSMC, Intel or Samsung, can benefit a lot from a communication mechanism between very high performance chips. And the large data centers in which it is necessary to connect a large number of machines, too. However, there is a particular discipline to which it would be wonderful about the advantages proposed by the photonic silicon: the artificial intelligence (AI).
China plans to use this technology in AI, 6G communications and quantum computers
Intel and TSMC are some of the companies that have been working on the development of their technologies linked to the photonic silicon, and, as we can intuit, this innovation is no stranger to Chinese companies and research centers. In fact, in mid -May 2024 the Institute of Information Technology and Microsystems of Shanghai (China) in collaboration with the Lausanian Institute of Technology (Switzerland) reached a crucial milestone. Until that time one of the fundamental ingredients of the integrated photonic circuits was the lithium niobate.
The lithium tantalate allows the manufacture of large -scale photonic chips and with much lower costs
This synthetic salt intervenes in the manufacture of these integrated circuits because its physicochemical properties allow it to optimize the conversion of electricity into light, but it has a problem: the industrial exploitation of this technology is conditioned by The high cost that each wafer hasand also for the size of each of them. What these scientists have achieved is to replace the lithium niobate with other semiconductor material whose properties are even more attractive: the lithium tantalate (litao3).
Ou Xin, one of the scientists who have led this project, assures That in addition to paying better than the lithium niobate, the lithium tantaloate allows the manufacture of large -scale photonic circuit and with much lower costs. This is because the manufacturing processes are similar to those currently used to produce conventional silicon semiconductors.
This is the context in which, according to SCMPthe chips center for integrated photonics Xplore (Chipx) of the Jiao Tong University of Shanghai has announced that it has started the production of 6 -inch wafers for photonic chips. Interestingly, this production line Use Lithium Niobateso it still has a room to advance and take advantage of the properties of the lithium tantalate. Be as Professor Jin Xianmin, the director of CHIPX, says that the photonic integrated circuits have a huge potential not only in the training and inference of AI models, the classical supercomputing and Quantum computersbut also in the development of communications 6g.
Image | TSMC
More information | SCMP
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