Cloud native EDA tools & pre-optimized hardware platforms
The conference, held in San Diego, Calif. on March 5-9, is the largest global conference and exhibition for telecom and data center optics, with approximately 12,000 attendees and 500 exhibitors. OFC includes technical sessions, courses, and exhibitions that focus on research and the latest industry applications.
Topics at this year¡¯s conference covered photonic modulation formats and receiver concepts, standards for high-speed optical networking, modeling and simulation of coherent communications, secure optical communications, high-speed lasers and modulators, networking for datacenters and machine learning, photonics for quantum key distribution, photonics for sensing, and much more.
Synopsys participated as an exhibitor in the conference and showcased several new features of its OptoCompiler photonic IC design automation platform along with demonstrations of performance and interoperability successes of its 224G and 112G Ethernet PHY IP solutions, respectively. Synopsys demonstrations included:
Synopsys also supported 224G & 112G Ethernet PHY IP interoperability demos at the (OIF) booth.
Synopsys demonstrated many new software and IP features at OFC, including:
In addition to live software demonstrations and discussions, Yuval Shay, Synopsys Marketing Director, participated in a Silicon Photonics Industrial Workshop panel organized by ePIXfab and Soitec to discuss 3D heterogenous integration and co-design of electronic and photonic ICs in a common package.
Synopsys staff and industry partners held a series of live presentations and Q&A sessions in our booth to discuss their work to support the industry to adopt photonics and photonic IC technologies. Presenters and their talks included:
Company / Speaker | Talk Title |
Tower Semi Ed Preisler |
Enhancements in Silicon Photonics Foundry Technology and Design Enablement |
OpenLight Photonics Jae Shin |
Design Enablement of an Open Silicon Photonics Platform with Integrated Lasers |
iPronics Diogo Costa |
Programmable Photonic Processors: from Lab to Market |
PhotonDelta Carol de Vries |
Enabling the Next Wave of Integrated Photonic 91³Ô¹ÏÍø Through the PhotonDelta Growth Fund Program |
AIM Photonics Amit Dikshit |
AIM Photonics Design Enablement in Synopsys Platform |
Synopsys Yuval Shay |
Synopsys Photonic 91³Ô¹ÏÍø Overview |
Synopsys Jigesh Patel |
53-GBd PAM4 Transmitter for Data Center Interconnects using GF Fotonix Monolithic Silicon Photonics |
Synopsys Madhumita Sanyal |
Lighting the Way for HPC with Synopsys Photonic IP |
Synopsys Yuval Shay |
Introducing Synopsys Photonic Solution in the Cloud |
Synopsys Remco Stoffer |
Device Development Flow with Python Pcells and Photonic Device Compiler |
In terms of industry trends at OFC, it was interesting to see the number of eco-system and intellectual property offerings now coming to the integrated photonics domain including an industry-first, field-programmable photonic processor. It¡¯s also amazing to see large sums of money being invested into start-ups focused on new applications using integrated photonics from government agencies such as PhotonDelta in Europe. It feels like integrated photonics is really starting to take off, as judged by the number of people attending the conference and visiting our booth, as well as the number of companies large and small that are now interacting with Synopsys.
While OFC is known to be an optical communications conference, attendees from a variety of photonic end application segments including datacom, high-performance computing, LiDAR, bio-sensing, AI hardware accelerators, optical compute engines, and quantum computing were in attendance.
In summary, this year¡¯s OFC was an excellent showcase of photonic technology and an evolving eco-system that shows great promise for growth over the next several decades!
Learn more about Synopsys photonic design and Ethernet IP solutions:
For more information, or to try any of these solutions, please contact photonics@synopsys.com.