OpenLight Photonic PDK Integrated into Tower Semiconductor PH18DA Platform

en.Wedoany.com Reported - OpenLight and Tower Semiconductor announced that OpenLight's photonic process design kit (PDK) is now available for Tower Semiconductor's PH18DA indium phosphide (InP)-based silicon photonics platform and integrated into Cadence electronic design automation (EDA) tools. Developed through a technical collaboration between the two companies, this PDK enables customers to develop advanced photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in a widely adopted IC design environment, accelerating the development process from design to production.

The PH18DA ecosystem integrates OpenLight's photonic IP, Tower Semiconductor's process and manufacturing expertise, and Cadence's EDA tools, providing a streamlined path for developing advanced photonic ICs and bringing photonic design closer to mature electronic IC workflows and manufacturing.

Dr. Adam Carter, CEO of OpenLight, stated that embedding the PDK into Cadence tools allows customers to design photonic integrated circuits in the advanced IC development environment they rely on. This integration lowers the barrier to adoption and strengthens the path from design to production on the PH18DA platform.

Designs completed based on the OpenLight PDK can be manufactured on Tower Semiconductor's PH18DA InP-based silicon photonics platform. This platform supports the integration of active photonic components such as lasers, modulators, and amplifiers into a single monolithic PIC, suitable for advanced optical systems in applications such as optical interconnects, AI infrastructure, and sensing.

Dr. Samir Chaudhry, Vice President of Customer Design Enablement and Reliability at Tower Semiconductor, stated that the collaboration with Cadence and OpenLight is a new initiative to advance the design capabilities of the PH18DA platform by integrating technology, IP, and EDA expertise. Customers can thereby streamline the development of 400G and 1.6T laser-integrated photonic integrated circuits, while enabling co-optimized design of PICs and EICs to enhance performance, power efficiency, and scalability, meeting the demands of next-generation near-package optics and co-packaged optics (NPO/CPO) solutions.

Gilles Lamant, Distinguished Engineer at Cadence, believes that including the OpenLight PDK PH18DA manufactured by Tower Semiconductor in the photonic process portfolio of the Cadence Photonics ecosystem marks the entry of integrated active devices for high-performance co-optimized electro-optical design onto this platform.