Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Though covering all light's technical applications over the whole spectrum, most photonic applications are in the range of visible and near-infrared light. The term photonics developed as an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s and optical fibers developed in the 1970s.
Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company headquartered in Mountain View, California that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Synopsys supplies tools and services to the semiconductor design and manufacturing industry. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design of integrated circuits and simulators for development and debugging environments that assist in the design of the logic for chips and computer systems. Synopsys is also active in the automotive industry, supplying IP and design tools for autonomous vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems. As of 2023, the company is a component of both the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 indices.
ASML Holding N.V. is a Dutch multinational corporation founded in 1984. ASML specializes in the development and manufacturing of photolithography machines which are used to produce computer chips. As of 2022 it is the largest supplier for the semiconductor industry and the sole supplier in the world of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) photolithography machines used to manufacture the most advanced chips. As of 2023, ASML was the most highly valued European tech company by market capitalization with about US$270 billion.
KLA Corporation is an American capital equipment company based in Milpitas, California. It supplies process control and yield management systems for the semiconductor industry and other related nanoelectronics industries. The company's products and services are intended for all phases of wafer, reticle, integrated circuit (IC) and packaging production, from research and development to final volume manufacturing.
Maxim Integrated, a subsidiary of Analog Devices, designs, manufactures, and sells analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for the automotive, industrial, communications, consumer, and computing markets. Maxim's product portfolio includes power and battery management ICs, sensors, analog ICs, interface ICs, communications solutions, digital ICs, embedded security, and microcontrollers. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has design centers, manufacturing facilities, and sales offices worldwide.
A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) or integrated optical circuit is a microchip containing two or more photonic components which form a functioning circuit. This technology detects, generates, transports, and processes light. Photonic integrated circuits utilize photons as opposed to electrons that are utilized by electronic integrated circuits. The major difference between the two is that a photonic integrated circuit provides functions for information signals imposed on optical wavelengths typically in the visible spectrum or near infrared (850–1650 nm).
Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wireless, storage, and industrial markets. As of 2022, some 78 percent of Broadcom's revenue was coming from its semiconductor-based products and 22 percent from its infrastructure software products and services.
Silicon photonics is the study and application of photonic systems which use silicon as an optical medium. The silicon is usually patterned with sub-micrometre precision, into microphotonic components. These operate in the infrared, most commonly at the 1.55 micrometre wavelength used by most fiber optic telecommunication systems. The silicon typically lies on top of a layer of silica in what is known as silicon on insulator (SOI).
Michael Hochberg is an American physicist. He’s authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, has founded several companies, and has been an inventor on over 60 patents. Hochberg's research interests include silicon photonics and large-scale photonic integration. He has worked in a number of application areas, including data communications, biosensing, quantum optics, mid-infrared photonics, optical computing, and machine learning. Much of his work in silicon photonics has been the product of a longstanding series of collaborations with Thomas Baehr-Jones.
GlobalFoundries Inc. is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, the company was privately owned by Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, until an initial public offering (IPO) in October 2021.
SiBEAM Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lattice Semiconductor, is a fabless semiconductor company that provides integrated circuits and system solutions for millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless communications and sensing.
IPtronics was a fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. Its products include integrated circuits for parallel optical interconnect applications intended for the computer, storage and communication industries. IPtronics' design center is certified by STMicroelectronics, which is also their semiconductor foundry partner. In June 2013, IPtronics was acquired by Mellanox Technologies.
MACOM Technology Solutions is a developer and producer of radio, microwave, and millimeter wave semiconductor devices and components. The company is headquartered in Lowell, Massachusetts, and in 2005 was Lowell's largest private employer. MACOM is certified to the ISO 9001 international quality standard and ISO 14001 environmental standard. The company has design centers and sales offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Ali Hajimiri is an academic, entrepreneur, and inventor in various fields of engineering, including electrical engineering and biomedical engineering. He is the Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. is an Israeli company that manufactures integrated circuits using specialty process technologies, including SiGe, BiCMOS, Silicon Photonics, SOI, mixed-signal and RFCMOS, CMOS image sensors, non-imaging sensors, power management (BCD), and non-volatile memory (NVM) as well as MEMS capabilities. Tower Semiconductor also owns 51% of TPSCo, an enterprise with Nuvoton Technology Corporation Japan (NTCJ).
Mellanox Technologies Ltd. was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, software, cables and silicon for markets including high-performance computing, data centers, cloud computing, computer data storage and financial services.
NeoPhotonics Corporation is an American public corporation based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1996. The company develops, manufactures and sells optoelectronic products that transmit, receive and switch high speed digital optical signals for communications networks, These products include transceivers, tunable lasers, high bandwidth receivers, optical semiconductors, photonic integrated circuits, and 100 gigabit per second and above modules." These are each "cost-effective components that handle massive amounts of data at very high speeds".
John Michael Dallesasse is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where his research is focused on silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs), nanophotonics, semiconductor lasers / transistor lasers and photonics-electronics integration. He has over 60 publications and presentations, and holds 29 issued patents.
Kaiam Corporation was an American manufacturer of optronics equipment for computer networking. Founded in 2009, it was headquartered in Newark, California, and until December 2018 had a manufacturing facility in Silicon Glen in Scotland. After cash-flow problems and a patent infringement lawsuit, the company collapsed in early 2019. The founder and CEO was Bardia Pezeshki.
Inphi Corporation is an American company that produces 10G-800G high-speed analog and mixed-signal semiconductor components and optical subsystems to networking original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), optical module, cloud and telecom service providers. Its headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California. Inphi develops linear transimpedance amplifiers, modulator drivers, optical physical layer devices, coherent DSPs, and silicon photonic-based subsystems for long haul, metro, and data center applications. As of April 20, 2021, the company was acquired by Marvell Technology, Inc.
