Silicon Photonics Market & Applications

2013

Fields of Expertise
Yole Developpement is a market, technology and strategy consulting company, founded in 1998. We operate in the following areas:

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Our expertise is based on research done by our in-house analysts, conducting openended interviews with most industry players. 30+ full time analysts with technical and marketing degrees Primary research including over 3,500 interviews per year
2012

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2012

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2012

Content
Si Photonics challenges Si Photonics applications & markets Industry status

Conclusions

2012

Si photonics in the news since January 2013 (a few extracts)

2012

Silicon Photonics
A disruptive technology: new breed of monolithic opto-electronic devices in a potential low cost Si process. The vision: to deliver optical connectivity everywhere, from the network level to chip-to-chip. Today, except for the light source, many optical functions can be embedded at the SOI wafer level.

Optical die (SOI wafer)

Source Luxtera
2012

Optical Interconnects

1000 km

Long Haul

Optics Since 90s

Metro/LAN

Thousands

10 km
Optical Fiber

Rack-to-rack

100 m 1m 0.1 m < 0.01m

Optics Since 2000 The Current Step

Board-to-board

Millions

Optical Waveguides

Chip-to-chip

On-chip

Optics Beyond 2015

Billions Volumes

Distance
2012

Example: the Data Center and HPC Problem

Distance expands beyond 1 km 40G moving to 100G VCSELs are not adequate Single mode transceivers big, expensive & power hungry

Interconnects become the system design limiter; silicon photonics will be a solution.
2012

Silicon Photonics Potential advantages & challenges

Low heating of components Low environmental footprint Low operating costs

Low Power Consumption

Still high for high perf modules (target is fJ/b) Impact on reliability

Higher optical functions integration Low manufacturing cost Higher density of interconnects

SiPh
Low error rate

Integration
But no complete integration (laser) Packaging issues

Reliability
Spectral efficiency Telecom standard Operation speed vs. InP Polarization dependency

No full CMOS process (Ge)

2012

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Silicon Photonics Time to market by application

Low Power Consumption
Active Optical Cables for Data Centers

Expected time to market

Short term Medium term Long term

AOCs for HPC (Already exists) Active Optical Cables (Consumer)

Telecom/Datacom Board-to-board Chip-to-chip Very High Speed Telecom

Integration
Fiber Optics Networks FTTx Medical Fiber Optics Network Metropolitan

Reliability
Fiber Optics Networks Long Haul

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Silicon Photonics Challenges

1. Few products - most of the industry has been focused on developing individual silicon photonics elements and cores.
Modulators, VOAs, switches, laser arrays, detector arrays, etc. Few companies have developed integrated product solutions.

2. High cost devices have been expensive to develop

Silicon photonics companies have had to create their own CAE/CAD programs. Several efforts have been established to promote CAE/CAD design tools. E.g. OpSIS and LETI-Mentor.

3. Technical mismatches - with high volume markets

Data centers want 850-nm and 1310-nm.

4. Competition with VCSEL

VCSEL-based interconnects dominate both the data center and consumer areas with very low prices.

5. Need for high volumes/low cost - Silicon Photonics has not been able to achieve high enough volumes so far. Consumers want cheap products.
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Applications Telecom

Examples Used in Metro (1 - 80Km) and long haul applications (40 -1,000 Km)

Data rate 10G, 40G, 100G, 400Gbps systems

Datacom
Consumer HPC & Data Centers

Used in data centers (<1m - 2Km) and campus applications (1 - 5Km)

Connecting desktop PC devices and PCs with HDTVs One High Performance Computer supercomputer may consume 40,000 AOCs or 250,000 mid-board modules Digital signage, digital cinemas, video recording and studios; 4xx2K displays and recording equipment Measurement of time, temperature, sound, frequency, and stress, range DNA, glucose, molecular and cellular analysis, etc. Used in scientific instruments at corporate and national labs; aircraft, space, missiles, radar, imaging and intelligence applications.

10G, 25G, 40G, 100Gbps interconnects between systems

5G - 50Gbps Up to 100 Gbps

Commercial Video

10G - 50Gbps interconnects

Metrology and sensors

Typically low data rates but using special silicon photonics sensors Typically low data rates but using special silicon photonics sensors High

Medical

Military/ Aerospace/ Scientific

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Telecom
Telecom needs:
Very high data rates Complex modulation systems Support for industry standards 25 years reliability
Silicon photonics Variable Optical Attenuator

Metro needs:
Optical functionalities (e.g. ROADMs) Slower data rates Less complex modulation.
InP Laser Transmitter Optical Engines

But InP Integrated photonics has already entered these markets mainly in FTTx and telecom transmitters and receivers.

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Datacom
Datacom products roadmap:
Active Optical Cables - today
Ex: Luxtera/Molex offesr silicon photonics-based AOCs. All others are VCSEL-based. Main applications: HPC supercomputers, Ethernet data center. Line rates moving from 10G and 14G to 28G.
SFP+ QSFP, CFP transceivers QSFP, CxP AOCs (Luxtera, Finisar)

Transceivers for switching & routing near term

2014+ likely applications (when 100G silicon photonics products will be announced ) Luxtera, Kotura demonstrated 4 x 25G transceiver engines at tradeshows

mid-board modules (Avago)

Servers to switches 2016+

High volume application dwarfing all others

2012

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Others applications, e.g. medical, sensors

Medical applications:
Special uses for silicon photonics in chemical, cellular and DNA analysis.
Example: Protein detection with ring resonator biosensor Genalyte (San Diego, CA) makes chips used for real-time measurement of protein interactions (DNA, molecules, etc.). Advantage is high sensor integration with very small footprints.
Single molecule spectroscopy

And also sensors based on silicon photonics that integrate multiple sensors e.g.
Stress and strain optical systems, Optical time domain reflectometers (OTDR) measure distances in fibers.
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Wavelength limitation
Datacom/telecom requirements:
Multi-vendor interopearablity with standards Data centers demand 850nm.

Going forward, the wavelength for silicon photonics is moving to 1310-nm and 1550nm
Meet datacom/telecom industry standards and requirements could help the market expand.

2012

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Optical Components Market Size

Silicon Photonics % of Optical Components 2017 TOTAL ~$9.5B

2%

Source Yole Developpement July 2012 ,

Optical Components Industry Silicon photonics - All

98% Silicon photonics represents a small percentage of the optical communications component industry.
2012

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Molex AOC with Luxtera Si Photonic Die

2012

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Laser Module from Luxtera

2012

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Players
Si Photonics Activity (2012)
OpSIS foundry services uses BAE & IME foundries JePPIX foundry uses Oclaro & FhG HHI foundries (InP) ePIXfab uses IMEC & LETI foundries

Product Manufacturing (> 100,000 chips)

Product Manufacturing (< 100,000 chips)

R&D/ Development Stage

R&D/MPW
2012

Fabless

Foundries

Devices

Systems

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Business model

Foundry services are coming

University MPW foundries Commercial CMOS Photonics foundries Commercial InP / Silica on Silicon / etc. foundries

2012

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Funds Raised by Company

Raised Funds: US$ in Millions (Total is $1.4B)

$600,0 $528,3
Red: Non-Si integrated photonics Green: Si integrated photonics

$500,0

$400,0 $333,7 $300,0 $214,7 $200,0 $120,1 $100,0 $85,9 $52,8 $0,0

Total funding for Si photonics companies: ~$270 millions

$40,0

$34,3

$23,0

$2,1

$0,2

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Note: Infinera, NeoPhotonics, Cyoptics, OneChip develop InP products, and may or may not introduce silicon photonics products

Relative Investment Efficiency

Integrated photonics faced a downturn in the years 2004 - 2005, while the year 2000 was a real bubble for integrated photonics investors. For readability reasons, Lightwires acquisition by Cisco was omitted: its efficiency was over 1835%.
Cyoptics

Relative Investment Efficiency

(Post Valuation - Amount Invested) / Amount Invested (%)

300,00
Cyoptics

NeoPhotonics Photline

ColorChip Infinera

250,00
200,00 150,00 100,00 50,00 0,00

NeoPhotonics Kotura Cyoptics

350,00

NeoPhotonics

Infinera

Infinera

ColorChip Infinera

ColorChip

Infinera

Infinera

Cyoptics

-100,00

(Post Valuation - Amount invested) / Amount invested (%) 2012

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General trend

NeoPhotonics

ColorChip Infinera

Kotura

Infinera

-50,00

NeoPhotonics

Conclusions
Silicon photonics is an exciting field mixing optics, CMOS, MEMS and 3D stacking technologies. All these technologies converge in Si photonics. The silicon photonics market is still modest with estimated sales of $65M in 2011; expected to grow to $215M in 2017.
Today, if is low volume in terms of dies and wafers. We estimate that 500,000 chips have been shipped over the last 5 years; that represents a few thousand 200mm wafers.

Data communications is the big market and dwarfs all other silicon photonics applications. Very few companies are actually shipping products to the open market:

There is a clear trend to surpass 25Gb in datacom protocols and this is where Si photonics will have significant advantages.
VCSELs have trouble reaching past 70 meters at 25Gb and above.

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Thank you

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