High-speed silicon photonics ring-resonator modulators for optical-amplification-free links

Area of Science:

• Photonics and Optical Communications
• Integrated Optics
• Artificial Intelligence Hardware

Background:

• AI clusters demand high-speed, energy-efficient optical interconnects.
• Silicon photonics offers a scalable, cost-effective solution for short-reach optical links.
• Existing solutions often require optical amplification, increasing complexity and power consumption.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and demonstrate silicon photonics ring-resonator modulators (RRMs) for energy-efficient optical interconnects.
• To achieve optical-amplification-free data transmission at high bitrates.
• To enable scalable and dense optical interconnects for AI applications.

Main Methods:

• Design and fabrication of silicon photonics C+L band and O band ring-resonator modulators.
• Experimental demonstration of optical-amplification-free data transmission using On-Off Keying (OOK), Pulse Amplitude Modulation 4-level (PAM4), and PAM6.
• Characterization of modulator performance at various bitrates.

Main Results:

• Record optical-amplification-free performance achieved with designed silicon photonics RRMs.
• Demonstrated transmission speeds of up to 245 Gbps (OOK), 280 Gbps (PAM4), and 265 Gbps (PAM6) in the C+L band.
• Achieved up to 206 Gbps (OOK) and 224 Gbps (PAM4) in the O band.
• All speeds reported as gross bitrate.

Conclusions:

• The developed silicon photonics RRMs enable high-speed, energy-efficient optical interconnects without optical amplification.
• This technology offers a scalable manufacturing solution for dense optical interconnects crucial for AI clusters.
• The results pave the way for next-generation, power-efficient data communication infrastructure.