MOSIS, a provider of low-cost prototyping and small volume production services for custom ICs, has teamed up with ePIXfab, the European Silicon Photonics support center providing low-cost prototyping services for photonic ICs. The partnership gives MOSIS’ customers access to imec’s state-of-the-art fully integrated silicon photonics processes and Tyndall’s advanced silicon photonics packaging technology. Co-founded by …

The 2013 Common Platform Technology Forum showcased “the latest technological advances being delivered to the world’s leading electronics companies,” so of course SOI-based topics were well-represented. Happily, those of us who weren’t able to get over to Silicon Valley were able to attend “virtually” via a live stream (which is now reposted – click here …

It’s a bright green light from the world leaders in SOI wafer capacity. Soitec, the world leader in SOI wafer production, and long-time partner Shin-Etsu Handatai (SEH), the world’s biggest producer of silicon wafers, have extended their licensing agreement and expanded their technology cooperation. SEH is a $12.7 billion company, supplying over 20% of the …

The 38th annual SOI Conference is coming up in just a few weeks. Sponsored by IEEE Electron Devices Society, this is the only dedicated SOI conference covering the full technology chain from materials to devices, circuits and system applications. Chaired this year by Gosia Jurczak (manager of the Memories Program at imec), this excellent conference …

Imec and Genalyte have successfully developed and produced a set of disposable SOI-photonics biosensor chips for Genalyte‘s diagnostic and molecular detection equipment. Founded by SOI-photonics innovator Dr. Cary Gunn, Genalyte chips contain ring resonator sensors for very sensitive molecular detection; on-chip grating couples infrared light to diagnostic equipment.

SOI is at the heart of silicon photonics. Here’s an overview of past, present and future trends. The existence of Silicon Photonics owes much to serendipity. During the early years of the development of SOI wafer technology probably nobody anticipated that SOI would be a perfect medium for short distance transmission and modulation of light …

Luxtera’s new optical engine chip-set for the HPC and data center markets uses mainstream SOI-CMOS photonics fabrication processes (foundry: Freescale). It delivers on-chip waveguide level modulation and photo-detection, along with associated electronics, and supports four fully-integrated 14 Gbps opto-electronic transceiver channels on a single CMOS chip.

With backing from Intel, U.Washington is hosting a new SOI-based photonics foundry service called OpSIS. Looking to launch a photonics revolution as MOSIS did for electronics a few decades ago, OpSIS is a multi-project wafer service. Actual foundry services are provided by BAE Systems. Read the Intel blog entry by Dr. Mario J. Paniccia, director …

SOI-based news from IBM (which has now shipped more than 100 million SOI chips): • Cu-32 Custom Logic dramatically increases memory capacity and processing speeds of chips used in fiber-optic and wireless networks, and in such gear as routers and switches. • CMOS-7HV process technology for powermanagement semiconductors targets manufacturers in consumer electronics, industrial, automotive, …

Intel has developed a research prototype of a silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers. Integrated on SOI, the link can move up to 50 gigabits of data per second.