Source: International Electronic Commerce News Recently, China Information and Communication Technology Group announced that China's first commercial "100G silicon photonic transceiver chip" has been successfully developed and put into production. This chip supports high-speed optical signal transmission of 100-200 Gb/s. It not only has a very small size, higher performance and lower cost, but is also universal and widely used in transmission networks and data center optical transmission equipment.
It is reported that the silicon photonic chip was jointly developed by the National Information Optoelectronics Innovation Center, Optical Networking Technology Company, the National Key Laboratory of Optical Communication and Network, and China Information and Communication Technology Group.
On a silicon chip with an area of less than 30 square millimeters, nearly 60 active and passive optical components including optical transmission, modulation and reception are integrated. This is one of the most highly integrated commercial silicon photonic integrated chips in the world at present. After the chip is encapsulated, the size of its silicon photonic device products is only 312 square millimeters, which is one-third of the area of traditional devices.
The mass production of this 100G/200G fully integrated silicon-based coherent optical transceiver chip and device has passed the on-site testing by users and has demonstrated stable and reliable performance.
Professor Yu Shaohua, the director of the Expert Committee of the National Information Optoelectronic Innovation Center, stated that silicon materials are abundant in supply, have low costs, and possess excellent mechanical properties and high-temperature resistance, making them ideal for chip processing and packaging. By leveraging the CMOS process platform that has been widely used in integrated circuits for the production of silicon photonic chips, it is possible to effectively address the issues of weak manufacturing capabilities and insufficient process capabilities in China's high-end optoelectronic chip production.
On July 20th, the Wuhan Telecommunication Science Research Institute (Fenghao Division) and the Telecommunication Science Research Institute (Datang Division) jointly reorganized to establish China Science and Technology Industry Group Corporation. It plans to invest 60 billion yuan over the next five years to develop nine industry directions including 5G mobile communication, integrated circuits, network information security, optical communication, optical fibers and optical devices, special communication, data communication, cloud computing, Internet of Things and smart city solutions.
This time, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology led the establishment of the National Information Optoelectronics Innovation Center, promoting the joint efforts of four units to realize the commercialization and application of 100G silicon photonic chips. This indicates that China has the conditions and foundation for the commercial design of silicon photonic products.
In the coming years, silicon photonics technology is expected to be widely deployed and applied in optical communication systems, driving the development of China's independent silicon photonics chip technology towards ultra-high speed, ultra-large capacity, ultra-long distance, high integration, high performance, low power consumption, and high reliability.
