Title: High Bandwidth Density Silicon Photonic Resonators for Energy Efficient Optical Interconnects

Abstract

The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) applications demands ever larger and more complex deep learning (DL) models, dominating today’s – and tomorrow’s – data center (DC) and high performance computing (HPC) systems. While traditional electronics are failing to keep pace with application demands, silicon photonic (SiPh) interconnects have emerged as a necessary technology to support these systems. SiPh-driven wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) offers a particularly promising path towards supporting incredibly high aggregate link bandwidth in a compact and efficient form factor. One of the basic building blocks of these integrated WDM interconnects is the SiPh resonator. Their inherent wavelength selectivity and compact footprint allow for efficient data transmission multiplexed across dozens of carrier wavelengths. Used as add-drop (AD) filters, SiPh resonators are critical to constructing integrated tunable wavelength-selective optical circuit switches (WS-OCS) as well as for demultiplexing the different carrier wavelengths towards independent wavelength-insensitive photodiodes in a DWDM receiver. Resonators in the all-pass (AP) configuration are widespread as well, allowing for wavelength-selective modulation to drive aggregate link bandwidths far beyond the individual channel data rate. Unlike SiPh Mach-Zehnder Modulators (MZM), resonant modulators can be driven using low, complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) drive voltages, allowing for tight co-integration between photonic integrated circuitsmore » (PIC), fabricated with larger process node technologies, and electronic integrated circuits (EIC), designed to exploit the advantages of the latest node. To push towards practical petascale interconnects, a comprehensive review of SiPh resonators is required, addressing bottlenecks and design constraints at both the architecture and device levels. We first describe the predominant integrated link architectures and identify their limits. We then discuss the device level design considerations that can be made for both AD and AP configuration resonators to overcome the system level limits with novel resonator device designs. Analytical models and numerical simulation of resonators are validated by experimental measurement of devices fabricated in a commercial 300 mm foundry, showing a clear path towards volume manufacturing. The demonstrated resonant modulators and filters support the feasibility of increasing the aggregate bandwidth of resonator driven SiPh interconnects into the petascale regime.« less

Authors:

Novick, Asher  ^[1];

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James, Aneek; Dai, Ling Yuan; Wu, Zhenguo; Rizzo, Anthony; Wang, Songli; Wang, Yuyang; Hattink, Maarten; Gopal, Vignesh; Jang, Kaylx; Parsons, Robert; Bergman, Keren

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1. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); Xscape Photonics

Publication Date:

Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2023

Research Org.:

Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)

OSTI Identifier:

2203284

Grant/Contract Number:  

AR0000843

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Applied Physics Reviews

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 10; Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 1931--9401

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

Photonics; resonators; communication; high performance computing