Recently the silicon photonic information emerging, from January 2013 Intel released by silicon photonics technology of active optical cables (AOC) to may mellanox announced to $82 million acquisition of silicon photonic devices Kotura to August Huawei to Belgium silicon photonics technology developers caliopa company mergers and acquisitions, and so on, the silicon photonic information can be heard.
And the current from the point of view of the worldwide, engaged in silicon photonics technology investment and development company is not much, the major global companies in 35%, the whole can be divided into five categories: R&D/MPW, fabless and foundry, equipment and systems. Intel is in silicon photonic devices in a leadership position, its current and Kang Ning has close cooperation in the based on silicon photonic crystal fiber (PCF); such as Fujitsu, IBM and Cisco is in terms of systems occupy an important position. Now stage, the industry will continue to rumors said silicon photonics is a revolutionary technology, the market and the product uses a very broad, applications span is also great, from more than 1000 kilometers of long-distance communications to metropolitan area network, from the optical access network to the LAN / network storage, from the device level backplane interconnect to board level of inter chip interconnection and even chip interconnect, have a broad application prospect. However, in the present situation, the application of the silicon photonics in optical communication is mainly used: active fiber optic cable, 100G Ethernet and Infiniband module. According to research firm global information released data show, 2011 AOC (AOCS) global sales for 30.5 million and $70 million in sales, the company forecast 2016 sales will reach 78.6 million, sales will expand to $1.75 billion, and in 2013 may mellanox to $82 million acquisition of silicon photonic devices Kotura and is rushed a 100 Gbit / s Ethernet and Infiniband products and, Infiniband products become some data center interconnect preferred. In February 2012, Cisco spent 271 billion acquisition of silicon (CMOS) photonic technology company Lightwire. In October of the same year that release based on optical transceiver specifications of silicon photonics technology, support 100Gbit/ seconds "Cisco CPAK", in March this year has released the transmission device of the specifications for the optical transceiver module is installed.
Silicon photonics technology after recent years of development, although a lot of progress has been made, but on the whole, the vast most manufacturers are still in the development stage, the real silicon photonics technology application in practice, there is little. The future development of silicon photonics can like rumored revolutionary, only to the time to test. In China, communications is currently the only one to do based on the silicon photonics products enterprises, looking forward to the future, can be more and more customer service.