1^st Apr – In case you missed it or are looking for inspirations to bring your silicon ideas to life, our special edition infographics provides perspectives and highlights to the two interactive sessions held as part of Lumerical Online Tech Day. In partnership with Lumerical, Cadence and Mentor, CompoundTek and hosts took attendees through interactive sessions that explored various technological possibilities and discussed capabilities that can advance the adoption of silicon (photonics).

Thanks to Lumerical, you can also check out the videos (login required):

CompoundTek, Lumerical and Cadence: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/2553163162412548108

CompoundTek, Lumerical and Mentor:  https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/5001508376144161804

Read our special edition infographics:

CompoundTek, Lumerical and Cadence

CompoundTek, Lumerical and Mentor

Contact CompoundTek team at enquiries@compoundtek.com  for more details.

Updated 7 March

CompoundTek continues its commitment to an OFC 2020 showcase of the company’s portfolio of latest technologies in silicon photonics fabrication. Its expanded capabilities are poised to accelerate commercialisation of niche technologies for telecommunication, data centre, bio-medical diagnostics, smart sensor, artificial intelligence, quantum optical computing, and automotive applications.

Now exhibiting at a new booth location, #2826 (from previously #6206), its senior team of experts will be on hand to provide insights and discuss partnership opportunities with the company’s:

• Expanded technical capabilities with the formation of an indigenous Si photonics testing hub. The first Si photonics Optical/RF/DC tester using Formfactor prober + Keysight system.
• CompoundTek’s growing EPDA ecosystem, including Lumerical CML, Mentor Tanner PDK, Luceda PDK and Cadence PDK.
• Cutting-edge capabilities in silicon photonics fabrication with fast turn-around time designed to address capacity and industry process technology gaps.

Extending the demo online for a more inclusive experience, a tailored session with partner Lumerical has been organised as part of the “Lumerical’s Online Tech Day”. CompoundTek and Lumerical will provide further insights into their collaboration together and with other partners, focusing on the Electronic Photonic Design Automation solution. This particular showcase will be held on Friday, March 13^th at 5:30 pm-6:30 pm PDT. Key details on the event will be made available soon at https://www.lumerical.com/learn/events/

See you at OFC 2020, booth #2826. We look forward to welcoming you.

Contact CompoundTek (enquiries@compoundtek.com ) for the latest OFC2020 updates and other enquiries. 

Full press statement below:

Grating Couplers with 20x smaller footprint

Singapore, 27 February 2020 – CompoundTek, a global foundry services leader in emerging silicon photonic (SiPh) solutions and leading photonic simulation software provider Lumerical announces a joint presentation of their grating coupler photonic inverse design success story at OFC 2020.

Designed as part of an ongoing effort to offer highly flexible solutions for photonic integrated circuit developers requiring rapid design and manufacture, the collaboration between Lumerical and CompoundTek additionally addresses improvements to one of the most complex photonic components, the SiPh grating coupler. Responding to the industry’s increased time-to-market demands in photonics commercialisation, Lumerical’s PID flow running on AWS EC2, are new SiPh grating couplers developed with a footprint 20x smaller than CompoundTek’s existing coupler.

With predicted improvements in performance, results are achieved through PID flow configuration that automatically optimises a parameterised 2D model of the grating coupler in FDTD with over 50 design parameters. The optimisation goal was set to minimise insertion loss over the entire band while adhering to minimum feature constraints enforced to ensure manufacturability.

Learn more:

• Lumerical’s Photonic Inverse Design (PID) flow was used to design and optimise the new grating couplers and new Y-branches in conjunction with Lumerical’s industry-leading FDTD
• nanophotonic simulator
• CompoundTek’s world-class foundry services and open silicon photonics process successfully fabricated Lumerical’s Photonic Inverse Design (PID) design and optimized new grating
• couplers and new Y-branches
• How a 20x smaller footprint grating coupler with 2-week design cycle was achieved
• An overview of measurement results available to date
• Upcoming developments to look forward to

Join us and launch your design tapeout journey at OFC 2020 booth #6206, San Diego Convention Centre.

Contact CompoundTek (enquiries@compoundtek.com) for more details.

Follow all OFC news here

Full press release below:

Demo showcases next phase of real-world applications in Silicon Photonics

Singapore, 21 February 2020 – CompoundTek, a global foundry services leader in emerging silicon photonic (SiPh) solutions announces its showcase of a seamless, integrated design flow that equips customers with what is needed for real-world tape-out jointly with leading Electronic Design Automation (EDA) vendor Mentor, a Siemens business, and leading photonic simulation software provider Lumerical.

Previously unveiled in December 2019 via a joint webinar hosted with Mentor and Lumerical, the recorded session can be viewed in English and Chinese, ahead of OFC 2020, on both Mentor and Lumerical video sites.

The demo at OFC 2020 will:

• Provide an overview of CompoundTek’s world-class foundry services and silicon photonics PDK featuring a full suite of active and passive devices
• Demonstrate Mentor and Lumerical’s PDK-centric design flow by taking a PAM-4 circuit from layout to simulation 
• Include an additional showcase of Mentor’s photonics implementation solutions including Tanner™ L-Edit Photonics software and LightSuite™ Photonic Compiler.
• Launch Lumerical’s PAM-4 circuit simulation in INTERCONNECT directly from Tanner L-Edit Photonics 

Join us and launch your design tapeout journey at OFC 2020 booth #6206, San Diego Convention Centre.

Contact CompoundTek (enquiries@compoundtek.com) for more details.

Follow all OFC news here

Full press release below:

Advanced EPDA flow enables customers to accelerate silicon photonics design implementation

Singapore, 13 February 2020 – CompoundTek, a global foundry services leader in emerging silicon photonic (SiPh) solutions announced it is showcasing a PAM-4 demo based on a process design kit (PDK) for SiPh ICs co-created with collaborators, Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and leading photonics design and simulation provider, Lumerical. The demo will feature the latest electro-optical photonic reference flow based on the industry-standard Cadence® Virtuoso® electronic/photonic design automation (EPDA) environment, Lumerical’s INTERCONNECT and CompoundTek’s silicon photonic PDK and process at the upcoming Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) 2020.

The demo of the new CompoundTek PDK, announced in December 2019 will include:

1. CompoundTek’s world-class foundry services and silicon photonics PDK and platform featuring a full suite of active and passive devices
2. Electrical and photonic schematic capture in the Cadence Virtuoso Schematic Editor
3. Electro-optical co-simulation in the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment, using the Cadence Spectre AMS Designer and Lumerical INTERCONNECT
4. Photonic layout implementation in the Virtuoso Layout Suite environment
5. Schematic-driven layout, using a single golden schematic for both electrical and optical domains
6. Waveguide parameter back-annotation to schematic for layout-accurate optical re-simulation
7. Co-design of the electronic and photonic components for hybrid systems

Full press release below:

Keysight, NOEIC and CompoundTek Establish Open Standards for layout, design and automation of Photonic Integrated Circuit Testing

Singapore, 7 February 2020 – Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS), a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world,  National Information Optoelectronics Innovation Center (NOIEC), an innovative institute aimed at building a world-class R&D for the information optoelectronics industry, and CompoundTek, a global foundry services leader in emerging silicon photonic solutions (SiPh), will work together to establish layout design standards for the automated testing of photonic integrated circuits (PICs).

PICs offer a multitude of advantages over their discrete components and bulk optics counterparts including significant footprint reduction, improved stability and lower energy consumption. PICs are ubiquitous in telecommunication networks solutions and attract increasing attention in new applications like sensing, bio-medical, cryptography and quantum computing. As the range of applications widens, a high level of standardisation and automation becomes essential to ensure the scalability, process monitoring and yield required for volume production.

Keysight, NOEIC and CompoundTek will collaborate to establish a globally recognised standardised approach to PIC layout, enabling access to automated testing, generic assembly and packaging services for scaling to volume production. The goal is to interface with PIC designers who define the test protocols during the design stage with the test facilities which will enable automation and define measurement procedure and their parameters.

Full press release below:

Firm strengthens capabilities in niche semiconductor technologies, leapfrogging industry’s commercialisation of smart city applications

Singapore, 28 January 2020 – Announcing the launch of its maiden SiPh test facility, believed to be Southeast Asia’s first-of-its-kind site, CompoundTek, a global foundry services leader in emerging silicon photonics (SiPh) solutions will  offer production and engineering test services accessible to commercial industry players. The testing service is independent of CompoundTek’s foundry services, enabling non-CompoundTek customers the opportunity to leverage the open-testing platform.

Housing SiPh on-wafer testing and cutting-edge equipment, instrument controls and test methodologies, the facility is custom-built by CompoundTek and its partners. The hub caters to the development of solutions that revolutionises data-transmission capabilities sought after in data centres, interconnectivity, Lidar, smart sensors and other high-growth applications poised to see explosive volume production over the next 5 years largely driven by advancements in smart city applications.

The test facility, established at CompoundTek’s Jurong East International Business Park office is staffed by a resident SiPh test team, bringing into the technology ecosystem proven talents with international expertise in both manual and automatic silicon photonics testing on either 8” or 12” wafers. The cleanroom is accredited as class 1000/10000 with its equipment designed to achieve fast and reproducible optical coupling, including 6-axis probe-position optimisation and polarisation alignment; wafer probing for conventional DC and RF electrical testing in the optical domain, and is capable of supporting both O and C-band. The facility will additionally enable the testing of electro-optical components up to 67GHz and is ideally suited for electro-optical components for 400Gbit/s or higher.

Outlining the hub’s unique offering, CompoundTek’s Chief Operating Officer, K.S. Ang, explained,” With added on-wafer level automated SiPh Optical/Electrical/RF testing facility, customers will be able to limit packaging costs to good dies (Known-Good-Die) only and avoid module packaging level testing turn-around time losses. This complements our rapidly growing solutions portfolio designed to drive mass production volume with fast cycle-time. Offered alongside our world-class commercial foundry capabilities, we are able to accelerate customers’ time-to-market to subsequently meet their commercialisation goals.

We are excited to be able to expand our footprint to better support customers regionally and internationally with this facility.”

Highlights of Southeast Asia’s first Silicon Photonics Testing Centre of Excellence

Booth No: 6206, San Diego Convention Center

Date: 10-12 March 2020

CompoundTek, a global market leader in silicon photonics foundry services provider will be exhibiting at the upcoming OFC 2020, for a third consecutive year. In line with its expanded solutions portfolio and new industry partnerships, the company looks to host visitors at a larger exhibit area and will include as part of its itinerary, a number of technology showcases.

Furthering the momentum of its 2019 growth which sees CompoundTek rounding off the year with “design-wins” from 19 commercial customers (7 of which of which are organisations of over USD$1 billion in revenue) and > 19 research Institutes/Universities, the team will feature:

• Expanded technical capabilities with the formation of an indigenous Si photonics testing hub. The first Si photonics Optical/RF/DC tester will be using Formfactor prober + Keysight system and be fully operational in Q1 2020.
• CompoundTek’s growing EPDA ecosystem, including Lumerical CML, Mentor Tanner PDK, Luceda PDK and Cadence PDK.
• Cutting-edge capabilities in silicon photonics fabrication with fast turn-around time designed to address capacity and industry process technology gaps.

Backed by technological strength that is comparable and at some points, superior to research institutes and other commercial foundries, CompoundTek aims to offer a global marketplace the best and the latest technologies in silicon photonics fabrication for telecommunication, data center, bio-medical diagnostics, smart sensor, artificial intelligence, quantum optical computing, and automotive applications.

The OFC 2020 will be headlined by renowned Plenary Speakers discussing the future of optics communications, 5G innovations and astronomy’s new frontier. Held for over 40 years, the event is billed as the largest global conference and exhibition for optical communications and networking professionals and is attended by over 15,000 representatives from all sectors of the market including data center end-users and service providers and carriers, to systems and component vendors.

To book an appointment or to register your interest for more information on CompoundTek’s exhibition, please contact:

Victor Tan

Sales Director

Mobile: +65 6515 0170

Email: tanvictor@compoundtek.com

We look forward to welcoming you at Booth #6206, San Diego Convention Center,  to share with your our unconventional solutions and innovations and explore opportunities in product fabrication and mutually rewarding strategic partnerships.

New advanced EPDA flow supports the continued development of SiPh solutions

Singapore, 12 December 2019 – Today announced that it has collaborated with Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and leading photonics design and simulation provider, Lumerical, on the delivery of a new CompoundTek process design kit (PDK) for SiPh ICs. The PDK consists of a new, advanced electronic-photonic design automation (EPDA) flow with features aimed at further advancing the development of differentiated SiPh solutions.

The PDK is based on the Cadence® Virtuoso® custom IC design platform, utilising the Cadence CurvyCore™ engine, Cadence Spectre® simulation platform and the electrical-optical co-simulation capability in Lumerical’s photonic integrated circuit simulator INTERCONNECT. The kit includes active and passive devices such as optical waveguide devices, fibre-to-waveguide couplers, high-speed waveguide Ge photo-detectors and high-speed modulators to enable SiPh designers to design and verify their photonics products more quickly and efficiently before fabricating physical prototypes. 

“Our strategic collaboration with Cadence and Lumerical enables customers to leverage an integrated EPDA PDK, which features an open SiPh manufacturing platform to accelerate the adoption of SiPh solutions for various applications ranging from datacom transceivers, smart sensor, bio-medical, automotive lidar, quantum computing and artificial intelligence,” said KS Ang, chief operation officer of CompoundTek.

Full press release below:

Use-case in achieving 20x Smaller Footprint with 2-Week Design Cycle

Singapore, 11 December 2019 – Facing increased time-to-market demands in a commercialising photonics industry, Lumerical and CompoundTek worked together to explore new ways to improve one of the most complex photonic components, the SiPh grating coupler. In addition to creating solutions that shorten the design cycle, the companies emphasised minimising component size – therefore reducing costs to the end-user.

Lumerical’s Photonic Inverse Design (PID) flow was used to design and optimise the new grating couplers in conjunction with its industry-leading FDTD nanophotonic simulator. Designers were able to rapidly develop optimised functionality with improved performance, reduced footprint, and achieve more robust manufacturability. The PID flow, run on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 platform, takes advantage of the flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and virtually unlimited scalability the system offers.

New SiPh grating couplers were developed with a footprint 20x smaller than CompoundTek’s existing coupler and with predicted improvements in performance. After two weeks, optimal designs for eight manufacturable variants were made available to CompoundTek that are significantly smaller than currently available designs and with better performance across the entire band, with significant gains in the o-band.

Read about the partnership between CompoundTek and Lumerical, announced here

Read more about this use-case and how a 20x Smaller Footprint with 2-Week Design Cycle was achieved in the attachment below: