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: