Award Period:
to
Award Amount
$90,000.00
Agency Name
AIM Photonics via State University of New York (SUNY)
PI Name
John Bowers
CO-PI:
Nadir Dagli
Area/s of Research:
Electronics & Photonics
Abstract
This project is a partnership between UCSB and Synopsys to port the AIM Photonics EPDA reference design to the Synopsys toolchain. A previous AIM Photonics MCE project for 2017 has focused on the implementation of this EPDA reference design based on a 2.5D integration scheme. The design is a multi-channel photonic transceiver chip targeted for 25G and beyond, and consists of (a) a multi-channel photonic transceiver chip incorporating modulators and photodiodes, (b) an electronic IC with driver, receiver, and control circuitry, and (c) an interposer for integrating these chips in conjunction with the necessary laser sources. While this reference design is open and intended for distribution to AIM Photonics members, it is only being implemented using a single EPDA tool flow, which limits its availability to designers who opt for a single software solution. Furthermore, this approach does not help improve these alternative tool flows, which would otherwise directly benefit from the development efforts related to a reference design implementation. Because support for alternative design flows is critical to help build an EPDA ecosystem that is on a par with if not superior to the global SOA, this project will port the AIM Photonics EPDA Reference Design to the Synopsys toolchain, including OptSim Circuit, its interface to OptoDesigner from PhoeniX Software, and additional Synopsys tools, such as HSPICE, for the design and simulation of the electronic IC.