Silicon Photonics Industry Shifts from Architecture to Manufacturing Competition

The debate over Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) has largely centered on whether it's necessary, and if placing optical engines next to switch ASICs creates reliability and serviceability challenges. However, a recent Silicon Photonics Global Summit in Taiwan suggests that this debate is becoming increasingly outdated.

Fourteen presentations by companies like Cisco, TSMC, Lumentum, Marvell, UMC, Lightmatter, ASE, imec, Soitec, Lam Research, Onto Innovation, ficonTEC, Advantest, and Enlitech indicate a shift in the industry. Despite their different positions across the semiconductor and photonics value chain, these companies are moving towards integrating optical interconnects into switch ASICs, XPUs, and advanced packages.

The key question is no longer whether CPO will happen, but rather how well companies can integrate dozens or hundreds of optical channels, lasers, PICs, EICs, fiber interfaces, advanced packaging structures, and thermal solutions while maintaining acceptable yield, cost, reliability, and test time. Testing, metrology, yield management, and process control are becoming almost as important as the optical devices themselves.