New IP Speeds Up Silicon Photonics Design
Alcyon Photonics launched its first silicon-proven IP library for Tower Semiconductor's PH18 process. The library aims to shorten the design-to-manufacturing cycle for silicon photonics used in AI and HPC interconnects, enabling more modular and rapid development.
Madrid-based Alcyon Photonics, a 2018 startup, has raised over $2.3M to commercialize its high-performance photonic circuit designs. The firm's core strategy is to provide validated, fabrication-ready IP to shorten development cycles for customers using major silicon photonics foundries. The IP library is built for Tower Semiconductor's PH18 silicon photonics (SiPho) platform, a process manufactured at their 200mm fab in Newport Beach, California. This "open" foundry platform provides access to components like low-loss silicon nitride waveguides and Germanium photodiodes, a key local resource for Southern California's semiconductor ecosystem. This collaboration addresses a critical bottleneck in photonic integrated circuit (PIC) development. By offering a library of pre-verified building blocks, designers can avoid creating foundational components from scratch, reducing risk and accelerating the design process, much like using standard cell libraries in digital ASIC design. The initial IP library includes essential components for datacom and telecom applications, such as multimode interferometers (MMIs), Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs), multiplexers, and polarization splitter-rotators (PSRs). These blocks are designed to be robust against fabrication deviations of up to 30 nm, ensuring high yield and performance stability. The demand for such technology is driven by the explosive growth of AI and HPC, where traditional copper interconnects are becoming a limiting factor for data-intensive workloads. The silicon photonics market is projected to grow from around $2.2 billion in 2024 to over $13 billion by 2032, fueled by the need for higher bandwidth and lower power consumption in hyperscale data centers. Alcyon's library is initially supported within the Luceda EDA environment, ensuring it integrates smoothly into existing design workflows for Tower's customers. This ecosystem approach allows engineering teams to focus on system-level differentiation rather than the physics of individual photonic components.
