FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS



What is meant by Highly Integrated Photonics?

HIP is the merging of Photonic Integrated Circuits with Electronic Integrated Circuit components to enable extremely small and efficient interface and control for multiple channels of Wavelength Division Multiplex (WDM) data or signals over single-mode fiber optics.


What problems are solved with photonics?

Electrons moving in copper wire have limitations in speed, heat generation, power consumption, and radiation that are not a problem for photons moving in fiber optic materials. To solve the problem of bottlenecks in communication links (interconnects) and computers, optical fiber and photonic devices provide a much faster, cheaper, and lower power medium than traditional copper wire and CMOS (complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor) circuits.


What is so special about APIC’s processes?

APIC integrates complex optical components together with complex electronics in a single CMOS-like chip, using a silicon Si on Insulator substrate (SOI), a relatively inexpensive material. The process and wafer production are fully scalable and represent the patented intellectual property of APIC.


Is Photonics in use today?

All major telecommunications networks use fiber optic cables and some photonic connection and interface devices. However, commercial telecom industry does not need optical devices that can handle the rigorous environment of the military.


What is the benefit of using CMOS technology with photonic chips?

The benefit is in applying revolutionary new capabilities of photonic components with the well-known CMOS process and materials. APIC photonic chips, integrated in silicon with a CMOS process, combine the massive computational power of standard electronics with the virtually unlimited bandwidth of fiber optic communications, resulting in a cost per transmitted bit that is much lower than electronics.


What is meant by the FLIP (fully laser integrated photonics) program claim of “all to all computing?”

Current electronically intereconnected multicores can only communicate to and process information from one other core at a time. Since FLIP cores are optically interconnected, any single core can communicate with every other core simultaneously. FLIP solves the latency problem of electronic multicores.


How does copper compare with multi mode fiber, and with single mode fiber used by APIC?


  Copper

  Multimode Fiber

  Single-Mode Fiber

  Size/weight/power requirements

  Cannot scale to needs; high cost,
  diminishing returns

  Low

  Low

  Bandwidth

  Limited

  High

  High

  Dense Wave Division Multiplex (WDM)

  No

  No

  Yes

  Susceptibility to EMI

  High

  None

  None

  Upgrade Potential

  Low

  Low

  High

  Network Solution

  No

  No

  Yes

  Compatible w/ Optical Amplifiers

  No

  No

  Yes

  Wideband Analog Over Fiber?

  No

  No

  Yes

  Tunable Components

  No

  No

  Yes

  Single Chip CMOS integration

  No

  No

  Yes

  Processors With Integrated Optical Bus

  No

  No

  Yes

  Inter- and Intra-chip Optical Interconnect

  No

  No

  Yes

  Multi-level Security

  No

  No

  Yes