As datacenters strive to meet escalating demands for efficiency and bandwidth, particularly with the integration of AI and ML technologies, optics is poised to play a crucial role in shaping the future of interconnect architecture and performance. The increasing investment in innovative optoelectronic IC integration and co-packaged optics (CPOs) solutions highlights this potential. The optical links of the future must not only address growing bandwidth requirements but also adhere to constraints related to power consumption, cost, space, reliability, and scalability.
Innovative solutions such as 3D packaging of optoelectronic ICs and CPOs offer the promise of significant improvements in cost efficiency and power consumption. However, these advancements come with challenges, including the need for new and intricate packaging, thermal management, and optical coupling designs. The Multiphysics portfolio of Ansys along with its industry leading photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design tools from the Lumerical suite offers best-in-class solutions to these design challenges. The image below shows a high-level overview of the different design workflows offered by Ansys for CPO design.
PIC Design
Passive components constitute the backbone of photonic integrated circuits. Whether its simple waveguides, splitters or crossings to propagate optical signal throughout the circuit with high fidelity and low loss, grating or edge couplers to efficiently couple light in and out of the circuit, or complex components like AWGs and wavelength demultiplexers for signal manipulation, Lumerical FDTD and MODE provides industry leading design and optimization solutions.
The Lumerical Suite also provides a power optimization capability vis Photonic Inverse Design. Note that the list below is not exhaustive, and more examples can be found by searching the Optics Home Page.
2. Active component design with FDTD, MODE, CHARGE and HEAT
3. Photonic circuit design with INTERCONNECT
4. Electro-optical co-simulation with Cadence – Lumerical interoperability
Optical Coupling Design
In integrated photonics, coupling the optical signal in to and out of the chip present a unique challenge that requires precise alignment and complex packaging. Given that coupling performance is critical to the chip’s functionality, it may not be surprising that this design problem represents a significant portion of the technology cost through lost yield, overengineering and additional processing/packaging expenses. With industry trends pushing towards co-packaged optics within 3DICs, it becomes imperative to develop workflows to accurately model reliability and make economically viable design decisions. Ansys Lumerical and Zemax toolsets provide the best-in-class solutions to simulate and design complete optical coupling systems for co-packaged optics and other integrated photonics applications. The table below provides some application examples and online resources that highlight these capabilities.
- Integrated microlens and grating coupler for photonic integrated circuits
- Fiber-to-chip edge coupler with a microlens
Signal Integrity
- Signal integrity analysis in a co-packaged optics system (RaptorX-Spectre-INTERCONNECT)
- Optical transceiver signal integrity analysis including packaging effects (AEDT-INTERCONNECT)