About CALADAN
The CALADAN project brings together a supply chain that will enable automatic wafer scale assembly of Terabit/s capable optical engines through the use of the micro transfer printing technology. SiGe BiCMOS drivers and receivers and GaAs quantum dot lasers will be integrated onto Silicon Photonic integrated circuits, fully at the wafer level.
The European project Caladan is an initiative of the Photonics Public Private Partnership (PPP), and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 innovation programme under grant agreement No 825453.
Why
Data centers which underpin the Cloud are under pressure. As the capacity of data center servers is growing, so must the capacity of the links between those servers. Industry foresees a need for high volumes of 800Gb/s and 1.6Tb/s transceivers by 2025.
Today, despite the use of complex Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), manufacturing an optical transceiver still requires a large number of sequential steps. This is because lasers and electronic chips need to be assembled on a piece-by-piece basis onto the PIC. The resulting optical engine then needs to be coupled to a fiber array and packaged. These steps are done sequentially, creating a bottleneck in the manufacturing line which makes it hard to scale up production and reduce cost.
CALADAN will demonstrate how integration of lasers and electronics onto a PIC can be done fully at the wafer-level using the established micro transfer printing technique, thus eliminating this bottleneck. GaAs quantum dot lasers and 130nm SiGe BiCMOS 56Gbaud capable driver and receiver electronics will be transfer printed onto Silicon Photonic 300mm wafers. Starting from proven concepts in PIXAPP, a novel fast fiber attachment process will be demonstrated that reduces the time required for fiber attachment by an order of magnitude. Using these techniques, transceiver cost will be 0.1Euro/Gb/s for volumes of at least 1,000,000 units.
Public Private Partners
The consortium, which consists of three SMEs (X-Celeprint, Innolume and ficonTEC), an LE (EVGroup), three research institutes (IMEC, Tyndall and IHP), a transceiver manufacturer (Mellanox) and a multinational (Xilinx) encompasses all the partners to start production of the targeted optical transceivers after the end of the project. Exploitation of the technology will be supported by an end-user (British Telecom), a semiconductor foundry setting up a micro transfer printing Pilot Line (MICROPRINCE, X-FAB), an optical equipment manufacturer (ADVA) and the European Photonic Industry Consortium (EPIC).
Funding
Grant agreement ID: 825453
Status
Ongoing project
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Start date
1 January 2019
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End date
31 December 2022
Funded under:
H2020-EU.2.1.1.
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Overall budget:
€ 6 624 737,50
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EU contribution
€ 5 846 728,75
Coordinated by:
INTERUNIVERSITAIR MICRO-ELECTRONICA CENTRUM
Belgium
