TowerJazz, Cadence and Lumerical deliver silicon photonics and SiGe integrated PDK with complete optical transceiver design environment, targeting 400Gb and 800Gb data-center and telecom applications

Specialty foundry TowerJazz, electronic design automation (EDA) software provider Cadence Design Systems Inc of San Jose, CA, USA and photonic design and simulation software tool provider Lumerical Inc of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada have announced the availability of a complete custom design silicon photonics (SiPho) and silicon germanium (SiGe) integrated process design kit (PDK).

The differentiated PDK is based on the Cadence Virtuoso custom IC design platform, providing native synthesis using the Cadence CurvyCore engine and Electrical-Optical co-simulation capability in Lumerical’s photonic integrated circuit simulator INTERCONNECT. The complete, photonics-optimized solution provides SiPho designers with a single, streamlined design environment for developing complex multi-fabric systems, while enabling them to collaborate in a shared IC design environment to leverage the electro-optical interface that is critical for enabling 400GB optical transceivers.

“We are excited to expand our industry-leading SiPho technology, and to be the first major foundry to offer - through this collaboration with Cadence and Lumerical - the co-optimization of electrical SiGe and optical SiPho components in a single EDA environment,” says Marco Racanelli, senior VP & general manager of the Analog IC business unit at TowerJazz. “This new capability enables our mutual customers to shortcut development cycles and accelerate the introduction of 400Gb and 800Gb breakthrough products.”

Customers using the new TowerJazz PDK can now synthesize non-Manhattan shaped photonics designs utilizing the Cadence CurvyCore technology, which allows users to systematically manage curvilinear shapes within the Cadence Virtuoso design environment using its high-performance shape generation and manipulation infrastructure with dedicated SKILL API.

Delivery of the new TowerJazz PDK encompasses the previously available Lumerical Compact Model Library (CML) to enable a proven, complete solution incorporating co-simulation utilizing industry-leading tools.

“TowerJazz and Cadence customers can begin leveraging the high-performance shape generation technology within the Virtuoso design environment to further advance the development of complete multi-chip photonics systems,” says Glen Clark, VP, research & development at Cadence. “TowerJazz, Lumerical and Cadence have a long history of collaboration that enables our mutual customers to achieve success in delivering quality products to market faster and easier,” he adds.

“A touchstone of the commercialization of photonics is ecosystem development by world-class companies,” comments Lumerical’s chief technology officer James Pond. “Our partnership with Cadence and TowerJazz enables photonic integrated circuit designers to co-simulate their electro-optical and photonic components using leading tools they are familiar with, and fabricate those designs at TowerJazz.”

See related items:

Lumerical and Mentor co-develop PDK for TowerJazz’s silicon photonics foundry process

TowerJazz announces first open foundry silicon photonics design kits with EDA tool support

Tags: TowerJazz SiGe Silicon photonics PIC Simulation software EDA software

Visit: www.towerjazz.com

Visit: www.lumerical.com

Visit: www.cadence.com/go/virtuosorfni