News: Optoelectronics
23 March 2026
OpenLight showcases III-V heterogenous integrated silicon photonics innovations and production capabilities
At the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC 2026) in Los Angeles (15–19 March), photonic application-specific integrated circuit (PASIC) chip designer and manufacturer OpenLight of Goleta, Santa Barbara, CA, USA (which launched as an independent company in June 2022, introducing the first open silicon photonics platform with heterogeneously integrated III-V lasers, modulators, amplifiers and detectors) showcased multiple technology breakthroughs, including demonstrating its latest advances in high speed photonic integrated circuits (PICs) with integrated lasers, electro-absorption (EA) modulators, and amplifiers. The demonstrations showed next generation optical architectures designed to meet the performance, efficiency and scalability demands of AI, cloud and hyperscale data-center networks.
OpenLight’s OFC presence highlighted industry demonstrations, new product collaborations, and thought leadership sessions featuring its engineering and executive teams, demonstrating that its technology is ready for production scaling.
Live demonstrations: advancing AI scale optical interconnects
- 400G-per-lane III-V on silicon EA modulator for 3.2T and beyond
Building on the technology first demonstrated at OFC 2025, OpenLight showcased an enhanced 400G-per-lane EA modulator featuring flip-chip co packaging with a MACOM driver, delivering optical modulation amplitude (OMA) of 3dBm and extinction ratio greater than 3.5dB. This year’s demonstration highlighted significant improvements in integration maturity and manufacturability, enabling differential drive and advances in bandwidth performance — made possible through OpenLight’s production-ready heterogeneous III-V-on-silicon photonics platform. These advancements further strengthen the scalability of OpenLight’s PDK devices for next-generation 3.2T and beyond high-density, low-power optical transceivers supporting AI, ML, and cloud data-center deployments. - 1.6T DR8 fully integrated transceiver PIC and evaluation board
OpenLight also demonstrated a 1.6T DR8 evaluation board incorporating its beta 1.6T DFB-based PIC including heterogeneous integrated lasers, modulators, amplifiers and photo detectors operating with a Marvell Ara 3nm 1.6T digital signal processor (DSP). The PIC integrates OpenLight’s 1310nm distributed feedback (DFB) lasers and InP-based 224G electro-absorption modulators (EAMs) and now delivers improved power efficiency, consuming about 2.0W, down from 2.7W reported at initial sample availability. This demonstration showcased a complete high-speed optical link representative of emerging AI cluster and data-center requirements, featuring full flip-chip co-packaging of the DSP, transmitter PIC, and receiver with no external laser alignment.
Additional in-booth partner technology showcases
OpenLight further highlighted collaborations with technology and ecosystem partners, including:
- Oriole Networks, demonstrating a scalable, all-passive backend network technology for AI workloads, built on silicon photonics nanosecond optical circuit switching, with predictable and low tail latency.
- GDS Factory, showcasing an all-in-one, schematic driven design solution for the OpenLight platform that combines advanced PH18DA device modeling with programmatic layout, verification, and seamless post-layout simulation for confident complex circuit design.
- Spark Photonics, presenting its design and layout services using the OpenLight process design kit (PDK) with the Luceda Photonics software suite.
Market Watch and Technical Program participation
OpenLight experts participated in several technical sessions and panel discussions throughout the week:
- Market Watch Panel — ‘Market Status and Enabling Technologies of 1.6Tbps and Beyond’. OpenLight’s CEO Dr Adam Carter joined industry leaders from Broadcom, Ciena, Marvell, Inpho and Source Photonics for a panel on the market trends, applications, and technologies accelerating adoption of 1.6Tbps pluggable modules.
- SC347: ‘Reliability and Qualification of Fiber Optic Components’, presented by Robert Herrick.
- M3G: High-Speed Optical Modulators for Intra-Data Center Links: Unlocking 400 Gb/s and Beyond per Lane’, featuring Beichen Wang as a panelist.
OpenLight sampling first heterogeneously integrated silicon photonics-based 3.2T DR8 PIC
