Photonics-Electronics Convergence — Light Enters the Semiconductor Industry
Photonics-Electronics Convergence — Light Enters the Semiconductor Industry Photonics-electronics convergence refers to a technological trend that closely integrates electronic circuits with optical communications to support the massive data movement required in the age of AI and high-performance computing. Its core technologies include silicon photonics, Optical I/O, CPO (Co-Packaged Optics), optical chiplets, and PICs (Photonic Integrated Circuits) . Optical communication, once used mainly for external data-center links, is now moving steadily closer to semiconductor packages and chips. In Japan, NTT is developing PEC (Photonics-Electronics Convergence) as a core technology of its IOWN initiative, extending optical integration from networking toward computing. Intel has commercialized silicon photonics and developed OCI (Optical Compute Interconnect) chiplets, while Broadcom is integrating CPO with high-end Ethernet switching platforms such as Tomahawk. NVIDIA is also intr...