CIR Issues Research Note on Silicon Photonics

January 15, 2007

Glen Allen, Virginia: CIR, a leading industry analyst firm based here, has just issued a new research note on the commercial and technical prospects for silicon photonics. The analysis in the report is based on research from CIR's forthcoming report on optical components that will be released in February. The paper is available for download from CIR's website here.

About The Report:

CIR's research note concludes that, unlike earlier attempts at optical integration, silicon photonics represents a technically superior solution that is finely attuned with the needs of today's marketplace and will be a key enabler for next generation optical components. Driven by video applications, the network has now begun to see a resurgence of optical networking deployment right down to end user. CIR believes that in order to provide the flexible and pervasive high-bandwidth demands of today's networks, the market must be able to come up with low-cost optical components that offer high data rates, low latency and loss and agility with regard to where that bandwidth is directed. This is precisely the promise of silicon photonics.

The report notes that for high performance applications silicon photonics may never be able to match the power of optical integration using InP or GaAs as a materials platform, but that the ability to use standard CMOS technology should be a powerful factor driving down the cost of silicon photonics products. Already, in the lab, researchers have applied silicon photonics to lasers, detectors, amplifiers, modulators and waveguides.

The report claims that current developments in silicon photonics indicates a phased timetable for silicon photonics, beginning with current deployments of silicon waveguides for VOAs, then going on to the use of silicon photonics to radically reduce the cost of 10 GigE and improve the data rates in computer interconnects.

About CIR:

CIR provides detailed market analysis and forecasting of the trends, technologies and opportunities in the telecom and data communications components and modules market. Since it entered the market in 1979, CIR has produced dozens of reports that have tracked the cutting edge of the communications sector with a special focus on emerging technologies and high bandwidth networking. Our focus is on supplying our customers with the most comprehensive and detailed market data available in the sectors that we follow.

Contact:

Robert Nolan
CIR
804-360-2967
info@cir-inc.com