Successful Mass Production of Semiconductor-Based 'Optical Router' 100,000 Times Faster

DGIST Professor Sangyun Han and US UC Berkeley Joint Research Team

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] A semiconductor-based optical router capable of processing data 100,000 times faster than existing technology has been developed and is expected to enter mass production soon.

Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) announced on the 21st that Professor Han Sang-yoon from the Department of Robotics, in collaboration with a research team from UC Berkeley in the United States, has successfully conducted mass production testing of a semiconductor-based optical router that can dramatically increase the information processing speed of data centers.

A router is a relay device that designates fast processing paths for data transmission between networks, and its importance has been emphasized recently due to the surge in data demand caused by the expansion of non-face-to-face services amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The problem is that while high-bandwidth networks in current data centers use optical fibers, routers are electronic, requiring the conversion of optical signals to electronic signals, which slows down speed and adds energy consumption, causing inefficiency.

The research team developed an optical router that can efficiently direct optical signals flowing through semiconductors to designated servers. They miniaturized the expensive optical router, a data processing device, at low cost, enabling mass production. They utilized silicon photonics technology, which creates optical circuits with silicon, developed in 2014. This technology can integrate optical routers that are over 100,000 times faster than existing ones in a miniature form on semiconductor chips.

Based on this, the research team recently succeeded in mass production at a commercial semiconductor foundry through collaboration with the U.S. TSI Semiconductors foundry. Currently, the joint research team at UC Berkeley is in the process of starting a company in Silicon Valley based on patents related to this technology.

Professor Han Sang-yoon said, “Not only for data center optical routers but also for optical circuits developed with silicon photonics technology, commercialization is now possible, making it easier to upgrade the internal networks of existing large data centers to optical networks,” adding, “We will do our best to ensure the commercialization of various optical circuits currently being developed at DGIST through follow-up research.”

This research was published as the cover paper in April in the Journal of Optical Microsystems, issued by the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE).