Dustphotonics samples first 1.6Tbit/s merchant photonic silicon
DustPhotonics in Israel is sampling the industry’s first merchant silicon photonics engine for 1.6Tb/s DR8 applications for AI and hyperscale data centres.
The Carmel8 silicon photonic engine was announced back in October by DustPhotonics supports 8 channels, each independently capable of operating at up to 224G/channel. Additionally, a second variant is available supporting four channels for 800Gb/s DR4 applications.
Both versions of the engine integrate on-board lasers mounted onto a transmit Photonics Integrated Circuit (PIC), incorporating the DustPhotonics patented L3C (Low-Loss Laser Coupling) technology. The engine has a simplified transceiver design with low power dissipation, low optical loss, lower overall cost, and enhanced supply chain scalability.
The devices will support a multitude of AI and hyperscale datacenter applications. The standard product is suitable for reaches of up to 2km. A lower-cost version, tailored for short-reach applications up to 100m, is also available that will use a single laser instead of 2 lasers for 1.6Tb/s operation. In addition, the products are highly suitable for LRO (Linear Receive Optics) and LPO (Linear Pluggable Optics) transceiver applications and can be employed in immersion cooling applications.
The products are currently sampling and will be released to production by the end of this year.
“We are extremely satisfied with the performance of our 224G/channel devices, where we have successfully demonstrated error-free links,” said Yoel Chetrit, CFO at DustPhotonics. “We believe 2025 will be an exciting year for DustPhotonics as we ramp up the 200G/lane products alongside the existing portfolio of Carmel 400G and 800G products.”
“We are seeing increased adoption of silicon photonics and have recently sharply increased our forecast for 1.6T modules in 2025,” said Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting. “With their 1.6T engine announcement, DustPhotonics is very well positioned to meet both of these significant industry trends.”