What is Driving the Adoption of Silicon Photonics?

It is clear by now that Silicon Photonics (SiP) is making a very significant impact on the market. Sales of SiP-based products started to ramp in 2014, accelerated in 2018 and reached almost $2 billion in 2020, accounting for 25% of the total market for optical transceivers. Numerous foundries offer design and manufacturing of SiP optical engines, making this technology available to a wide range of suppliers and accelerating innovation. Co-packaged optics and Integration of optical chips with coherent and PAM4 DSPs will solidify market position of SiP technology over this decade. Business strategies of leading networking equipment vendors and semiconductor chip manufacturers is the main driving force behind progress made by Silicon Photonics. Cisco made headlines with high value acquisitions, but Chinese companies made as much progress in developing products based on this new manufacturing platform. This presentation will offer a summary of the latest market data and forecast for sales of optical transceivers based on Silicon Photonics.