Design Challenges in Silicon Photonics

Silicon photonics is rapidly gaining maturity in high-bandwidth optical communication, with applications in datacom, access networks, and I/O for bandwidth-intensive electronics. Also, applications are emerging in spectroscopy and sensing. To get the best performance out of the photonics, co-integration with electronics is needed: side-by-side, stacked, or on the same chip. However, the combination of photonics and electronics introduces a range of new problems on the design side: Codesign and cosimulation of complex photonic and electronic circuits, tolerance to variability, and verification algorithms that can handle photonic circuits. We will discuss these challenges and give an outlook on how tools need to evolve to address the needs of photonic-electronic IC designers.