Topic
Technology for fabricating optical circuits on silicon chips using CMOS processes, paired with III-V materials for lasers, used in high-speed data links.
Tower Semiconductor and Japan will co-invest $4 billion to reach 45,000 300mm-equivalent wafers a month of optical-connectivity capacity by 2029. Until the new fab lands in 2029, growth comes from adding tools to a fab that already ships.
Reality
Operators are betting light replaces copper between the chips inside a data centre. Whether it does turns on hall temperature and cable routing as much as on an optical cost curve that is still expensive.
Reality
KeyBanc's optical thesis for Marvell and Marvell's own revenue guidance both land near $30 billion, four years apart and measuring different things. The purchase price for the technology is already committed.
Reality
Kyocera and Tohoku University report 13.6 decibels of isolation on a silicon waveguide, roughly a 95 percent cut in reflected light, from garnet crystallised by a laser aimed at one small patch. Lower loss and mass production are still on their list.
Reality
In Nature Communications, Hatice Altug's EPFL group tunes one metasurface two ways: on-chip microheaters running at kilohertz rates, and ultrafast laser pulses running about a million times faster, a route that needs an external laser.
Reality
The book grew from about $7bn in a year, and roughly half of it is priced by funding rounds rather than by markets, which means a demand forecast built on customer orders is partly a forecast of Nvidia's own marks.
Reality
The demonstration is photopumped, so nobody is specifying it into a lidar module yet. The buried silicon dioxide pattern it lases through is the part that could let one wafer carry several photonic-crystal designs.
Reality
A Singapore team swapped hydrogen for deuterium in silicon nitride, cut loss to 0.54 dB per centimeter, and spanned 1.7 octaves. The sub-400 C process is the part fabs will care about.
Reality
A forecast filed with a Hong Kong IPO puts data center optics at $144.4 billion in 2030, and the $15 billion already spent means rack decisions made now are bets on a moving roadmap.
Reality