SANTA CLARA, CA, UNITED STATES, March 10, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — OpenLight, the world leader in custom PASIC chip design and manufacturing, today announced the sample availability of its first heterogeneously integrated silicon photonics–based 3.2T DR8 photonic integrated circuit (PIC). Fabricated on Tower Semiconductor’s PH18DA process, the PIC integrates OpenLight’s 1310 nm distributed feedback (DFB) lasers with high-performance InP based 448G electro absorption modulators (EAMs), delivering a highly integrated, low power solution. This milestone follows more than a year of focused design and process optimization on OpenLight’s Process Design Kit (PDK) platform in collaboration with Tower Semiconductor. As a result, OpenLight has significantly advanced its 448G EAM technology, demonstrating a differential 3 dB bandwidth approaching 100GHz and extinction ratio (ER) greater than 3.5 dB at 2.0 volts differential. These results enable robust performance at terabit data rates while maintaining power efficiency and manufacturability. This highly integrated PIC solution is well suited for not only module and transceiver applications but also the emerging co packaged optics (CPO) and near packaged optical applications, where power efficiency, thermal performance, and packaging simplicity are critical.
OpenLight’s 3.2T DR8 PICs, enabled by its high bandwidth, low drive performance 448G EAM technology, eliminates the need for externally coupled continuous wave (CW) laser sources and significantly simplify packaging requirements. By achieving approximately 90% coupling efficiency between the active elements and the silicon waveguide, along with the low drive swing of 2V of the InP EAM, OpenLight enables an extremely lower power solution. At full 3.2T operation, the PIC’s power dissipation is less than 2 W at 80 °C which corresponds to approximately 0.63 pJ/bit, representing a substantial improvement in thermal efficiency compared with previous generation designs.
Building on this foundation, OpenLight is introducing the 3.2T DR8 PIC as an extension of the same platform architecture used for its 1.6T DR8 PIC, enabling a consistent, scalable design approach across data rate generations and allowing customers to leverage a common platform allowing seamless and fast scale deployment from 1.6T to 3.2T deployments. All active components on the PH18DA platform, including those used in the 3.2T DR8 PIC, have been independently qualified to the Telcordia GR 468 standard, as recently announced, providing additional assurance for deployment in high reliability datacenter environments.
“We are very excited to offer our customers a 3.2T solution through our strong collaboration with OpenLight,” said Dr. Ed Preisler, Vice President and General Manager, RF Business Unit at Tower Semiconductor. “Looking ahead, we see substantial potential for our PH18DA technology to expand our addressable market through the integration of lasers, EAMs, and other InP components within our silicon photonic platform.”
“The 3.2T DR8 PIC with 448G EAMs delivers clear benefits in power efficiency, cost, and time to production,” said Dr. Adam Carter, CEO of OpenLight. “Superior performance of our 448G EAMs enables a easy straight forward scalable path for our customers to transition from from 1.6T to 3.2T at 400G per lane and is well suited for not only DR8 and FR4 transciever module applications but also emerging co packaged optics (CPO) and near packaged optical (NPO) applications.”
These platform improvements have also enabled continued progress on OpenLight’s 1.6T DR8 PIC, with 224G EAM devices now in beta sampling offering both LRO and LPO variants. OpenLight has received orders from major transceiver manufacturers to support transceiver builds and qualification programs, reflecting growing adoption from customers as designs move toward production.
Platform alpha samples of the 3.2T DR8 PIC are available today, with bare die available immediately and an evaluation board featuring an integrated flip chip 448G modulator and driver expected by the end of March 2026. Beta samples of the 3.2T DR8 PIC for module and transceiver qualification are expected to be available in calendar Q4 2026.
OpenLight will participate in OFC 2026, held March 15–19 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California.
For more information on OpenLight’s production ready photonic platform and the PH18DA process, please visit booth #2449 or www.openlightphotonics.com.
To learn more about Tower Semiconductor’s silicon photonics platform, visit booth #2221. Additional information is available on the company’s website.
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