OpenLight, a start-up offering an open silicon photonics platform with integrated lasers, has appointed Dr. Adam Carter as its Chief Executive Officer.
Previously, Carter served as Chief Commercial Officer at Foxconn Interconnect and Oclaro. At Oclaro, he served as a member of the senior executive team from July 2014 to December 2018, when it was acquired by Lumentum Holdings for $1.85B. Prior to that, he served as the Senior Director and General Manager of the Transceiver Module Group at Cisco from February 2007 to July 2014, where he was instrumental in the acquisition of Lightwire, a Silicon Photonics start-up, and released the first internally-designed CPAK 100G transceiver family utilizing a Silicon Photonics Optical engine. Dr. Carter holds a B.Sc. (Honors) in Applied Physics from Portsmouth University and received a PhD from the University of Wales, Cardiff, for his research on Reactive Ion Etching of III-V semiconductor materials.
"OpenLight is exactly the compelling opportunity I was looking for," said Adam Carter. "I believe the company has a unique and innovative business model and a world class engineering team that will enable our customers with access to our intellectual property, design services and photonic integrated components to accelerate the use of PICs in a wide variety of markets and applications. I look forward to guiding the team through future growth as we scale our open-foundry business."
"Since our launch last year, our proven ability to integrate lasers, amplifiers as well as passive components on a single chip has already provided our customers with scalable, high-performance, cost-effective solutions while driving operational efficiency," said Dr. Thomas Mader, Chief Operating Officer at OpenLight. "As we begin a new year, we are delighted to have Dr. Carter join the company and lead our efforts in driving this new era of open silicon photonics with integrated lasers and our company growth."
OpenLight unveils Silicon Photonics platform with integrated InP lasers
OpenLight, a start-up based in Santa Barbara, California, introduced its open silicon photonics platform with integrated lasers.
OpenLight operates under the tagline, "Open. Integrated. Scalable." The open platform includes integrated lasers, optical amplifiers, modulators, photodetectors, and other key photonic components to form a complete solution for low-power, high-performance photonics ICs. In addition, OpenLight offers select PIC designs and design services to accelerate time-to-market.
The company says it aims to accelerate the development of high-performance photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in applications such as datacom, telecom, LiDAR, healthcare, HPC, AI, and optical computing. The technology has passed qualification and reliability tests on Tower's PH18DA production process. OpenLight expects the first open Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) shuttle run on the PH18DA process as well as 400G and 800G reference designs with integrated lasers to be available in Summer 2022.
By processing the Indium Phosphide (InP) materials directly on the silicon photonics wafer, the PH18DA platform reduces the cost and time of adding lasers, enabling volume scalability and improved power efficiency. In addition, monolithically integrated lasers improve overall reliability and simplify packaging.
