Silicon Photonics : Digitalization is One of The Most Effective Tools for Sustainability

 

The growth of data in the 21st century has become inexorable. With data being touted as the new oil, its storage is also becoming increasingly popular in this new era. Alongside storage, the computation and networking of data are also opening up new possibilities. Organizations are utilizing Big Data to gain agility, identify loopholes, maximize their efficiency, and transform businesses. The digital world that is rapidly gaining momentum has shown increased demand for online applications, data transfer, and data storage, among others. Several banks, private and public organizations, and universities have now started to own large data centers that are connected to secure networks. The data centers available today have enormous computational power, processing capability, and storage facility. However, with evolving customer needs, the need for insight through the computation of complex data within a short period of time has led to new technologies being adopted across data centers. Especially during the ongoing situation of COVID-19, when digitalization is one of the most effective tools for sustainability, the requirement of effective data centers and higher speed interconnects have become a necessity. The ubiquitous usage of data and its transportation to different access points, servers, and data centers entail fast and uninterrupted connections.

BIS Report on Silicon Photonics Market

The use of fiber optic technology to replace copper interconnects has been the norm in the data center environment to facilitate faster data transmission. However, the distance-cost crossover from copper to an optic solution has been a debatable subject for a long time. While traditional methods, involving copper wires, have been improved further to maintain their relevance, the transmission of heavy datasets (>100 Gigabytes) has posed major limitations to the traditional methods due to the low bandwidth and high attenuation of copper wires. The silicon photonic technology has emerged as a potential solution to overcome the limitations of traditional methods, and several companies have started investing in the technology in order to develop passive optical alignment and effective integration at a lower cost.