Cadence Collaborates with GlobalFoundries to Advance Silicon Photonics IC Design

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Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced a collaboration with GlobalFoundries (GF) aimed at speeding silicon photonics IC development for 5G communications, hyperscale computing, healthcare, automotive, IoT and aerospace systems. Through this collaboration, the Cadence® photonics solution, an integrated electronic/photonic design automation environment (EPDA), has been optimized for the new GF Fotonix™ platform, its next-generation, widely disruptive, monolithic platform that is the first in the industry to combine its differentiated 300mm photonics and RF-CMOS features on a silicon wafer, delivering best-in-class performance at scale.

The comprehensive Cadence photonics solution, which supports the GF Fotonix platform, consists of the Cadence Virtuoso® IC Design Platform, the Virtuoso Photonics Platform, the Spectre® Simulation Platform and the Voltus™-Fi Custom Power Integrity Solution, which seamlessly integrate with other Cadence products and solutions. The solution offers mutual customers a production-proven design platform for electronic/photonic design, simulation and analysis, and includes a robust set of features and APIs for generating and editing complex curvilinear shapes, waveguides and other photonics components.

The GF Fotonix platform delivers optimal performance at scale. It consolidates complex processes that were previously distributed across multiple chips onto a single chip by combining a photonic system, radio frequency (RF) components and high-performance complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) logic in a single silicon chip.

“Through our collaboration with Cadence, we’re enabling customers to create photonics designs faster while improving power and performance and reducing system costs,” said Mike Cadigan, senior vice president for Customer Design Enablement, GF. “By combining the Cadence photonics solution with our GF Fotonix platform, customers can meet design requirements for the most urgent, complex and difficult challenges in areas such as optical networking, super and quantum computing, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), 5G networks, aeronautics and defense.”

“In recent years, we’ve seen photonics technology move into mainstream electronic designs,” said Tom Beckley, senior vice president and general manager, Custom IC & PCB Group at Cadence. “The comprehensive Cadence photonics solution incorporates all of the key features in a single design platform, creating efficiencies and reducing user errors. By collaborating with GF to drive adoption of our photonics solution and the GF Fotonix platform, we’re enabling mutual customers to innovate, design and deliver photonics products faster.”