Successful demonstration of a 1.6 Tb/sec PIC shows the potential of photonic integration to scale to greater data rates. Photonic integration is a key technology for enabling optical networks to scale to carry Internet traffic as Internet bandwidth continues to grow at double- and triple-digit rates. At a data rate of 1.6 Tb/s (1.6 trillion bits per second), this single chip would be capable of transmitting simultaneously more than 50 million Internet telephone calls, or 160,000 high-definition television broadcasts.

“While this PIC is still a lab demonstration, it shows the enormous potential of photonic integration to put more and more devices, as well as more features and functionality, onto a single chip,” said Dave Welch, Infinera co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer. “We will continue to pioneer further integration as it is the most powerful technology today for delivering economic and technical benefits to service providers, enterprises, and ordinary consumers using the Internet.”

Infinera’s 1.6 Tb/s PIC includes more than 240 optical devices on a chip. It transmits 40 channels of optical data, with each channel operating at 40 Gb/s. The aggregate date rate of 1.6 Tb/s is equivalent to 160 of the line cards typically deployed in long-haul telecom networks today. An optical system based on a 1.6 Tb/s PIC would deliver substantial benefits to service providers in terms of density, space, power consumption, and cost-effectiveness.

Over the past twenty years, the data rate of optical semiconductors in commercial markets has increased at a relatively steady rate, doubling about every 2.2 years. Successful demonstration of the 1.6 Tb/s PIC, coming only one year after Infinera demonstrated the 400 Gb/s PIC, shows the potential of photonic integration to scale at a rate in keeping with internet growth. It would also deliver substantial cost benefits to service providers as the silicon industry has shown that unit costs fall dramatically with increasing integration.