Manufacturing Progress for InP-based 500 Gb / s Photonic Integrated Circuits

The status and progress of InP photonic integration is reviewed. Infinera has previously reported on the manufacturing of 100 Gb/s InP-based large-scale photonic integrated circuits. These PICs, based on amplitude modulation and with more than 50 discrete functions per chip, have now reached a high level of manufacturing maturity, and have furthermore redefined reliability standards for InP components, having achieved more than 900 million field hours without a single failure as of this writing. In this paper, we will describe manufacturing status for the 3rd generation of Infinera’s LS-PICs, which feature 500 Gb/s capacity using phase modulation on the transmitter chip, and coherent detection on the receiver chip, and which now form the heart of Infinera’s 500G DTN-X transport system, released in mid-2012. These new PICs have an order-of-magnitude increase in chip complexity, and a commensurate increase in fabrication complexity from III-V epitaxy through wafer fab, die fab, and test. The architecture and performance of Infinera’s PICs will be described, along with relevant yield and production metrics that demonstrate this platform is at once manufacturable and scalable.