- Keysight Technologies has announced the integration of GlobalFoundries’ (GF) Process Design Kit (PDK) into its ADS Photonic Designer (Advanced Design System).
- This software update allows engineers to design photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and simulate all electro-optical-electrical (EOE) links within a single development environment.
The development of silicon photonic components, widely used in data center infrastructure and artificial intelligence computing, requires verifying the interaction between electrical and optical signals. Traditional design methods typically require separate tools for circuit layout and system behavior simulation, increasing the risk of transfer errors and delaying the validation phase.
The introduction of this PDK aims to connect the photonic circuit design, based on GlobalFoundries’ manufacturing processes, to a comprehensive system simulator. Designers can evaluate the optical link behavior before sending masks to production. The software enables, in particular, the analysis of eye diagrams and the calculation of regulatory signal integrity metrics, such as TDECQ (Transmission Dispersion Eye Closure Quaternary).
Predictive Metrology and Industrial Applications
The solution’s architecture relies on physical models calibrated to GlobalFoundries’ industrial tolerances to ensure consistency between simulation results and post-manufacturing physical measurements.
For engineers developing transceiver modules or co-packaged optics (CPO) architectures, the workflow integrates algorithms from the Keysight FlexDCA oscilloscope software. This software continuity allows the same mathematical analysis tools to be used during the virtual design phase and during the characterization tests of real components in the laboratory.
According to Vikas Gupta, head of the silicon photonics product line at GlobalFoundries, this unified workflow addresses the need to link the fundamental performance of the components to that of the overall optical interconnect. Niels Faché, vice president of the Design Engineering Software division at Keysight, adds that this early detection of systemic constraints eliminates performance discrepancies observed after the silicon fabrication phase.
