WAVE PHOTONICS LTD

At a glance

Company profile

WAVE PHOTONICS LTD is a Cambridge-based integrated photonics company offering photonics IP, products and services, with a mission to help unlock valuable photonics markets by using design technology to enable new applications and turn a fragmented productisation cycle into a more integrated and rapid process analogous to modern semiconductor development. The company was founded by three people who believed statistics and optimisation could improve integrated photonics, and it has since built and validated a core computational photonics design technology intended to reduce photonic product development time. Its team brings backgrounds spanning integrated photonics, high-performance computing, quantum photonics, statistics, optimisation, technology consulting and semiconductors. WAVE PHOTONICS LTD is located in Cambridge, UK, is backed by investors in the US and Europe, and contributes to multiple projects funded by Innovate UK. Its investors include Berkeley Skydeck, Plug and Play, the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Redstone, QAI Ventures’ Quantum Fund, Kyra Ventures, Deep Tech Labs and several angel investors. At the core of its patent-pending innovation is a design platform that combines fabrication process characterisation, modelling, photonic simulation and inverse design to develop process design kits, or PDKs, across different materials and wavelengths. The platform is intended to enable rapid, fabrication-tolerant photonic integrated circuit development for any wavelength or platform and supports applications including Co-Packaged Optics, transceivers and quantum technologies. Its PDKs have demonstrated lower loss and reduced sensitivity to process variations compared with conventional designs, and the designs have been validated and are undergoing testing in a high-volume commercial fab. The company has developed a PDK focused on quantum applications that it describes as the world’s most expansive, illustrating the scalability and speed of its approach. WAVE PHOTONICS LTD works with Cadence, Siemens and Luceda Photonics so that its PDKs are compatible with leading electronic design automation tools, and it has also built integrations that make its PDKs accessible with a growing range of EDA tools. Integrated photonics is used across energy-efficient communications for AI and data centres, wearable healthcare sensors, rapid diagnostic tools, optical tensor processors, on-chip lidar and quantum technologies, which are among the application areas addressed by the company’s design technology, products and services. The company seeks foundry and design partners for datacom, Co-Packaged Optics and quantum applications, as well as collaborations with organisations working on transceivers, new integrated photonics technologies, new integrated photonic processes and platforms, and quantum-photonics applications such as trapped ions and quantum key distribution. As part of its expansion in Co-Packaged Optics, WAVE PHOTONICS LTD acquired the intangible assets of Phoelex Ltd, including key IP for energy-efficient modulator designs, driving and control circuits, and equaliser circuit designs.

Exhibits

WAVE PHOTONICS LTD supplies a range of products and services intended to enrich and accelerate the PIC development process, including custom PDK development, a PDK Management Platform, PIC design services, packaging and Assembly Design Kits, automated measurement, and component libraries and Co-Packaged Optics IP. For custom PDK development, its proprietary design technology can produce a custom or application-specific PDK in weeks for a target material or wavelength, supporting customers working in datacoms, sensing and quantum technologies. Its fabrication-tolerant PDK portfolio covers different wavelengths, material processes and applications, with telecom-band PDKs for telecommunications, data communication and Co-Packaged Optics, visible-wavelength PDKs for quantum and AR/VR applications, and long-wavelength PDKs for gas sensing. PDKs have been designed for Silicon-on-Insulator, Silicon Nitride and Thin-Film Lithium Niobate, and PDK development support is available for new materials including Aluminium Nitride, Gallium Arsenide and Silicon Carbide. The Silicon Nitride for Quantum, or SiNQ, PDK spans 33 wavelengths from 493 nm to 1550 nm for PICs used with trapped ions, atoms, NV centres, quantum dots and other systems and emitters, and the SiNQ process is available from CORNERSTONE. Its telecoms PDKs cover O-band, E-band, S-band, C-band, L-band and U-band and more than 500 components, include fabrication-aware S-parameters, are available through CORNERSTONE processes, and can be paired with QPICPAC packaging for a path to a fully packaged device. For applications with exacting requirements, including high-bandwidth communication for AI and datacentres, gas sensing and satellite communication, WAVE PHOTONICS LTD supports dedicated wafer-run PDK development on materials such as thin-film lithium niobate, aluminium oxide and gallium arsenide, and its platform can generate a PDK within weeks after the required process data are available. The PDK development offering is designed to reduce design iterations and product development time while improving yield, and fabrication-tolerant design has shown a 50% reduction in component-level performance variation. Measurements using its design technology showed lower optical loss and lower performance variation than conventional inverse design, with reported results including 2x lower optical loss, 2x lower performance variation and achievement of the target ratio on the first fabrication run. Its production-ready component library includes crossings, bends, tapers, MMIs, mode converters, dual-mode mode multiplexers, grating couplers and single-mode, mixed-wavelength and wide-waveguide variants. MMI options include 1x2 splitters with 50:50, 60:40, 70:30, 80:20, 90:10 and 67:33 ratios or other ratios on request, together with 1x3, 1x4, 2x2, 2x4 and 4x4 configurations, including a 90° optical hybrid. Additional components available on request include inverse tapers, edge couplers, polarisation splitter rotators, focusing grating couplers and polarisation rotators, while vertical layer couplers and advanced edge couplers are listed as coming soon. For foundries, WAVE PHOTONICS LTD combines rapid PDK development with PDK management, including designs across visible and telecom wavelengths, fabrication-tolerant approaches that reduce performance variation, and rapid redesign intended to help dedicated-run customers reach volume with fewer iterations. Its foundry PDKs can include S-parameters, EDA integrations and automatic compatibility with ADKs, packaging, fibre attach and other processes. The PDK Management Platform lets foundries digitally manage PDKs and streamline the fabless-customer experience by making foundry PDKs work with an expanding range of EDA tools and by providing ready-calculated S-parameters for circuit simulation. Foundry-oriented platform functions include built-in compatibility with EDA partners, automated S-parameter generation, black-box IP management with NDA tracking, and automated PDK documentation and version control to reduce mix-ups and accidental cross-use of conflicting PDKs. The broader PDK Management Platform provides automatic EDA compatibility, black-box IP protection, PDK version control and hosted PDK access. Foundry PDKs can be pre-packaged for leading design platforms without manual setup or labelling, allowing users to download a PDK, integrate it into their selected EDA tool and begin designing. The platform generates S-parameters with WAVE PHOTONICS LTD’s built-in simulation engine, and fabrication-aware S-parameters can incorporate fabrication imperfections so users can run full circuit simulations before chip tapeout. For IP protection and reuse, the platform can obscure sensitive designs with black boxes while retaining visual circuit inspection, support secure design reuse and licensing, and use NDA tracking so PDKs are shared only with approved partners. PDK documentation can be generated automatically so users have searchable and current documentation, while PDK and tool versions are tracked to help prevent incompatible versions from being mixed. For commercial foundries, the platform is intended to widen customer adoption through multiple EDA integrations, shorten design and tapeout time, lower support effort and improve security through controlled IP and data access. For research and academic foundries, it is positioned to organise and track designs for group productivity, provide a streamlined route for exposing fabrication processes to industry, facilitate collaboration with universities and other organisations, and support IP reuse for licensing and exploitation. WAVE PHOTONICS LTD supports CORNERSTONE, a UK-based open-source silicon photonics rapid-prototyping foundry, with a platform through which users can access CORNERSTONE PDKs integrated into major EDA tools and use ready-calculated S-parameters for circuit simulation. The CORNERSTONE deployment packages PDKs for tools including GDSFactory, IPKISS, L-Edit and Virtuoso, with support for Synopsys and Latitude Design Systems listed as coming soon, and lets users download PDKs and documentation while tracking each version with release history and metadata. Its PDK-management workflow uses a template to upload PDKs in a compatible format, processes them by running S-parameters, generating documentation and packaging for EDA tools, hosts new versions with NDA tracking and fine-grained access control, and continuously processes newly uploaded PDKs for foundry users. For chip designers, WAVE PHOTONICS LTD provides services across the development process from component design through chip testing, with the stated aim of shortening PIC development time and improving device performance. Its PIC Design Services provide custom PIC architecture development and chip design and can manage the fabrication and characterisation process. For new material platforms or non-standard wavelengths, the product-development service can help design photonic components and PICs and can provide layout scripts and training so a customer team can perform future design updates in-house. The development service covers discovery work such as innovation strategy or a PIC business case, requirements gathering, costing and economic modelling, supply-chain appraisal and management, and partner selection, followed by architecture, algorithms, specification, prototyping and technology or IP selection. Design and implementation can include PIC architecture and specification, system design involving possible electronics and software algorithms, concurrent circuit design, system modelling, simulation and optimisation, followed by chip tapeout, validation, characterisation, qualification, and fab and OSAT selection and support. Ongoing support can coordinate design, manufacturing and foundry partners and act as a gate keeper for design verification, optimisation, certification, upgrades and related activities. Packaging offerings include reusable PIC packaging templates and Assembly Design Kits that are designed to minimise custom-development requirements and costs, and the QPICPAC offering can provide packaged photonic chips in as little as one month. Packaging can provide mechanical chip protection, built-in temperature control and consistent optical coupling, while designing chips without packaging in mind can make the desired package expensive or impractical. Standardised packaging templates are intended to save chip-design time, offer a lower-cost alternative to custom packaging, make packaged-chip behaviour more predictable through repeatability, and speed packaging by allowing packaging companies to use standard elements that may already be in stock. QPICPAC is a turnkey packaging solution for prototyping and R&D developed through an Innovate UK project by WAVE PHOTONICS LTD, SENKO Advanced Components and Alter Technology for Quantum Photonic Integrated Circuits, using design templates and components to reduce custom-development requirements and costs for quantum-technology companies while also supporting other prototyping applications. For the PHIX Characterization Package, WAVE PHOTONICS LTD provides packaging templates for the CORNERSTONE SOI 220 nm passive and active fabrication processes, with templates available for its own PDK of optimised components and for CORNERSTONE open-source PDKs; PHIX supports both chip prototypes and high-volume manufacturing. Its packaging workflow starts with chip design using a packaging template, collects information such as chip quantity and fabrication run, screens the design for packaging suitability, orders consumables at tapeout and payment, sends completed chips directly to the packaging company, and returns packaged chips. The Automated Measurement Service provides high-throughput, parallelised testing and validation for individual PIC dies or wafers up to 8 inches. The measurement service is compatible with QPICPAC so customers can select the best devices for packaging, can measure from a single chip to a whole wafer, and can gather large quantities of data for repeatability tests and statistical analysis. Its automated setup combines measurement equipment with in-house software to minimise human error and improve accuracy, and it supports wafer diameters of 100 mm, 150 mm and 200 mm. The setup can be modified for different designs and can run multiple measurements in parallel for faster results, while WAVE PHOTONICS LTD can process measurement data into a performance and statistics summary. The measurement workflow includes design-for-test layout for the prober or fibre array, submission of measurement information such as wafer coordinates and wavelengths, receipt of the chips or wafer, in-house measurement, data processing, and return of the devices with measurement results. Its component libraries and Co-Packaged Optics IP include ready-to-use photonic components, energy-efficient modulator designs, driving and control circuits and equaliser circuit designs, and the IP is available for licensing or other forms of access. WAVE PHOTONICS LTD also offers pre-designed fabrication-tolerant PDKs on several fabrication processes to speed PIC design cycles, alongside the modulator, driving, control and equaliser IP obtained through the Phoelex Ltd asset acquisition. The core computational technology begins with measured foundry process data, which are used to fit a fabrication model and support first-time-right design, fabrication-tolerant components for improved yield and rapid component re-adaptation when processes change. Its fabrication model captures the statistical distribution of possible photonic-device shapes produced by the fabrication process and combines validated physics and data-driven modelling with optimisation against measured process variation. Cloud-scalable infrastructure can run thousands of simulations in parallel to automate the design of fabrication-tolerant building-block libraries, enabling rapid component design for new processes or wavelengths and expansive libraries for each supported process or wavelength. Fabrication-aware scattering parameters supplied with its PDKs support full circuit simulation before tapeout so designers can estimate expected component performance on a fabrication process, predict circuit behaviour before fabrication and assess component suitability. Its EDA integrations make PDKs accessible in multiple EDA tools, provide a streamlined route for using pre-designed component libraries in existing design environments, and are intended to retain the features offered by those EDA tools as the supported tool range expands. For CORNERSTONE MPW runs, WAVE PHOTONICS LTD lists access to all of its CORNERSTONE PDKs for £5,000 and describes an example path from idea to a packaged SOI passive device in 6 months for £14,550, using a 5.5 mm x 4.9 mm design area and single-mode fibre-array packaging for 1 unit, with £5,000 for PDK access, £6,250 for the MPW run and £3,300 for QPICPAC packaging. Access to its black-box component designs follows a workflow in which the chip is designed with the black boxes, payment and a swap-out date are agreed, WAVE PHOTONICS LTD replaces the black boxes with the real designs and sends the design to the selected fab, and the chip is then taped out with the real component designs.

Capabilities and products

• Custom photonic integrated circuit PDK development
• Supply of SiNQ PDKs for quantum photonic integrated circuits
• Supply of Telecoms-band photonic PDKs
• PDK development for SOI material platforms
• PDK development for SiN material platforms
• PDK development for TFLN material platforms
• PDK development support for new AlN materials
• PDK development support for new GaAs materials
• PDK development support for new SiC materials
• Photonic PDK management platform
• Automated S-parameter generation for PDK circuit simulation
• PDK integration with EDA tools
• PDK IP black-box protection
• PDK NDA access management
• Custom PIC architecture development
• Photonic integrated circuit chip design
• PIC fabrication management
• PIC characterisation management
• PIC layout script provision
• PIC design training
• PIC packaging design templates
• PIC packaging Assembly Design Kits (ADKs)
• QPICPAC photonic chip packaging solution
• PHIX photonic chip packaging templates
• Automated photonic die and wafer measurement services up to 8 inches
• PIC yield and performance variability analysis
• Photonic chip known good die (KGD) selection
• Photonic waveguide bend component IP
• Photonic waveguide taper component IP
• Photonic waveguide crossing component IP
• Photonic multimode interference (MMI) component IP
• Photonic mode converter component IP
• Photonic mode multiplexer component IP
• Photonic grating coupler component IP
• Licensing of energy-efficient optical modulator design IP for CPO
• Licensing of CPO driving and control circuit IP
• Licensing of CPO equaliser circuit design IP

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