Photonic Memory Moves Closer to Practical Deployment

Research builds on UW–Madison’s membership in AIM Photonics to advance practical photonic system design

The device was designed and tested by Akhilesh Jaiswal (left), a UW-Madison assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and PhD student Md Abdullah-Al Kaiser (right), along with colleagues in the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute.

One of the biggest obstacles to fully optical computing has been the lack of a fast, scalable photonic memory cell. This article shows how researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have taken a pivotal step by demonstrating a manufacturable photonic memory device that functions as an optical counterpart to traditional SRAM and addresses a long-standing gap in optical system design.

Their design, which delivers write speeds near 20 GHz and read speeds up to 50–60 GHz, was developed in consultation with experts from AIM Photonics and GlobalFoundries to ensure it could be fabricated using standard silicon photonics processes, making it compatible with existing foundries and ready for volume production.

“Our solution only uses those components that are currently available in a commercial foundry,” says Jaiswal. “We are not using exotic processes or materials. This design could be fabricated in volume today."

Read the full article from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.