China releases silicon photonics all-optical processing platform, which allows users to travel at high speed without leaving the interchange

2025/07/25

TechNews Technology News
July 10, 2025
Author Su Ziyun

A Chinese team has developed the world's first programmable, single-chip all-optical signal processing platform (AOSP), breaking the limitation of traditional silicon photonics that requires "optical-electrical-optical (O-E-O)" conversion, allowing data to maintain the state of optical signals from input to output, and moving towards a new high-speed computing architecture that does not require switches.

A team composed of institutions such as Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Shanghai Jiaotong University in China claimed that the new platform effectively reduced transmission loss to only 0.17 dB/cm, and achieved high-speed logic operations under four-wave mixing (FWM), with an operating rate of up to 100 Gbit/s. The chip integrating 136 components can process 8 channels of signals at the same time, with a total processing capacity of 800 Gbit/s, and supports multiple modulation formats such as Differential Phase Shift Keying and on-off keying, laying the technical foundation for the realization of all-optical networks. The research was also published in the journal "Frontiers of Optoelectronics".

All-Optical Signal Processing (AOSP) is a technology that completes signal processing, logic operations and regeneration completely in the optical field. In contrast, the current mainstream silicon photonics technology still relies on the "O-E-O (optical-electrical-optical)" architecture, which requires data to be converted from optical signals to electrical signals, processed by switches, and then converted back to optical signals for transmission, resulting in additional energy consumption and delays, just like being forced to get off the interchange and then get back on the highway when driving on the highway.

AOSP does not require the intervention of additional network communication equipment and can complete data operations at extremely fast speeds and extremely low energy consumption. This makes it particularly suitable for high-bandwidth, high-concurrency (high traffic in a short period of time) applications, such as AI training, quantum communications, and CMOS integrated systems.

Although AOSP sounds like a dream blueprint for future technology, why has it not been widely used yet? The key lies in material limitations. Silicon is prone to two-photon absorption (TPA) and free-carrier absorption (FCA) under high-intensity light, resulting in signal attenuation and interference. In addition, although the high refractive index of silicon itself helps to conduct light waves in a concentrated manner, it also causes scattering loss and optical interference due to the large difference in refractive index, further increasing the difficulty of design and control.

To overcome these technical obstacles, the research team developed this AOSP platform, integrating optical filtering, logic operations, and signal regeneration functions on silicon-based chips, and successfully solved the signal attenuation and interference problems by optimizing waveguide design and introducing high-Q microresonators.

As silicon photonics processes continue to evolve, optical components on chips are moving from supporting roles to leading roles. In the future, if logic operations, data routing, and even memory access can be completed in the optical domain, whether switches are still necessary components will inevitably become the focus of industry discussion.

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