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MASSTART

Cheap, high-speed photonic components are required to cope with today’s boom in data communications, especially optical communications at Data Centers. The MASSTART project’s aim is to transform holistically the assembly and characterization of highspeed photonic transceivers, thereby drastically reducing their mass production cost. This will guarantee European leadership in the photonics industry for the next decade.


Published on 23 April 2021



MASSTART : Mass Manufacturing of Transceivers for Terabit/s era

Cheap, high-speed photonic components are required to cope with today’s boom in data communications, especially optical communications at Data Centers. The MASSTART project’s aim is to transform holistically the assembly and characterization of highspeed photonic transceivers, thereby drastically reducing their mass production cost. This will guarantee European leadership in the photonics industry for the next decade.

 

Starting date : Jan 2019 > Dec 2021

Lifetime: 36 months


Program in support :



 

Status of project : in progress

CEA-Leti's contact :                             

> Stéphane Bernabé

> Laurent Fulbert       

                              

 

Project Coordinator:

Fraunhofer Gesellshaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung e.V. (DE)


Partners:  

  • DE: Adva Optical Networking SE
  • Ficontec Service GmbH
  • Fraunhofer Gesellshaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung e.V
  • Tektronix GmbH
  • FR: CEA-Leti
  • GR: Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis
  • IL: Dustphotonics Ltd Mellanox Technologies Ltd
  • NL: Bright Photonics BV


​

Investment: € 7.4 mi

EC Contribution: € 5.9 mi



Website


Stakes

CEA-Leti’s main objectives within the MASSART project are to:
  • Provide access to its Photonic Device Library (Design Kit) for other project partners in order tobuild PICs using CEA-Leti’s building blocks
  • Control the resulting designs and proceed with lithographic mask procurement
  • Perform wafer manufacturing of SOI photonic circuits and on-wafer characterization using state-of-the-art testing equipment
  • Participate in common project activity such as specifications, standardization, dissemination and technical discussions on design and assembly.




OBJECTIVES


  • The MASSTART project is focusing on holistically transforming the assembly and characterization of high-speed photonic transceivers to reduce their mass production cost to €1/Gb/s or even less. 

  • This is being achieved by using enhanced scalable methods, specifically i) glass interface-based laser/Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) and fiber/PIC coupling and leveraging glass waveguide technology to obtain spot size and pitch converters for dramatically increasing optical I/O density, while facilitating automated assembly processes, ii) 3D packaging (TSV) enabling backside connection of high-speed PIC to an Si carrier, iii) a new generation of flip chip bonders with enhanced placement in a full assembly line compatible with Industry 4.0 to guarantee a sixfold improvement in throughput and, iv) wafer-level evaluation of assembled circuits using novel tools to reduce characterization time by a factor of 10 (down to 1 minute per device). 

  • This process flow will be assessed through fabrication and characterization of four different demonstrators, which will address the medium term requirements of next generation transceivers required by Data Center operators for inter- and intra-Data Center applications. The demonstrators are: i) a 4-channel, PSM4 module in QSFP-DD format with a 400G aggregate bit rate, ii)a n 8-channel, WDM module in a QSFP-DD format with a 800G aggregate bit rate, iii) a 16-channel, WDM on-board module delivering a 1.6Tb/s aggregate line rate and, iv) a 600Gb/s, tunable, single-wavelength, coherent transceiver based on the DP-64QAM modulation format on a 64Gbaud/s line rate. 
  • Finally, MASSTART is aiming for close interaction with international bodies to ensure developed technology compliance and standardization with other proposed packaging