Editors: Lukas Chrostowski and Michael Hochsberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 418 pages
Book Review by: Venkat Subramaniam
This book, written primarily for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for academic and industrial researchers, has three basic purposes. They are to help you:
- Acquire practical understanding and experience in designing complex integrated systems-on-a-chip.
- Cut design time and development cost with step-by-step tutorials and illustrated source code fragments that guide you through every step of the design process, and provides you a practical framework for developing and refining key skills.
- Get industry-ready expertise with guidance in this book on how a process design kit (PDK) is constructed and how to use the best types of PDKs currently available.
The editors write that this text enables students and other readers to understand the design process for building even very complex photonic systems, and with additional resources available online (see link below) guides academic and industrial researchers involved in the development and manufacture of new silicon photonics systems.
Twenty-four specialists in silicon photonics design – 16 from Canada, six from the United States, and two from Singapore – authored the 13 chapters of this book, that we name below to give you an overview of what you will find or will not find in it.
- Part I. Introduction
- Fabless silicon photonics
- Modeling and design approaches
- Part II. Passive Components
- Optical materials and waveguides
- Fundamental building blocks
- Optical I/O
- Part III. Active Components
- Modulators
- Detectors
- Lasers
- Part IV. System Design
- Photonic circuit modeling
- Tools and techniques
- Fabrication
- Testing and packaging
- Silicon photonic system example
In addition to the above content in the print book, additional information and resources are available online – just go to www.cambridge.org/chrostowski.
In the words of the two editors of this book, their intention in writing it is to provide “a practical, examples-driven introduction to the practice of designing practical devices and systems.” They decided to use the minimal amount of device physics, and “to focus primarily on the practical design considerations associated with using state-of-the art silicon photonic foundry processes to build real, useful, systems-on-a-chip.”
A series of tutorials using the tools they have in their own labs is the method the editors and other authors have used in this text to guide students and other readers. They point out that their tools are not perfect, nor are they the best for any given application. Where they have taken alternative approaches, they explain why and provide some context.
The software packages they have used are available to educational institutions for complimentary access by their vendors.
Each chapter of this book begins with introductory paragraphs on the subject indicated in the chapter title, then discussions of topics, and ample illustrations with captions, and in the end, a list of References for further exploration and investigation. .
This is a practical book that even laymen (those unfamiliar with silicon photonics) will understand. It contains all the essential instructions (and more) in designing, laying out, simulating, fabricating, and testing silicon photonics chips.
If laymen can understand the steps laid out in making such devices, imagine how much easier and useful it can be for those who have some familiarity of these technological devices and what they do. For anyone interested in silicon-based optical circuits, this is the book to read. .
Editors:
Lukas Chrostowski is Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is the Director of the NSERC-CREATE Silicon Electronic-Photonic Integrated Circuits (Si-EPIC) training program, has been teaching silicon photonics courses and workshops since 2008, and was awarded the Killiam Teaching Prize in 2014.
Michael Hochsberg is Director of Architecture and Strategy for Coriant Advanced Technology Group based in Manhattan, New York, where he holds a visiting appointment at Columbia University. He has held faculty positions at the University of Washington, University of Delaware, and National University of Singapore.
He was Director the OpSIS foundry-access service. He has co-founded several startups, including Simulant and Luxtera, and received a Presidential Early-Career Award in Science and Engineering in 2009.
