Bridging Designers and Foundries: Managing Variability in PICs

Process variability has a significant impact on Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs). Taking this variability into account during the design and validation stages is crucial to ensure that PICs meet system performance specifications.

In this talk, Fiers dives into methodologies that leverage advanced modeling and circuit analysis to address this challenge. By incorporating variability-aware models into the design process, designers can perform PIC architecture trade-offs, conduct what-if analyses, predict yield, and verify designs.

This presentation outlines a vision for variability-aware PIC design, providing actionable insights and strategies for integrating these models into photonic Process Design Kits (PDKs). Fiers also highlights how Luceda Photonics collaborates with ecosystem partners to enable the development of resilient and high-performance photonic systems.

About the presenter
Martin Fiers, Ph.D., received his doctorate in integrated photonics from Ghent University (UGent), Belgium, in 2013, with a research focus on photonic circuit modeling and machine learning and AI.

During his doctorate, Fiers investigated novel photonic hardware architectures for all-optical computing, inspired by machine learning. At the same time, he developed Caphe, an integrated photonic circuit simulator.

After completing his degree, Fiers spent a year in business development to prepare for the launch of the startup Luceda Photonics. He co-founded Luceda Photonics in 2014 and has been with the company ever since, currently serving as product manager responsible for modeling and circuit analysis.