The Caladan consortium
There are 9 key partners for the Caladan consortium
IMEC
IMEC is the world leading R&D and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, and Europe’s largest independent non-profit research centre on nano-electronics. With its staff of more than 3,500 people including industrial residents, guest researchers and Ph.D. students, IMEC focuses on those domains where it sees a growth potential and where it can differentiate itself from other research institutes. A cornerstone of IMEC’s strategy is to create innovative leverage between its research domains using its extensive infrastructure and expertise. IMEC works on the following research domains: technology for future chips and systems, energy, electronics for healthcare and life sciences, sustainable wireless communication, imaging and future 3D visualization, and sensor systems for industrial applications. The competences of IMEC's research groups are gathered and steered by a number of strategic programs, covering lithography, logic devices, memory devices, interconnect, optical I/O, and 3D system integration. At its campus in Leuven (Belgium), IMEC has world-class research facilities. IMEC’s 200 mm and 300 mm cleanrooms run a in semi-industrial operation mode, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. In the 300 mm cleanroom, IMEC performs research and development on process technology for memory and logic ICs – focusing on sub-10 nm technologies nodes. IMEC’s research bridges the gap between fundamental research at universities and technology development in industry.
Three IMEC groups are involved in Caladan:
- IDLab (Ghent University):
The IDLab-Design group is currently one of the leading groups in the research and development of high-speed, low-power transmitter and receiver integrated circuits for next generation transport, metro, access, datacenter and radio-over-fiber networks with extensive experience on high-speed design in CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS for different optical devices. In 2014, the Design group was awarded the 3rd biannual Greentouch 1000x award together with Bell Labs and Orange Labs and in 2016, one of our PhDs received the "Nokia Belgium Scientific Award", awarded by the FWO/FNRS in recognition of the best PhD thesis in Belgium in the field of information and communication technology. At this moment, the Design group is one of the few groups worldwide that developed transmitter/receiver chips with serial rates up to 100Gb/s, demonstrated end-to-end with realtime BER measurements, underlying our design and test capabilities. This technology has been commercialized under the form of the BiFAST (bifast.io) spin-off company. - Silicon Photonic group (Leuven):
Over the past 15 years, imec has matured its silicon photonics platform using its semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure to support industrial prototyping through its multi-project wafers offer (offered by Europractice since 2009) or through bilateral collaborations. Over the past three years imec, has taped out a total of nine different masksets and processed a total of more than 300 wafers. - Photonics Research Group (Ghent University):
The PRG team at imec-Ghent is specialized in photonic integration and more specifically in silicon photonics. With 9 professors (of which 5 current or former ERC grantees) and about 90 researchers the group works on new device concepts and technologies, new system architectures and design methodologies, new application domains and proof-of-concept demonstrations, all building on the capabilities of silicon photonics. This encompasses not only telecom and datacom applications at 1.3 and 1.55 micrometer but also sensor and biomedical applications spanning a wavelength range from the visible to the mid infrared. With respect to technology the group builds on the silicon and silicon nitride photonics platforms developed by imec (iSiPP50G, BioPIX) as well as on heterogeneous integration approaches, e.g. based on transfer printing, in its own clean room facilities at Ghent University. The group has an involvement in various European projects, including for example FP7-SWIFT, H2020-PIXAPP and FP7-Plat4M. In 2010, a spin-off using silicon photonics technology for FTTH transceivers was created from the group (Caliopa, now a part of Huawei). In 2014 a second spin-off was created, Luceda, commercializing photonic design tools initiated from work within the Photonics Research Group. In 2016, a spin-off on a silicon photonics based implantable glucose sensor was founded (Indigo Medical). Two more spin-off initiatives based on silicon photonics technology are in preparation.
Weblink: https://www.imec-int.com/en/home
Tyndall
The Tyndall National Institute (Tyndall) at University College Cork is Ireland’s largest ICT research centre, with more than 460 researchers, >130 postgraduate students and support staff. The strengths of the institute at the present time lie in the area of photonics, electronics and integrated circuit design, materials and nanotechnologies and their applications in communications, healthcare, energy and the environment. The centre has strategic research projects funded through national and industry sources, addressing all aspects of photonic systems starting from the basic materials, over photonic devices and assembly up to full system demonstrations. Facilities at the centre are extensive, including epitaxial growth, device fabrication, photonic/electronic packaging and advanced system characterisation. Tyndall has an annual income of €30M, has generated 9 spin-off companies and has over 200 industry partners and customers worldwide.
Tyndall is the host of the Irish Photonic Integration Centre (IPIC). The Irish Photonic Integration Centre (IPIC), which was launched in 2014 is a new centre funded by Irish Government through Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). The Centre brings together more than 100 researchers from three other Irish higher level institutes - Cork Institute of Technology (CIT), University College Cork (UCC) and Dublin City University (DCU) - all to develop new light enabled technologies. IPIC also collaborates with 20 industry partners, including multinationals, indigenous SMEs and high tech start-ups. Targeting the ICT and medical devices sectors, IPIC is working with 20 industry partners to develop the next generation of highly –compact and miniaturized photonic technologies. This will require major advance in photonic integration to enable much higher levels of functionality whilst simultaneously reducing the cost and size of devices. IPIC is developing solutions to this challenge that are ‘bringing photonics to life’ by opening new ways to connect people and their environments through the application of light. The Centre’s work is focused on:
- Enabling continued growth of the internet through faster more energy efficient devices for information transport, storage and display.
- Delivering smart medical devices for improved diagnosis and treatment of disease through the integration of photonics onto surgical instruments and into compact high sensitivity analysis equipment.
- Developing systems for food and environment monitoring
- Tyndall has an impressive track record in EU funding, having participated in over 90 EU FP7 projects with a total worth of €299M, and acting in 27 projects as coordinator.
Weblink: https://www.tyndall.ie/
IHP
IHP is a public funded German research institute located in Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany. With 300 employees and around 40Million EURO annual turn-over for operation cost and invest, IHP is dedicated to innovative solutions for wireless and broadband communication systems by close co-work of competent teams working in the fields of material research, process technology, circuit design, and systems.
IHP owns a 1000 square meter; class-1 clean room and pilot line with production-grade tool-set for 0.25μm and 0.13μm technologies and offers its CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS technologies for Multi Project Wafer service and medium-volume prototyping to external customers, via EUROPRACTICE. About half of the institute’s staff is engaged with technology including the 24/7 clean room operation. IHP, while being a public research institution, also makes its semiconductor technology available to outside customers in the form of several distinct product lines, with industry-standard stability. Its multi-project wafer run business is particularly suited for the kind of microwave and millimeter wave systems with low to medium scale market volumes.
IHP’s SiGe BiCMOS technologies are tailored for high-performance, moderate-cost applications featuring up to 200 GHz fmax in the 0.25μm node and >300 GHz fmax in the 0.13μm node. Regarding the history of the development of SiGe HBTs, IHP helped to get the introduction of C into SiGe base accepted. Pioneering results were presented at the IEDM conferences 1997-99 including the first integration of SiGe:C HBT in 0.25μm CMOS technology. IHP’s activities in this field intent to combine best high-frequency performance and cost-effective HBT integration in CMOS technologies. In this direction, IHP demonstrated improved HBT concepts at the IEDM conferences from 2001-2010 achieving best-in-class values. Finally, IHP has demonstrated half terahertz (500 GHz) fmax values HBT transistor, which still holds the world record. Besides the leading position on SiGe HBTs, IHP has been putting enormous effort on BiCMOS embedded RF-MEMS and silicon-photonics modules in last 10 years. Each area have been supported by both EU and German government by research and industrial based projects.
X-Celeprint
X-Celeprint delivers the most cost-effective and scalable manufacturing technology for integrating microscale devices such as lasers, LEDs or integrated circuits onto non-native substrates. A wholly owned subsidiary of XTRION N.V., X-Celeprint works globally with multiple corporations to adapt its micro-transfer printing technology for their specific applications. X-Celeprint is headquartered in Cork, Ireland, with facilities within the Tyndall National Institute.
Weblink: https://x-celeprint.com/
Innolume
Since 2004 Innolume, is an SME with its headquarters in Dortmund (Germany) and a leading innovator of Semiconductor Quantum Dot Technology, offering epitaxial wafers, laser chips and fibre coupled modules with unique properties mainly for medical, telecom and datacom applications. Innolume has premises with fully integrated GaAs factory in Dortmund. Innolume has accumulated strong experience in development, fabrication and characterization of all types of optoelectronic devices based on GaAs quantum dots and quantum wells.
Weblink: https://www.innolume.com/
Mellanox
Mellanox Technologies (MLNX) is a supplier of end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect solutions and services for servers and storage. Mellanox offers a broad portfolio of interconnect products: adapters, switches, software, cables and silicon for a range of markets including computing, enterprise Data centers, Web 2.0, Cloud, Storage and financial services. Mellanox’ top notch equipment is preferred among HPC cluster managers: Mellanox connects 39% of TOP500 systems (192 systems) as well as all of 25G, 40G and 100G Eth. systems in the TOP500 list. Mellanox accelerates 2 of the TOP5 supercomputers. The company has over 2900 employees globally and 2/3 of its global workforce is hosted in Israel, with a significant portion (~1500) conducting research and development. Mellanox has several R&D centers in Europe with main HQ being in Denmark, UK, Czech Republic and Sweden.
Mellanox offers a broad portfolio of optical interconnect products (active optical cables, transceivers and mid-board optical modules) including multi-mode and single-mode solutions for various deployment scenarios in different datacenter tiers. Mellanox is strongly involved in photonics research activities aiming at promising transceiver technologies for beyond 400 Gb/s interconnects (e.g. silicon photonic, plasmonics, high-speed VCSELs etc.)
Mellanox is a vertically integrated company developing in-house a broad range of network interface cards (NICs), switches, network processors as well as the associated management software. Mellanox has a breadth of research activities in the fields of High Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence, storage, Network Function Virtualization, advanced network acceleration technologies (RDMA, DPDK), switch programmability, Big Data, virtualization and cloud. Mellanox has pioneered the development of an end-to-end commercial solution for 200 Gb/s, combining its photonics and systems developments in a complete offering.
Weblink: http://www.mellanox.com/
Xilinx
Xilinx is an American technology company, primarily a supplier of programmable logic devices. It is known for inventing the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and is the first semiconductor company with a fables manufacturing model. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1984, the company is headquartered in San Jose, California; and has significant presence in Europe.
Major FPGA product families include Virtex (high-performance), Kintex (mid-range) and Artix (low-cost) and the retired Spartan (low-cost) series. Major computer software includes Xilinx ISE and Vivado Design Suite.
Xilinx is one of the first semiconductor companies to introduce products based on so-called 3D integration, i.e. using CMOS interposers to heterogeneously integrate dies with different functions in a single package.
Xilinx employees 3000 people worldwide. The European Headquarters is located at Dublin, Ireland where 250 employees are based. Xilinx is a Nasdaq floated company with a Market Cap of approximately $17Billion.
Weblink: https://www.xilinx.com/
ficonTEC
ficonTEC provides automated micro-assembly and testing solutions for the photonics industry. These solutions are cutting-edge, and are independent of the device material and of the specific application the device is targeting. Additionally, our modular system architecture is scalable from early device development environments, over new product introduction (NPI) and all the way up to high-volume requirements.
A globally installed base of over 500 systems is already serving integrated photonics applications in telecom and datacom sectors, in sensing applications ranging from biomedical to automotive, in high-power diode laser assembly, and much more.
Not resting with the status quo, ficonTEC is also actively involved in several internationally-supported initiatives that promote access to integrated photonics technology through the transition to high-volume manufacturing processes via advanced automation for both singulated dies as well as wafer-level approaches
Weblink: https://www.ficontec.com/
EVG
EVG is a world leader in wafer-processing solutions for semiconductor, MEMS and nanotechnology applications. Through close collaboration with its global customers, the company implements its flexible manufacturing model to develop reliable, high-quality, low-cost-of-ownership systems that are easily integrated into customers' fab lines. Key products include wafer bonding, lithography/nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and metrology equipment, as well as photoresist coaters, cleaners and inspection systems. In addition to its dominant share of the market for wafer bonders, EVG holds a leading position in nanoimprint lithography and lithography for advanced packaging and MEMS. In the Austrian Headquarters more than 100 scientists and engineers are developing processes, tools and software. The equipment is produced and tested in-house before installation at customer site. Further EVG operates a 1200m2 cleanroom class 100 for process development and demonstration of its own tools. EVG supports its partners in process development and equipment with a focus on 6 market segments: MEMS, 3D integration and Advanced Packaging, Compound Semiconductors, SOI and engineered Substrates and since 2016 Bio technology and medical applications. EVG designs, manufactures and installs equipment tailored for targeted processes. The major expertise of EVG is high volume manufacturing tools meeting the respective cost of ownership targets of the different market segments
Weblink: https://www.evgroup.com/