By Mark LaPedus
Two foundry vendors, Tower Semiconductor and UMC, have separately expanded their respective efforts in the emerging silicon photonics market.
In one announcement, Isreal’s Tower Semiconductor is expanding the production of its silicon photonics technology in Japan. Tower is also expanding its silicon germanium (SiGe) and advanced packaging capabilities in Japan. The scope of the expansion is forecasted to be an approximate $3 billion in Tower investment, net of grants of $1 billion, to be provided by the Government of Japan.
Then, in a separate announcement, Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) is shipping the first photonic ICs from its 300mm fab in Singapore.
Let’s first look at Tower’s announcement. Tower, a specialty foundry vendor, is seeing enormous demand for its silicon photonics technology. Thus, the company is expanding its fab capacity to meet demand.
In recent times, Tower gained full ownership of its 300mm fab operations in two locations in Japan—Arai and Uozu. The Arai fab site is located in Myoko-city Niigata, while the Uozu fab site is based in Uozu-city Toyama.
Tower plans to implement a parallel dual-track expansion plan in Japan. In the first track, Tower will repurpose the Arai facility, formerly Fab 6, for 300mm silicon photonics capacity and advanced packaging capabilities, maximizing the company’s Fab 7 300mm output in Uozu.
The first track will add new 300mm silicon photonics capacity, with full production readiness expected during the fourth quarter of 2027.
The second track will commence in parallel with the first track and consists of constructing an additional 300mm manufacturing facility, adjacent to Fab 7. This facility is expected to provide an increase in silicon photonics and SiGe capacity. The new facility is expected to be accretive beginning in 2029.
Meanwhile, in a separate announcement, UMC recently struck a foundry deal with SILITH Technology, a Singapore-based silicon photonics company. SILITH has achieved commercial-scale deployment, with cumulative shipments of more than 8 million 100G/lane and 200G/lane photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The company is also developing 400G/lane PAM4 silicon photonics platforms.
UMC has announced the first mass-production wafer delivery of photonic ICs for SILITH from its 300mm fab in Singapore. The collaboration combines SILITH’s photonics design expertise with UMC’s 300mm wafer manufacturing capacity and process capabilities to support high-volume production of SILITH’s 1.6T silicon photonics platform.