GlobalFoundries Connects Silicon Photonics Design to System-Level Validation

Keysight Technologies has added support for GlobalFoundries’ (GF) silicon photonics process technology in its Advanced Design System (ADS) Photonic Designer, expanding the foundry ecosystem available for photonic integrated circuit (PIC) development. The integration lets engineers move from PIC design to full electro-optical-electrical (EOE) system simulation within a single environment, validating how photonic circuits will perform at the optical link level before tapeout.

As silicon photonics moves into volume production for data centers, AI infrastructure, and optical communications, designing a PIC is only part of the challenge — engineers must also confirm how that circuit performs within a complete EOE system. Traditional workflows keep these two steps separate, forcing teams to move between PIC design tools and system-level simulation platforms and pushing validation late into the development cycle.

As silicon photonics moves into volume production for data centers, AI infrastructure, and optical communications, designing a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) is only part of the challenge engineers face. Traditional design flows treat PIC-level design and system-level performance validation as separate steps, using different tools that were never built to work together.

GlobalFoundries needed a way to give its silicon photonics foundry customers a design environment that connects PIC-level circuit design directly to system-level validation, without forcing engineers to rebuild or recalibrate component libraries from scratch.

The ADS Photonic Designer software gives engineers a single simulation environment for photonic integrated circuit design and full system-level electro-optical-electrical validation, using models built on GlobalFoundries’ foundry-qualified process design kit (PDK).

The GlobalFoundries PDK for ADS Photonic Designer gives engineers foundry-aligned, physics-based models they can use immediately without building or calibrating component libraries from scratch.

By simulating with Keysight instrument software, including FlexDCA-based measurements and TDECQ analysis, engineers reduce design-to-test correlation variables and gain the best possible predictive results before committing a design to silicon. Shifting this system-level insight earlier in the architecture phase can reduce design iterations and time to market.