Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are optical microchip systems with optical components utilizing light (or photons) for data transmission instead of electrons, which are the basis of traditional integrated circuits (ICs), also known as electronic integrated circuits (EICs). This fundamental shift from electronic to photonic signals enables data to be transferred at the speed of light, resulting in significantly higher speeds and greater bandwidth compared with EICs, which are limited by the slower movement of electrons. Massless photons can transmit without the same resis...

Using light to move data over shorter distances is becoming more common, both because there is much more data to move around and because photons are faster and cooler than electrons. Using optical fiber for mission-critical communication is already well established. It has been the preferred PHY for long-haul communications for decades because it doesn’t suffer from the attenuation losses of copper. It also has emerged as the dominant way of transferring data back and forth between servers and storage because it is nearly impervious to interruptions, extremely fast, and requi...