IN Brief:
- The service combines GlobalFoundries silicon photonics with SMART Photonics indium-phosphide lasers, modulators, and optical amplifiers.
- Active InP devices are flip-chip integrated into a silicon-based cavity following more than a year of joint engineering.
- General availability is targeted for the second half of 2027 for datacentre, transceiver, LiDAR, and related optical products.
SMART Photonics and GlobalFoundries are combining indium phosphide and silicon photonics in an open-access foundry service intended to integrate active optical devices with silicon photonics without requiring customers to build a bespoke manufacturing chain.
The service pairs GlobalFoundries’ silicon photonics platform with SMART Photonics’ indium-phosphide photonic integrated circuits, including lasers, modulators, and semiconductor optical amplifiers. Applications include AI datacentres, pluggable optical transceivers, LiDAR, and other systems requiring light generation alongside silicon-based optical routing and processing.
GlobalFoundries supplies a silicon-based cavity into which SMART Photonics’ active InP devices are attached using flip-chip technology. The companies have spent more than a year engineering the interface, including mechanical fit and optical coupling between the two material platforms.
Silicon photonics can integrate waveguides, modulators, and other optical functions using semiconductor manufacturing techniques, but efficient light generation remains difficult in silicon itself. Indium phosphide is well established for lasers, optical amplifiers, and other active photonic devices. The joint process assigns those functions to the material platform best suited to them, then connects the two inside one manufacturing route.
The companies intend to offer that integration as a foundry service rather than a customer-specific assembly programme. General availability is targeted for the second half of 2027, leaving time for process qualification, design enablement, packaging development, and customer evaluation before the service enters routine production.
The launch comes as optical conversion moves closer to high-power switching and compute silicon. Large AI systems depend on high-bandwidth links between accelerators, memory, and network switches, while electrical channels become harder to scale as lane rates and physical distances increase. Pluggable modules, near-packaged optics, and co-packaged optics address that problem at different points in the system, but all require lasers, photonic devices, electronics, packaging, and fibre interfaces to operate as one chain.
GlobalFoundries has also been expanding specialist semiconductor capacity around these links. In September it expanded silicon-germanium manufacturing for Marvell optical products, supporting pluggable, near-packaged, and co-packaged architectures. The SMART Photonics agreement addresses a different part of the same optical stack by combining silicon photonics with native indium-phosphide active devices.
An open-access service can also reduce dependence on a one-off proprietary assembly flow. Integrated photonics programmes often become tied to supplier-specific coupling, packaging, and process choices early in development. A defined foundry interface gives customers a clearer route between photonic design and manufacturing, although detailed process design kits, package options, yield data, and commercial terms have yet to be published.
SMART Photonics already operates indium-phosphide manufacturing, while GlobalFoundries contributes a larger silicon production base and an established silicon photonics process. The partnership therefore joins two existing foundry capabilities instead of introducing a new material technology requiring a manufacturing infrastructure to be created from scratch.
Production readiness will depend on more than achieving efficient optical coupling between test devices. Wafer variation, die placement accuracy, thermal behaviour, assembly yield, optical loss, and final test all contribute to the economics of the integrated product. Those constraints become more demanding as optical assemblies move closer to costly switching silicon and package footprints shrink.
Customer access, design tools, qualification data, and packaging specifications will determine how quickly the service moves beyond initial programmes. If the 2027 availability target is met, optical-system developers will gain another manufacturing route for combining silicon-scale integration with indium-phosphide light sources and amplifiers without creating the full cross-material process themselves.
