In the last two years much discussion has been devoted to the problem of how to satisfy soaring demand for high-speed communications bandwidth. As much as anything else, this represents an engineering challenge.
Miniaturization is required to help operators reduce space requirements at their central offices.
Infrastructure providers need to reduce costs by using commercial assembly techniques, and by integrating various optical functions into a single module to dramatically reduce the fiber content and connections necessary in advanced networking equipment. And the unit must provide all of that capability on a scalable production platform at a low cost per channel. The technology is called ASOC, for Active Silicon Optical Circuit. But the key differentiating feature for silicon is in materials technology and the ability to integrate a broad array of optical functions using very scalable production processes. It is this differentiator that convinced Bookham Technology that it was worth investing time in solving the related engineering challenges.