India, April 16 -- Photonic integrated circuits are the optical equivalent of microchips, using semiconductor industry processes to shrink many photonic components down onto a piece of material often smaller than a human fingernail. With photonic integrated circuits (PICs), functionality that would previously have required a laboratory-scale optical table can be shrunk to a usable scale and manufactured in high volumes.

As outlined in IDTechEx's recent report "Silicon Photonics and Photonic Integrated Circuits 2025-2035: Technologies, Market, Forecasts", data communications has fast become the "killer app" for PICs. PIC transceivers are fast becoming ubiquitous in data centers, where they increase the throughput of connections between no...