Applications & Technology — Topical Reviews
Deep-dive, tutorial-style sessions that connect emerging photonics breakthroughs to real-world deployments. Each review blends fundamentals, tooling, and case studies, led by domain experts.
Silicon Photonic Engine for Peta-Scale Computing
Champion(s): Yasutomo Ota
The Silicon Photonic Engine (SPE) represents a paradigm shift in computing architectures by integrating photonic circuits with electronic processors to achieve peta-scale (10¹⁵ operations per second) computing performance. By leveraging the high bandwidth, low latency, and energy efficiency of light-based data transfer, SPEs aim to overcome the bottlenecks of conventional electronic interconnects, enabling scalable and power-efficient data centers, AI accelerators, and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.
Those emerging computing clusters require high-throughput optical interconnects, which can be advanced through densely integrated wavelength-division-multiplexing channels, ultra-high bandwidth optoelectronic converters, and amplitude-phase-polarization modulation formats. Another bottleneck of the electronic-photonic co-integrated system is the 3D packaging architecture meeting the optical bandwidth and electronic bandwidth requirements. The symposium with panel discussions will be organized to address those issues from device to system architectures.
Haisheng Rong — Intel, USA
Talk:OCI Engines for Scale-Up Networks
Samuel Felipe Serna Otalvaro — Bridgewater State University, MIT, USA
Talk:Co-Packaged Silicon Photonic Engines for Peta-Scale Computing
Wei Shi — University of Laval, Canada
Talk: Scalable Coherent Optical Transmitters for Petabit-Class Interconnects
Reza Baghdadi — Lightmatter, USA
Talk: 3D Co-Packaged Optics: Redefining Silicon Photonics for the Next Era of Computing
Ming Wu — University of California Berkeley, USA
Talk: Silicon Photonic Optical Circuit Switches (OCS) for AI Computing
Liron Gantz — NVIDIA
Silicon Photonics and Co-Integration Strategies for AI‑Driven Datacenters
Po Dong — Coherent
Talk: TBA
Photonics Modeling and Simulations 2026
Champion(s): Katia Shtyrkova
Integrated photonics simulation tools are used in both academia and industry to support applications ranging from quantum computing to microwave photonics and medical diagnostics. With accessible MPW services, the demand and supply of such simulation platforms have grown rapidly, evolving along multiple axes: specialized physics and multiphysics solvers, rapid prototyping pipelines, complex-geometry accuracy, GUI maturity, and API ecosystems (e.g., Python/Matlab) that speed device-to-system design loops. Open-source platforms with unique advantages are also part of the landscape.
In this tutorial-style review, state-of-the-art photonic simulation companies will discuss capabilities in a common format—covering solvers/physics, unique features, computation speed, GUI/APIs, and integration—then walk through a detailed design flow for a representative device, including simulation results and time/memory budgets.
Eugene Sokolov — VPIphotonics
Integrated Device-to-Circuit Simulation Workflow for SiN MMIs
Dominic Gallagher — Photon Design
Talk: FIMMPROP – an advanced EME framework for modelling waveguide-based photonic components – performance advantages and limitations.
Andrew (Drew) Strikwerda — COMSOL Multiphysics
Talk: COMSOL Multiphysics platform capabilities and workflow demonstration for photonic devices
Joaquin Matres — GDS Factory
GDSFactory: An Open-Source Python Library for Chip Design and Simulation
Tom Chen — Flexcompute (Tidy3D)
Talk: Fully Autonomous Agentic Design of Photonic Devices and Circuits
Federico Duque Gomez — Ansys / Lumerical
Simulation-Driven Photonic Design: From High-Performance Computing to High-Performance Devices
Jim Qu and David Qu — SPINS Photonics / Inverse Design
GPU-accelerated inverse design of a compact mode converter on silicon nitride
Yannik Mahlau — FDTDX, open-source
Talk: Overview of platform capabilities and detailed design flow of a mode converter using FDTDX
