Experts from RTOs and academia were also present.
Discussions during the workshop revolved around the challenges and status of the PICs industry. The audience was overall very active during the different sessions, that included:
- Presentations from Aryballe, PhotonFirst and Thales, who shared their journeys from idea - to design - to prototyping, and how the photonixFAB partners supported that
- An interactive session with live Q&A, followed by a panel discussion with experts from PHIX, Luceda, X-FAB and Epiphany, who reacted to the interactive session results and provided their own opinions and feedback.
The main conclusion from the discussions was that while PICs hold immense technological promise, the ecosystem is currently facing an industrialization gap — transitioning from excellent R&D and pilot programs to a cost-competitive, high-volume manufacturing model with rapid iteration cycles. Key take-aways from the interactive session & panel are highlighted below:
Cost and investment needs
The PIC industry struggles with high costs for specialized equipment, mask sets, foundry access and packaging, which prevents PICs from competing with high-volume electronics. The fight is economic — lowering the cost of entry and accelerating the prototype-to-product pipeline is key to attracting the large-scale investment needed for global competitiveness.
Innovation Bottleneck
The primary inhibitor to commercialization is the long cycle time (turnaround time) for a single design-to-test loop, which can stretch from 9 months to over two years (compared to the market's expectation of about 6 months). This slow pace is considered an "innovation killer" for startups, making it hard for them to conduct the required critical design iterations needed to refine a product and catch a market window;
Technical Challenges
Fundamental limitations are due to …
- Complexity of integration: Unlike purely electronic ICs, PICs often involve complex heterogeneous integration steps.
- Packaging and testing: The back-end work — getting the chip packaged and fully tested (which must be functional to be a "functional prototype") — adds significant time.
- Design iterations: Unlike CMOS electronics, where design rules are mature and highly refined, some PIC platforms are newer. Design-to-actual-performance often requires more validation cycles to fix problems and optimize performance.
Standardization
While large end-users are needed to initiate standardization by defining system requirements, consortia and foundries should take the lead in executing these standards to translate market needs into accessible, reliable, and non-proprietary technological building blocks that benefit the entire ecosystem.
In summary, Europe possesses world-leading research capabilities; the challenge is to translate this R&D excellence into scalable manufacturing and market leadership. photonixFAB is a direct mechanism to close this gap, as it addresses the primary challenges currently facing the European photonics industry. PhotonixFAB offers a path to a European photonics value chain, providing low-barrier access to prototyping and moving toward scalable manufacturing. This is key in supporting European SMEs and larger industry players in developing their PIC systems & applications and remaining competitive.