Keysight Technologies, Inc. announced support for GlobalFoundries? silicon photonics process technology in its Advanced Design System (ADS) Photonic Designer, expanding its foundry ecosystem for photonic integrated circuit (PIC) development. Designers can move from PIC design to full electro-optical-electrical (EOE) system simulation within a single environment, validating how photonic circuits perform at the optical link level before tapeout.

Keysight?s PDK for ADS Photonic Designer addresses this by connecting PIC design with system level EOE simulation. Engineers can now design photonic circuits on GlobalFoundries? platform, then validate full optical link behavior, including eye diagram analysis and signal integrity metrics such as transmission dispersion eye closure quaternary (TDECQ), without switching tools.

Built on physics based models aligned to GlobalFoundries? silicon photonics process, the PDK ensures that PIC simulations correlate to fabricated silicon, while validation at the system level ensures the desired channel link performance is achieved. These PIC and system performance are critical for high-speed optical interconnect architecture development, and further down the design process where photonic and electronic performance must be verified together.

Engineers designing optical transceivers and co-packaged optics can use Keysight FlexDCA oscilloscope software during design to ensure the best possible simulation to measurements correlation and the best possible predictive results. Key benefits include: Faster time to first design: Foundry aligned, physics-based models for GlobalFoundries? silicon photonics process are ready for immediate use, so teams can start working without building or calibrating component libraries from scratch.

Achieve compliance before tapeout: By simulating with Keysight instrument software, FlexDCA based measurements and TDECQ analysis, engineers reduce design to test correlation variables ensuring the best possible predictive results. Earlier system level insight: By shifting left engineers can evaluate how PIC performance affects the optical link early during architecture development, which can reduce design iterations and time to market. The GlobalFoundries CLO PDK for ADS Photonic Designer is available now.