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PIC Summit Europe 2024: day 1 morning round-up 

15 October 2024

Event host Irene Rompa kicked off the event, welcoming attendees to a packed Philips Hall for two days of discussion, collaboration, and innovation. The audience included PIC manufacturers, application builders, academics, investors, and end users.

Since PIC Summit 2023, an increasing number of large semicon companies have realised the added value of integrated photonics. For the Netherlands and Europe to become global leaders in the field, it’s time to scale or fail.

Eelko Brinkhoff, PhotonDelta

Irene welcomed PhotonDelta CEO Eelko Brinkhoff to the stage to outline his vision for the future. With an investment of €470 million from the National Growth Fund, PhotonDelta plays an integral role in sector growth. 

Eelko emphasised the sense of urgency – especially with current developments in the US and Asia. “Innovation isn’t enough. What’s needed are products in bite-size chunks and standardisation to effectively scale.” 

Tjerk Opmeer, Ministry of Economic Affairs

Next, Tjerk Opmeer from the Ministry of Economic Affairs outlined the need for high performance and transmission speed; as well as the reduction of energy requirements, whether it’s in healthcare, automated mobility, AI, or quantum computing. 

He also spoke about how the Dutch government is improving its investment landscape to help kickstart more capital. In 2018, the country was able to support PhotonDelta via the Ministry of Economic Affairs. This support has already leveraged €400 million in public and €600 million in investment to enable the Netherlands to take the next step toward industrialisation.

Gustav Kalbe, DG CNECT 

Gustav Kalbe from DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology gave an EU Commission perspective on the future of PICs in Europe, focussing on the collective need to pool resources and move towards a wider integrated photonics ecosystem.

“You see how ubiquitous applications for integrated photonics are becoming,” he said. “It’s becoming a fundamental building block. The need is ever-increasing and ever-critical because it underpins so many other technologies.”

Paraskevas Bakopoulos, NVIDIA

NVIDIA’s Paraskevas Bakopoulos shared his personal viewpoint on the opportunities for optics in scalable AI systems. Two years ago was AI’s ‘iPhone moment’, he explained. Now the tech is expected to reach $3 billion in value by 2026. However, the main barriers continue to be price and power increases. 

Faisal Kamran, Sony

Sony’s principal tech analyst, Faisal Kamran, then explored the market need for integrated photonics, a key component of the synergy between AI and quantum computing. In 2023, he said, the world used 64.2 zetabytes (billion terabytes). That’s only going to increase as AI models become more and more complex. Our existing technology is under strain, and bottlenecks are appearing.

However, he also noted that quantum technology brings the computing power the world needs and is a key enabler for sustainability targets. In addition, he sees that these AI bottlenecks can also be potentially overcome by quantum computing and that AI can build better algorithms to make quantum computers more scalable and sustainable. 

Vikas Gupta, GlobalFoundries

Next up, Vikas Gupta, representing Global Foundries, took the theme of ‘fading boundaries’ and considered the parallels between computational power and interconnect power. 

He made it clear that while computational power has increased by an enormous amount in the past two decades, interconnect bandwidth has flagged behind, increasing at a far lower rate.

Vikas also highlighted that to achieve high-volume manufacturing for Silicon Photonics, foundries need to address the main cost challenges, stemming primarily from packaging and supply chains.

Evi Somers, PhotonDelta

Evi Somers shone a spotlight on the Human Capital program started by PhotonDelta to raise awareness and interest in integrated photonics through education and industry partners. Highlighting the need for a long-term strategy to drive talent into the sector, she announced a new central hub for talent. Doubling down on the hub’s slogan, she was met with applause when she said, “Let’s light the way together.”

Rudi De Winter, X-FAB

In this keynote, Rudi De Winter explored the convergence of electronic and photonic technologies to solve today’s societal challenges. Rudi exposed the need for more product companies and applications to create a European ecosystem before summarising some of the key applications, including datacom, AI, automotive, food analysis, industrial sensing, healthcare sensors, quantum computing, and AR/VR. He also noted that there are two major challenges that can be addressed by photonic chips: climate change and digital medical care.

Twan Korthorst, New Origin

As the CEO of New Origin, a cutting-edge foundry, Twan shed light on how there has been a shift in the overall PIC ecosystem in the past ten years. Looking back to 2014, Twan was very optimistic about the potential for the future of the photonics industry. He described how companies could leverage the innovation that has been made in datacom to simplify the adoption of new applications, going on to say that this could turn into cascaded growth of other applications and in turn create a richer industry.

That’s a wrap for the morning session! We’re looking forward to a full lineup of breakout sessions, including panel sessions with some of the leading lights of the photonics industry.