Keysight and GlobalFoundries Unite to Speed Up Silicon Photonics for AI

SANTA ROSA, CA – June 03, 2026 – Keysight Technologies today announced a significant step forward in the race to build the next generation of artificial intelligence hardware, revealing that its flagship photonic design software now fully supports GlobalFoundries’ advanced silicon photonics manufacturing process. The integration creates a unified digital environment where engineers can design, simulate, and validate complex optical chips and the systems they power, a move poised to dramatically accelerate the commercialization of technologies essential for the future of data centers and AI.

The announcement centers on Keysight's Advanced Design System (ADS) Photonic Designer, which now includes the process design kit (PDK) for GlobalFoundries' silicon photonics platform. This seemingly technical update addresses a major, long-standing bottleneck in the industry: the fragmented and risky process of moving a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) from a digital blueprint to a physical, profitable product. By bringing circuit-level design and system-level validation under one roof, the collaboration promises to reduce costly design iterations and slash time-to-market for the high-speed optical interconnects that are rapidly becoming the lifeblood of modern computing.

The Data Deluge and the Photonic Solution

The insatiable data demands of AI models and hyperscale data centers are pushing traditional copper-based electrical interconnects to their breaking point. As data rates climb towards 800 gigabits per second, 1.6 terabits per second, and beyond, copper wiring generates excessive heat, consumes significant power, and suffers from signal degradation over even short distances. This "interconnect bottleneck" threatens to stall progress in high-performance computing.

The industry's answer is silicon photonics, a revolutionary technology that uses light (photons) to move data on silicon chips. By replacing electrons with photons, PICs can transmit massive amounts of data at higher speeds, over longer distances, and with far greater energy efficiency. This technology is the key to developing advanced optical transceivers and co-packaged optics, where optical I/O is placed directly alongside processing chips.

The market is responding with explosive growth. Industry analysts at Yole Group project the silicon photonics market will surge from $278 million in 2024 to $2.7 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 46%. This growth is not speculative; it is driven by the urgent need to re-architect data centers to handle the immense east-west traffic generated by distributed AI training and inference workloads. However, designing and manufacturing these sophisticated chips has remained a complex, high-stakes endeavor.

Bridging the Design-to-Test Chasm

Historically, the workflow for creating a PIC has been dangerously disjointed. Engineering teams would use one set of specialized tools to design the photonic circuit itself, then export that design to a separate platform to simulate how it would perform in a complete electro-optical-electrical (EOE) system. This hand-off between disparate environments introduced significant risk, as critical cross-domain interactions could be missed. The true performance of the chip within an optical link was often not fully understood until after the expensive and time-consuming fabrication process was complete.

"The silicon photonics industry has moved past the point where circuit design and system validation can live in separate workflows," said Niels Faché, Senior Vice President at Keysight’s Design Engineering Software division. "Engineers building for AI and data center infrastructure need to see system-level link performance from day one, not after fabrication."

Keysight's integrated solution directly confronts this challenge. By incorporating GlobalFoundries' PDK—a file containing the specific rules and physics-based models of its manufacturing process—into ADS Photonic Designer, engineers can now perform a complete EOE simulation in the same environment where they design the chip. They can model the entire signal path, from the electrical transmitter through the PIC and optical fiber to the electrical receiver, and analyze critical signal integrity metrics like eye diagrams. This "shift left" approach allows teams to identify and fix potential performance issues early in the architectural phase, long before committing to the multi-million dollar cost of a tapeout.

A Strategic Alliance Forging an Ecosystem

This collaboration is more than a simple software update; it represents a deepening strategic alliance between a leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and a premier semiconductor foundry. For GlobalFoundries, the partnership makes its cutting-edge silicon photonics platform, which combines photonics and RF-CMOS on a single wafer, more accessible and easier to use for a wider customer base. It lowers the barrier to entry for companies looking to innovate in optical communications.

"By enabling our silicon photonics platform in Keysight’s ADS Photonic Designer, we’re helping customers accelerate development, reduce design risk and scale their optical interconnect solutions more effectively," noted Vikas Gupta, Senior Fellow of the Silicon Photonics Product Line at GlobalFoundries. His statement underscores the foundry's goal of fostering a robust ecosystem around its technology, ensuring that customers not only have access to world-class manufacturing but also to the best-in-class tools needed to succeed.

For Keysight, the move solidifies its position as a critical enabler in the high-growth photonics market. By expanding its foundry-supported ecosystem, the company provides a more comprehensive and validated path from prototype to profit. This tight integration between design tools and manufacturing reality is becoming the new standard for developing complex, next-generation semiconductor technologies.

From Simulation to Silicon: The Commercial Impact

The practical benefits for companies developing optical hardware are immediate and substantial. The new workflow enables faster time to a first working design, as engineering teams can start with foundry-aligned, pre-validated component models instead of building libraries from scratch.

Crucially, the platform allows for pre-tapeout compliance testing. Using simulation capabilities based on Keysight's own instrument software, like its FlexDCA oscilloscope platform, engineers can perform measurements for industry standards such as Transmission Dispersion Eye Closure Quaternary (TDECQ). TDECQ is a critical quality metric for high-speed modulated optical signals, and the ability to verify it in simulation provides a high degree of confidence that the fabricated chip will meet performance targets and pass compliance tests. This direct correlation between simulation and real-world test measurements is a powerful tool for de-risking a project.

By providing earlier system-level insights, this unified approach directly supports the development of next-generation architectures like co-packaged optics, where photonic and electronic performance must be verified together with extreme precision. The GlobalFoundries CLO PDK for ADS Photonic Designer is available now, allowing engineering teams to immediately begin leveraging this streamlined workflow to build the foundational hardware for the next wave of technological innovation.