Keysight Expands Photonic Design Automation Portfolio with System-Level Simulation to Accelerate Optical Communications Development

Keysight Newsroom USA

Overview

Keysight Technologies has announced an expansion of its Photonic Design Automation (PDA) portfolio, adding new system-level simulation capabilities. This enhancement allows optical communication system designers to comprehensively evaluate performance from chip to full system, significantly shortening development cycles. The software tools are specifically aimed at addressing the complex design challenges of next-generation optical interconnects crucial for AI/ML data centers and High-Performance Computing (HPC). This advancement fosters rapid innovation and market introduction of optical communication technologies.

In Depth

Key Findings

Keysight Technologies has announced the latest expansion of its Photonic Design Automation (PDA) portfolio, introducing significant enhancements in system-level simulation capabilities for optical communication system development. This new functionality enables designers to verify and optimize performance throughout the entire design process, from optical chip components to complete system architectures.

Technical / Clinical Details

• The expanded PDA portfolio includes Keysight’s OptSim and Interconnect tools, which work in tandem to simulate the behavior of optical circuits, modules, and entire networks.
• The new features not only support the design of highly complex photonic integrated circuits (PICs) but also allow for system performance prediction of advanced optical interconnect solutions like Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) and Near-Packaged Optics (NPO) in AI/ML data centers.
• Designers can accurately model physical phenomena such as signal degradation, noise, and nonlinear effects, and proactively evaluate system-wide bit error rate (BER) and eye diagram quality. This significantly reduces errors in the prototyping phase, saving development costs and time.
• This simulation platform supports a collaborative design environment, fostering cooperation between optical component, electrical component, and system-level design teams.

Background & Context

The rapid advancements in AI, HPC, and 5G communications are placing unprecedented demands on optical communication systems in terms of performance and power efficiency. These next-generation systems require increasingly complex optical circuits and advanced integration technologies, making accurate simulation and verification at the design stage indispensable. Keysight’s PDA portfolio expansion directly addresses these industry needs.

Strategic Significance & Outlook

The introduction of Keysight’s system-level photonic simulation capabilities has the potential to revolutionize the development process for optical communication technologies. This is expected to enable faster and more reliable optical solutions to be brought to market for AI-driven data centers and other high-performance applications. This advancement will accelerate the innovation cycle in the optical communication industry and pave the way for new technological breakthroughs.

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