Silicon photonics uses chip-making techniques to fabricate photonic circuits. The emerging technology is coming to market at a time of momentous change. The need of the Internet content providers to keep scaling their data centers is becoming increasing challenging, the chip industry is facing a future without Moore's law, while telcos must contend with a looming capacity crunch due to continual traffic growth.

Each of these developments is significant in its own right. Collectively, they require new thinking in the design of chips, optical components, and systems. Such change also...