Synopsys, Juniper Networks fuse to tackle silicon photonics

Synopsys and Juniper Networks are targeting the silicon photonics market via a newly established company to let third parties produce devices with integrated on-chip lasers using Tower Semiconductor's production facilities. Named OpenLight, the company was effectively formed in April by an agreement between Synopsys and …

[Sparkus]

I remember not too far back the long-lamented ADC tried to do this on a really really big multi-year project.

After that failure, Tyco snapped the remnants of ADC at a massive discount around 2010

[IJD]

The real problem is that the companies who are successful in silicon photonics -- including the one I work for -- all have their own "secret sauce" designs and layouts which they've invested a lot of time and money developing, often including tweaks to the fundamental process, to get improved performance or lower power consumption -- you really have to dig down deep into the process, it's not like assembling digital gates or even analogue designs using transistors, more like designing your own transistor from scratch including all the dopants and implants.

As soon as you go to a standard process/design kit anyone can do it but also a lot of the ability to differentiate also disappears.