1470 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 17, NO. 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 Current Status of Large-Scale InP Photonic Integrated Circuits Fred A. Kish, Fellow, IEEE, David Welch, Fellow, IEEE, Radhakrishnan Nagarajan, Fellow, IEEE, Jacco L. Pleumeekers, Vikrant Lal, Member, IEEE, Mehrdad Ziari, Member, IEEE, Alan Nilsson, Member, IEEE, Masaki Kato, Member, IEEE, Sanjeev Murthy, Peter Evans, Scott W. Corzine, Matt Mitchell, Parmijit Samra, Mark Missey, Scott DeMars, Richard P. Schneider, Jr., Michael S. Reffle, Tim Butrie, Jeffrey T. Rahn, Member, IEEE, Michael Van Leeuwen, James W. Stewart, Damien J. H. Lambert, Member, IEEE, Ranjani C. Muthiah, Member, IEEE, Huan-Shang Tsai, Jeffrey S. Bostak, Member, IEEE, Andrew Dentai, Fellow, IEEE, Kuang-Tsan Wu, Han Sun, Donald J. Pavinski, Jr., Jiaming Zhang, Jie Tang, John McNicol, Matthias Kuntz, Vince Dominic, Brian D. Taylor, Randal A. Salvatore, Member, IEEE, Matt Fisher, Augi Spannagel, Eva Strzelecka, Pavel Studenkov, Maura Raburn, Senior Member, IEEE, Wayne Williams, Doug Christini, K. John Thomson, Shashank S. Agashe, Roman Malendevich, Gilad Goldfarb, Serge Melle, Chuck Joyner, Member, IEEE, Mike Kaufman, and Stephen G. Grubb (Invited Paper) Abstract—In this paper, the current state of the art for large- scale InP photonic integrated circuits (PICs) is reviewed with a fo- cus on the devices and technologies that are driving the commercial scaling of highly integrated devices. Specifically, the performance, reliability, and manufacturability of commercial 100-Gb/s dense wavelength-division-multiplexed transmitter and receiver PICs are reviewed as well as next- and future-generation devices (500 Gb/s and beyond). The large-scale PIC enables significant reductions in cost, packaging complexity, size, fiber coupling, and power con- sumption which have enabled benefits at the component and system level. Index Terms—Monolithic InP Integration, optical receivers, optical transmitters, photonic integrated circuit (PIC). I. INTRODUCTION T HE invention of the transistor in 1947 [1] has been one of the most profound technology developments that has shaped the world as we know it today. The transistor has en- abled the further invention of the integrated circuit (IC) [2], [3] which has changed the way we communicate and process in- formation by virtue of its ability to scale to circuits today that contain up to a billion transistors on a chip [4], [5]. The IC has become ubiquitous as a result of the ability of these devices to continually increase the functionality, performance, and re- liability while simultaneously reducing power dissipation, size, and cost. One of the key value propositions for the IC is the ability to reduce overall cost by trading off chip functionality with package (assembly and test) cost [4], [6] as shown in Fig. 1. Over time, the cost per function curve can be improved (moved Manuscript received December 10, 2010; revised February 3, 2011; accepted February 7, 2011. Date of publication April 25, 2011; date of current version December 7, 2011. The authors are with Infinera Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA (e-mail: fkish@infinera.com). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTQE.2011.2114873 Fig. 1. Conceptual plot showing one of the key value propositions of the IC: lowering the total cost by trading off chip functionality (cost) with package cost (assembly and test ) [6]. to the right), by leveraging improvements from semiconductor technology and manufacturing learning curves, thus enabling the progression of the IC as predicted by Moore [4]. The invention of the laser in 1960 [7] and the realization of a semiconductor version [8]–[11] laid the groundwork for the possibility of extending the electronic IC concept to photon- ics. This was first proposed by Miller [12] in The Bell System Technical Journal: This paper outlines a proposal for a miniature form of laser beam circuitry...Photolithographic techniques may permit the simultaneous construction of complex circuit patterns...if realized...economy should ultimately result. The last phrase in the aforementioned quote is very im- portant, and has been the biggest inhibitor to the develop- ment of the photonic integrated circuit (PIC). PICs have been generally economically challenged to provide the same value 1077-260X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE