The photonic era is coming, and Chinese photoelectric enterprises should follow the trend

In recent years, with the rapid development of cutting-edge hard technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, supercomputers and cloud computing, chip manufacturing process and design level has been promoted. As the manufacturing process of microelectronic chip has approached the physical limit of 1 nanometer, it is increasingly difficult to improve the performance of chip by improving the technological level, and Moore's Law is on the verge of failure. In this context, Mi Lei believes that the current core technology of the entire information industry is in the process of "from electricity to light" conversion. Compared with integrated circuits, photonic chips are characterized by ultra-high speed and ultra-low power consumption. Photonic chips that use optical signals for data acquisition, transmission, calculation, storage and display will become key infrastructure in the era of 5G and artificial intelligence in the future.

In fact, as early as in the 1980s, developed countries in Europe and the United States had already made great efforts in the field of photonic chips. The U.S. Department of Defense listed photonics as one of the 20 key technologies in the United States. The German government identified photonics as one of the nine key technologies to maintain its advanced position in the international market in the 21st century, and invested 3.5 billion euros in industrial research and development. At the same time, it released the famous "Horizon 2020" plan to increase the research of optoelectronics integration. From the domestic perspective, in January 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the five-year roadmap of China's optoelectronic devices development (2018-2022), which clearly mentioned the industry target of China's optocommunication devices: the localization rate of mid - and low-end optoelectronic chips exceeds 60% in 2022, and the localization rate of high-end optoelectronic chips exceeds 20%. In 2022, domestic enterprises will occupy more than 30% of the global market share of optical communication devices, and one enterprise will enter the top 3 in the world.

"The 21st century is the age of optics, the underpinning of all future information technologies." Based on years of industry research and trend prediction, Mi proposed "Mi's Law of 70" : the cost of optics will account for 70 percent of the cost of all future technology products. Taking mobile phone terminals as a simple example, Mi said that the biggest innovation of domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers is based on optical chips, including camera array, 3D camera, etc., the bottom of which is VCSEL laser, 3D ToF and other technologies. Similar to Moore's Law, Mi's Law is a formula drawn from industry experience. Mi further explained that there are two key points: First, the cost of optics will account for 70 percent of the cost of all future technology products. Second, optical technology has become the key bottleneck technology of scientific and technological products, and the solution of optical technology is the core to promote scientific and technological progress.

At present, in the chip industry, China's overall level temporarily lags behind. In emerging areas such as optical sensing, biphotonics and consumer photonics, China is lagging behind developed countries such as Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, showing a competitive trend. In an interview, Mi Lei said that in the next 3 to 5 years, as the photoelectric industry is about to break out, practitioners in the photoelectric industry should quickly seize the opportunity of this industry, promote the transfer and application of technology to the industry, and create more leading enterprises.

Lei Mi took as an example the project Kunyou Opto-Electronics, which has been invested by China Science and Technology, as follows: Kunyou Opto-Electronics has long focused on the field of microphotonics and optical integration, and the wafer level optics that the team focuses on is the cornerstone field of photon consumption. In 3D depth imaging and unmanned, AR/MR Display, short-range all-optical transmission between chips, medical imaging, aviation, military, automatic security and other fields have a huge amount of application space. In March this year, Kun You Optoelectronics completed its B round of financing of 200 million yuan. Before that, the project has four financing history, including many Sainty Marine Optical industry leaders support.

According to Mi Lei, as early as the establishment of 2013, China KEChuang Star has been focused on the layout of the photoelectric field. 

"In the future, CSCSTAR will focus on the two terminal application technologies of mobile phones and automobiles, including mobile phone sensor optical chip, automotive lidar, 400G silicon optical chip involving 5G technology, optical AI chip, AR glasses and so on." Talking about the future investment direction of China KEChuang in the field of optoelectronics, Mi Lei said that with people's demand for information technology is higher, faster and more intelligent, the evolution of information acquisition, transmission, computing, storage, display and other technologies will also be under the guidance of optics, major technological innovation will take place, and the formation of demand line and technology line collection, is worthy of the industry's focus.

Finally, for the upcoming 22nd China International Opto-Electronics Expo, Mi Lei said that he hoped CIOE could not only play the function of the exhibition of the technical achievements of opto-electronics hard technology enterprises, but also build it into an industry event with international influence, so as to promote the industry with the exhibition, promote the industrial innovation with the technical exchange, and then promote more optoelectronic technology into the front line of the industry. Collision with the industry needs to create a spark of value.