Tan Min, Wang Yuhang, Wang Ken Xingze, Yu Yuan, Zhang Xinliang
School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China.
Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China.
Front Optoelectron. 2022 Apr 28;15(1):16. doi: 10.1007/s12200-022-00013-8.
Integrated photonics is widely regarded as an important post-Moore's law research direction. However, it suffers from intrinsic limitations, such as lack of control and satisfactory photonic memory, that cannot be solved in the optical domain and must be combined with electronics for practical use. Inevitably, electronics and photonics will converge. The photonic fabrication and integration technology is gradually maturing and electronics-photonics convergence (EPC) is experiencing a transition from device integration to circuit design. We derive a conceptual framework consisting of regulator, oscillator, and memory for scalable integrated circuits based on the fundamental concepts of purposeful behavior in cybernetics, entropy in information theory, and symmetry breaking in physics. Leveraging this framework and emulating the successes experienced by electronic integrated circuits, we identify the key building blocks for the integrated circuits for EPC and review the recent advances.
集成光子学被广泛认为是摩尔定律之后的一个重要研究方向。然而，它存在一些固有局限性，比如缺乏控制和令人满意的光子存储，这些问题无法在光学领域得到解决，必须与电子学相结合才能实际应用。不可避免地，电子学和光子学将会融合。光子制造和集成技术正在逐渐成熟，电子 - 光子融合（EPC）正经历从器件集成到电路设计的转变。我们基于控制论中有目的行为的基本概念、信息论中的熵以及物理学中的对称性破缺，推导出一个由调节器、振荡器和存储器组成的概念框架，用于可扩展集成电路。利用这个框架并借鉴电子集成电路所取得的成功经验，我们确定了EPC集成电路的关键构建模块，并回顾了近期的进展。
