STMicroelectronics announced an agreement to bring Luxtera Inc.’s silicon photonics intellectual property and knowledge to a process to be developed at its 300-mm semiconductor wafer facility in Crolles, France. Production at the ST Crolles site will enable the two companies to further support the market with low-cost, high-volume solutions for silicon photonic components and systems. Silicon photonics is regarded as a key enabler of future high-speed computing and communications applications such as optical networking, CPU interconnect and data storage, as they scale to multiterabit connectivity. The collaboration grants ST the rights to use Luxtera’s silicon photonics technology, which will be implemented in the new ST photonics process and its future generations. ST will provide Luxtera with a reliable, scalable and cost-effective supply chain, which will allow Luxtera to satisfy its growing market. “The powerful synergy of this partnership, derived from the complementary strengths of two technology and industry leaders, represents a tremendous breakthrough,” said Flavio Benetti, general manager of the mixed process division at STMicroelectronics. “This will bring silicon photonics into the mainstream of important technologies such as optical networking, ultrafast computer processors and other applications via the commercial volume availability of a best-in-class silicon photonics IP platform.” Luxtera is a fabless semiconductor company specializing in integrated silicon CMOS photonics. ST provides semiconductor and microelectronics products for sense and power technologies and multimedia convergence applications. For more information, visit: www.luxtera.com or www.st.com