OpenLight and TFC Advance Silicon Photonics Back End Integration Supporting up to 400G Data Rates on TGV Substrate

OpenLight announced continued progress in its ecosystem partnership with Suzhou TFC Optical Communication Co., Ltd. (TFC), building on the collaboration first announced in 2025 to fast track the back end process for silicon photonics production and optical communication systems. The partnership remains focused on advancing the integration, assembly, and manufacturing workflows required to bring highly integrated silicon photonics optical engines to market with the OLP-PM13306 400G test board serving as the most recent example of this progress.

The OLP-PM13306 is designed to enable testing and evaluation of OpenLight’s 400G electro-absorption modulator (EAM) by integrating a high-speed driver alongside the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) on a TGV-based high-speed printed circuit board (PCB), combined with a low-loss fiber attach unit (FAU). The complete optical sub-assembly—including TGV-based PCB design, FAU integration, and assembly—was designed and manufactured by TFC. This device will be showcased at OpenLight’s booth at OFC 2026.

As silicon photonics adoption continues to accelerate across data center, AI/ML, and emerging optical networking applications, the maturity of the back end ecosystem has become increasingly critical to support higher levels of photonic integration and increasing per-lane data rate requirements. 

Since the initial partnership announcement at OFC 2025, OpenLight and TFC have expanded the scope of their collaboration to support higher speed optical engines and evolving integration requirements. TFC has supported optical sub assembly activities for OpenLight’s 100G  and 200G per lane transmitter PICs and this collaboration has now extended to 400G per-lane devices. These efforts reflect the partnership’s focus on maturing integration and assembly workflows in parallel with increasing data rate requirements for silicon photonics optical engines.

The OpenLight–TFC collaboration provides customers with an expanded ecosystem option for optical sub assembly, helping streamline the supply chain from completed wafers through full fiber attached optical engines. The partnership aims to reduce complexity, improve manufacturability, and support faster time to market.