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This paper discusses our progress on high-speed optical transmitters for next generation intra-datacenter interconnects. Silicon integrated photonic systems have a key role to play in this evolution by allowing compact, fast, innovative and cost-effective devices to be manufactured in large volumes. Especially silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators are a very attractive candidate: they are easy to manufacture, easy to use and support both intensity as well as coherent modulation. Key to the next-generation optical transmitter is not only the very high datarates, but also the very small form-factor and low power consumption. This requires leveraging electro-optic co-design of driver electronics and optical modulators.

High-speed electronic integrated circuits are essential to the development of new fiber-optic communication systems. As a consequence of the increasing speeds and multi-channel operation, close integration and co-design of photonic and electronic devices have become a necessity to realize high-performance sub-systems. Such co-design on the other hand also enables the design of new electro-optic architectures to create and process multi-level optical signals. This presentation will illustrate a number of recent and ongoing developments in IDLab, an imec research group, from various H2020 projects with a focus on application-specific high-speed electronic transceiver circuits such as driver amplifiers and transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs).