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News Article

Report sounds "wake-up call" to InP industry

The Optoelectronics Industry Development Association says that with the InP industry at a crossroads, it should adopt the successful silicon-style foundry model and endorse greater co-operation.

Co-operation among InP-based optoelectronic device manufacturers and the establishment of a foundry model are crucial to the future success of the photonics industry.

That's the conclusion of a roadmap for the InP industry compiled by the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association.

Mike Lebby, the OIDA's executive director, said: "The roadmap sounds a wake-up call for the industry. We need to act soon to accelerate the development of an InP foundry model."

According to Lebby, who was previously at InP chip manufacturing company Bookham, the optoelectronics industry is at a crossroads.

"Key device vendors would like to become horizontally integrated, as demanded by their customer base," explained Lebby.

"Unfortunately, they are forced to remain vertically-integrated because of the competitive advantage they get in their InP optoelectronic device designs."

The clear solution, believes Lebby, is co-operation among device manufacturers and the adoption of a common foundry model.

One of the key recommendations in the OIDA report was that the InP industry should mirror the silicon semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure.

To date, InP device manufacturers have used the unique properties of the material to develop proprietary designs to tailor device performance, using specific epitaxial growth, fabrication, testing and packaging procedures.

The excess manufacturing capacity that has resulted has become a huge drain on both capital and operating expenditure.

But according to the OIDA roadmap, the picture will have begun to change by 2007, as there is a move towards the common foundry approach.

And two years later, the change will be clear: "2009 will be the beginning of a time when the key vendors will look toward the foundry model as a solution and an economic advantage "“ as opposed to a threat," predicts the report.

OIDA will work with its members and the rest of the InP community to develop the foundry model and identify solutions to the current impasse.

The OIDA report is the second recent attempt to recommend a complete shift in the InP community's approach to device manufacturing. Just last month, the Communications Technology Roadmap, which was developed through a series of working groups brought together by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came up with some similar conclusions (see related story).

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