Phys.org February 2, 2021
Photonic Digital‐to‐analog converters (DAC) enable a seamless signal conversion with respect to both energy efficiency and short signal delay. Using a silicon photonic chip platform, a team of researchers (Washington University, UCLA) has developed a coherent parallel photonic DAC concept along with a 4‐bit prototype capable of performing as DAC without optic–electric–optic domain crossing. This guarantees a linear intensity weighting among bits when operating at high sampling rates (50 GHz), featuring an exceptional sampling efficiency (> 100 GS −1 ) and small footprint (≈1 mm2) in an 8‐bit implementation. The photonic DAC enables seamless interfaces of next‐generation data processing hardware with high relevance in data centers, task‐specific compute accelerators such as neuromorphic engines, and network edge processing applications…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE