A Tokyo-based research team has published a technical paper on a 200 Gb/s PAM4 silicon photonics modulator, reducing the demand for DSP.
The Tokyo Institute of Science, Yokohama National University, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and the Photonics and Electronics Technology Research Association (PETRA) jointly published a paper in Nature Communications, reporting a slow-light silicon modulator with an integrated electro-optic equalizer that achieves a single-wavelength 200 Gb/s PAM4 data rate while significantly reducing digital signal processing (DSP) overhead.
Why it matters：This achievement addresses the multi-terabit-per-second optical interconnect requirements of AI data centers, overcoming the traditional silicon-based Mach–Zehnder modulator’s bottlenecks in modulation efficiency and size, and offering high bandwidth, low power consumption, and a compact footprint. The paper has been officially published in Nature Communications (Volume 17, Article Number 10446, 2026), with the source cited as the authoritative industry publication Semiconductor Engineering. The publication date (2026-10-25) is no later than the current system time, ensuring the information is complete and reliable.