Photonics is the leading candidate technology for high-speed and low-energy-consumption systems. Thermal and process variations are the two main challenges of achieving high-reliability photonic systems. Thermal variation is due to the heat issues created by application, floorplan, and environment, while process variation is caused by fabrication variability in the deposition, masking, exposition, etching, and doping. Tuning techniques are then required to overcome the impact of the variations and efficiently stabilize the performance of silicon photonic systems. In this thesis, we first developed a holistic optical switch integration model, called BOSIM. BOSIM is validated by the measured data from eight research groups and companies. Based on BOSIM we analyze the thermal and electrica...[ Read more ]

Photonics is the leading candidate technology for high-speed and low-energy-consumption systems. Thermal and process variations are the two main challenges of achieving high-reliability photonic systems. Thermal variation is due to the heat issues created by application, floorplan, and environment, while process variation is caused by fabrication variability in the deposition, masking, exposition, etching, and doping. Tuning techniques are then required to overcome the impact of the variations and efficiently stabilize the performance of silicon photonic systems. In this thesis, we first developed a holistic optical switch integration model, called BOSIM. BOSIM is validated by the measured data from eight research groups and companies. Based on BOSIM we analyze the thermal and electrical properties of optical switches. Secondly, we propose indirect feedback tuning (IFT) to simultaneously alleviate thermal and process variations. IFT can improve the BER of silicon photonic systems to 10⁻⁹ under different variation situations. Thirdly, we present a more effective method, BAT, that combines our invented optical bridging method with IFT. BAT enhances the temperature channel transition among microresonators (MRs) and minimizes bit errors during temperature changes. BAT is integrated with thermal tuning, electrical tuning, laser tuning, and receiver tuning. We optimize MR design, control logic, tuning circuit, thermal floorplan, and network protection mechanism for BAT. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, BAT achieves a 10⁻¹² BER for photonic chiplets, saves up to 70.0% of the thermal tuning power, and improves up to a 1.17X system energy efficiency.