A team from the Photonics Research Lab (PRL)-iTEAM at the Valencia Polytechnic University and the company iPronics have designed and manufactured a revolutionary chip for the telecommunications industry, data centres and infrastructure associated with artificial intelligence computing systems.

It is the first universal, programmable and multifunctional photonic chip in the world and is especially useful for communications, data centres, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, satellites, drones and autonomous driving, as well as many other applications, as reported by the University in a statement.

The development of this revolutionary chip is the main result of the European UMWP-Chip project, led by researcher José Capmany and funded by an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. The work has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The chip, designed and manufactured by the Valencia Polytechnic University and iPRONICS team, allows on-demand programming and interconnection of wireless and photonic segments in communication networks, avoiding the creation of bottlenecks  which can limit both capacity and available bandwidth.

“It is the first chip of its kind in the world. It can implement the twelve basic functionalities needed in these systems and can be programmed on demand, which results in greater circuit efficiency,” Capmany points out.

The professor at the Valencia Polytechnic University, one of the international benchmarks for photonics, explains that applications such as 5G or autonomous cars require a higher frequency, so it is necessary to reduce the size of the antennas and associated circuits.

In this case, what the PRL-iTEAM at the Valencia Polytechnic University and iPRONICS have achieved is ensuring that the converter behind the antenna, which is an interface chip, is as small and compact as possible, and that it is able to support current and foreseeable frequency bands in the future.

This chip is already integrated in an iPRONICS product, the Smartlight, and is already being tested by Vodafone.

“For us, the development of this chip is a very important step, because it has allowed the validation of developments we have applied to solve a growing problem, the efficient handling of data flows in data centres and networks for artificial intelligence computing systems. Our next goal is to scale the chip to meet the needs of this market segment,” says Daniel Pérez López, co-founder and CTO of iPronics.