What does it take to develop a PIC MVP?
In the fast-paced world of integrated photonics, moving from concept to a minimum viable product (MVP) with minimal cost and risk is complex and often overwhelming.
The challenges are real: the difficulty of hiring skilled integrated photonics engineers, navigating a rapidly evolving ecosystem of material platforms, foundries, and packagers, and managing the high costs of component and system-level development. For many companies, this complexity creates a significant barrier, preventing them from demonstrating the transformative potential of their integrated photonics ideas with viable, low-cost, R&D.
At Light Trace Photonics, we understand these challenges deeply. That’s why we’ve developed a streamlined pipeline designed to take you from idea to MVP in less than 12 months, empowering you to succeed and stay competitive in this fast-changing industry.
In this article, we outline the core challenges faced at each step and explain how we can help you overcome them.
So, what are the main challenges?
A constantly evolving ecosystem
The integrated photonics industry is incredibly diverse, with a growing range of material platforms, components, and packaging types to consider and choose from when developing a new integrated photonics product (check out our previous blog post on choosing material platforms). Each choice introduces trade-offs, and navigating these decisions without up-to-date knowledge and broad expertise can easily lead to costly delays and dead ends.
Lack of components
Most companies must start their development process from scratch, first assessing and building core components, then engineering and demonstrating a system. This requires a diverse set of skills that minimally covers integrated photonic simulation, design, fabrication, testing, and packaging — a tall order for most companies with limited budgets to reach MVP.
One of the major challenges lies in testing. Component-level testing and validation demand high-throughput and reliable testing across multiple chip runs to evaluate how fabrication variations impact overall performance. Without a solid grasp on how this affects performance, it can be hard to reach the right conclusions when assessing your MVP and planning for the next stage. Establishing these capabilities is expensive, especially before an MVP has demonstrated the value proposition to budget holders.
High engineering costs & risks
Developing integrated photonics products can be prohibitively expensive. Each fabrication run can cost tens of thousands of pounds and, without significant insight and expertise, several such runs are often required to develop a working MVP, with each cycle taking 5-8 months on average. Here, we can see the need for first-time-right design to stand any hope of delivering an MVP in under 12 months.
These challenges lead to an inability to produce cost-effective, functional prototypes. This limits opportunities to showcase new, impactful products and secure stakeholder buy-in, which is often required to unlock the funding needed to take an integrated photonics product to market.
How can you overcome these challenges?
Our mission at Light Trace is to demystify and streamline integrated photonics development, helping companies overcome these challenges. Our team has walked this path before, and we understand the intricacies of each layer of the development cycle. Our expertise and insights have enabled us to put together a pipeline designed to get our customers to MVP in under 12 months, helping them prove the impact of their integrated photonics technologies with minimal risk.
So, what does this pipeline look like, and how can it help you get your integrated photonics products to market?
Step 1 - Uncovering what integrated photonics means for your products
If you’re exploring integrated photonics, the first step is understanding how it could fit into your products to deliver impact and a competitive edge.
Our LightPort (pictured below) provides zero-barrier, hands-on training to help your team learn and program photonics chips with ease. At its heart is a photonic chip that engineers can connect up to and program from Day 1. Equipped with user-friendly software and guided lessons, engineers can build foundational knowledge tailored to your industry.
Armed with LightPorts, the Light Trace team will give your engineers a crash course in integrated photonics, helping demystify their use and potential application.
Challenges to Overcome:
Bridging Skills Gaps: Many engineers lack training or experience in integrated photonics, creating uncertainty about how to effectively implement and innovate with the technology.
Navigating Complexity: Integrated photonics is a broad and rapidly evolving field, making it challenging to identify key priorities and to stay up-to-date with the latest advancements.
Key Benefits:
Practical Hands-on Learning: The LightPort provides exclusive opportunities for real-world, hands-on experience with programmable photonic chips, simplifying and demystifying the technology.
Customised Training: Our sessions are tailored to align with your specific products, industry applications, and goals, leveraging our deep expertise in integrated photonics.
Empowered Engineers: Equip your team with the confidence and skills needed to drive innovation and unlock the potential of photonic chips in your organisation.
Step 2 - Chart Your Path to Success
With a strong foundation in integrated photonics and a good handle on how it fits into your technology roadmap, the next step is creating a detailed plan to take your idea from concept to MVP. This roadmapping is critical to ensuring your MVP delivers maximum impact while setting the stage for future growth. Our team collaborates closely with your engineers to address all key considerations, creating a clear, actionable plan that minimises risks, avoids costly detours, and accelerates your timeline.
Key Considerations Include:
Choosing the Right Platform and Materials: Selecting the optimal integrated photonic platform and materials to meet technological needs, ensuring financial viability, scalability, and future-proofing.
Defining Critical Components: Identifying essential components and their minimum specifications to meet performance, reliability, and expectations.
Optimising Packaging Solutions: Designing a seamless integration of the photonic chip into your broader product, leveraging existing infrastructure while accounting for market requirements, cost projections, and potential failure mechanisms at different production volumes.
Budgeting and Timeline Planning: Estimating costs, defining timelines, and pinpointing the necessary suppliers and skills to achieve both the MVP and full-scale product launch efficiently.
Challenges to Overcome:
Complexity of Integration: A broad range of materials, platforms, wavelengths, component types, system implementations, suppliers, and packaging solutions make for an incredibly wide parameter space to navigate.
Risk Management: Understanding where the main technological risks lie in your chosen architecture, and mitigating them appropriately requires extensive expertise in developing integrated photonic systems.
Key Benefits:
Comprehensive Planning: A clear, actionable roadmap from MVP to full product launch, tailored to your specific goals.
Future-Proofed Solutions: Strategies that consider both immediate needs and long-term market evolution, ensuring sustainable and competitive success.
Step 3 - Designing and Fabricating a First-Time-Right Photonic Chip
With your roadmap established and a clear plan in-hand, the next phase is designing and fabricating a photonic chip that brings your MVP to life with minimal fabrication runs.
Precision, expertise, and access to proven components help increase the chances of a first-time-right design, minimising budget burn or delay.
No MVP is perfect; here it’s important to identify the key value the MVP must demonstrate to unlock the next stage of development. Understanding how this then maps onto technological risks in the design and layout of the chip can be the difference between failure and success.
Our LightCraft service provides access to components developed and tested in-house by the Light Trace team. Accessing these components helps you jump straight to system-level development, minimising risk in the first design iteration.
For those with no chip design/layout capabilities in-house, LightCraft offers additional support for system design and layout, facilitated by the Light Trace team.
Key Considerations/Challenges Include:
Design Optimisation for Packaging: Aligning the chip design with packaging needs such as fiber I/O, laser integration, and thermal/electrical management.
Leveraging Proven Components: Using pre-tested components to minimize design risks and costs.
Error and compliance checking: Ensuring designs are compatable with foundry processes.
Supply Chain Relations: Navigating supply chain relations to ensure a seamless transition from design to fabrication.
Key Benefits of using LightCraft:
First-Time-Right Design: Expert support ensures your chip is designed correctly from the start.
Streamlined Development: Proven components and key supply chain relationships accelerate development.
Cost and Time Efficiency: Fewer fabrication runs are required for component-level development, ensuring an accelerated, budget-friendly MVP development.
At this point, you’ll be just 3 months into development and you’ll have a low-risk, system-level chip in fabrication…
Step 4 - Rapid Testing and Plug-and-Play Packaging with LightPort
Once your chip is fabricated, testing, packaging, and integration must begin. Here, the aim is to:
Understand component-level performance quickly and reliably,
Enable existing engineers to assess system-level performance, and
Enable demonstration of the MVP outside of a controlled lab environment to help showcase the technology in the field.
Component-level Testing
Before exploring the system, it’s important to validate the performance of all components used on the chip, even if they’ve been previously proven. Having trustworthy and extensive data for each component helps uncover any potential fabrication errors and provides a solid foundation to begin characterising at the system level.
At Light Trace, we’ve developed automated testing capabilities (pictured, right) that can quickly and reliably generate a report on the performance of components used within your system, providing clarity.
System-level Characterisation
After validating your components, the next step is system packaging and characterisation. At Light Trace, we recognise that your engineers are the best people for your system-level characterisation, as they possess in-depth knowledge of your existing product lines. However, engaging effectively with a packaged chip can often present significant challenges.
Key Challenges
Electronic Interfacing: Packaged chips are typically returned with pin breakouts, necessitating the development of additional hardware to drive the system effectively.
Software Development: Bespoke software is essential for programming the system and enabling demonstrations, often requiring specialised effort before characterisation can begin.
Temperature Stability: Many chip systems require active temperature stabilisation to maintain optimal performance, demanding further infrastructure investment.
Our Solution
At Light Trace, we simplify this process by integrating your packaged chip into the LightPort:Pro (pictured, right). This platform addresses these challenges by:
Streamlining electronic interfacing,
Providing ready-to-use software infrastructure, and
Incorporating active temperature stabilisation.
With LightPort:Pro, your engineers can focus on system characterisation and programming without needing additional training or onboarding, ensuring a seamless and efficient workflow to MVP demonstration.
Take the next step with Light Trace Photonics
The journey from idea to MVP doesn’t have to be daunting. With Light Trace Photonics as your partner, you gain access to a proven process, expert guidance, and the tools you need to succeed. Let us help you transform your concept into a demonstrable MVP that paves the way for commercial success—all within 12 months.
Are you ready to accelerate your photonics development? Contact us today to learn more about our services and start your journey to innovation.
