India, Oct. 8 -- At the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC), imec - a world-leading research and innovation hub in advanced semiconductor technologies - presented the world's first Ge/Si avalanche photodiode (APD) to combine 100 GHz bandwidth, low-voltage (5 V) operation and a responsivity of 1.8 A/W across both the O- and C-bands.

Delivering a 3 dB receiver-sensitivity improvement, the device was used to demonstrate the first net 400 Gbps optical link employing an APD receiver. This breakthrough marks an important step toward next-generation optical interconnects for AI data centers, where vast amounts of data must be exchanged with ever-higher speed and energy efficiency.

As AI workloads continue to scale, data center...