According to foreign media reports, in order to promote the development and deployment of silicon photonics technology, telecommunications giant Vodafone has formulated a detailed plan to expand its workforce and announced cooperation with European photonic chip developers iPronics and Salience Labs. Vodafone seeks to integrate photonic chips into its mobile base stations to achieve ultra-low latency, highly programmable, and more efficient networks. The company has identified these two optoelectronic companies as one of the first startups to collaborate on the Malaga expansion park in Spain.
Vodafone said that the photonic chip integration will support computing progress in fields such as generative artificial intelligence, network security and autonomous vehicle technology. IPronics is a subsidiary of the University of Politicia de Valencia and began launching the first batch of programmable PICs earlier this year. The company’s fully programmable PIC function is similar to a field programmable gate array. In March of this year, the company listed a “multinational telecommunications and electronics company” as one of its first customers.
Salience Labs, established by Oxford University and the University of Manchester in 2021, is commercializing an ultra-high speed multi chip processor, which places photon processing maps directly on static random access memory. These chips are designed for mass production using standard CMOS processes.
While announcing the expansion of the Malaga campus, Vodafone shared information about the partnership. Vodafone stated that the base currently has over 430 engineers and will add an additional 170 by 2025.