PRC’s Photonic Chip Push Signals Leapfrogging Moment

Sunny Cheung

Source Link

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has gone from a single pilot production line to a string of headline breakthroughs in photonics technology since 2024. Beijing has framed progress by researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as a way around U.S. chip sanctions.

Photonic chips, which move information using light rather than electricity, are faster, run cooler, and—crucially for Beijing—do not depend on the cutting-edge factory equipment that the United States has blocked the PRC from buying. PRC labs are at or near the global frontier in several photonic research benchmarks, but the United States and Taiwan still dominate the parts of the photonic supply chain that turn lab demonstrations into viable, scalable products.