DYNAMOS develops fast (1 ns) and widely tunable (>110 nm) lasers, energy-efficient (~ fJ/bit), broadband (100 GHz) electro-optic modulators, and high-speed (1 ns) broadcast-and-select packet switches as photonic integrated circuits (PICs). DYNAMOS meets the expected outcome objectives and call scope by proposing the development of low energy (few pJ/bit) PICs, which are integrated into modular and scalable subsystems, and subsequently utilized to demonstrate novel data centre networks with highly deterministic sub-microsecond latency to enable maximum congestion reduction, full bisection bandwidth (lower congestion) and guaranteed quality of service while reducing cost per Gbps. The proposed network offers optical circuit switched reconfiguration and guaranteed (contention-less) full-bisection bandwidth, allowing any computational node to communicate to any other node at full-capacity. DYNAMOS builds on recent developments in III-V optoelectronics, thick silicon-on-insulator waveguide technology, and silicon organic hybrid (SOH) modulators. It co-develops the entire ecosystem of transceivers, switches and networks to boost overall performance and to reducing the total cost of data exchange, instead of focusing on the improvement of individual optical links or interfaces. The objectives of DYNAMOS perfectly match the major photonics research & innovations challenges defined in the Photonics21 Multiannual Strategic Roadmap 2021-2027.

Air pollution poses a great environmental risk to health, accounting for nearly half a million premature deaths each year in Europe. Biogas production is an enabling technology to achieve net-zero emissions, while accelerating the energy diversification in Europe. Both, air quality control and biogas production demand critical improvements in sensor technology. SYMPHONY will develop a new technology enabling the implementation of dense networks of cloud-connected, low-cost, portable and easy-to-use sensors, capable of multi-target detection for applications in air quality control, pollution monitoring, industrial process control and safety. SYMPHONY will address this challenge by making key developments in silicon photonics, neuromorphic circuits, artificial intelligence, integration, and packaging, while exploiting state-of-the-art silicon microelectronics for ultra-low power edge computing with artificial intelligence, and the connected sensor network for spatially-resolved analysis and prediction. The main focus of SYMPHONY smart sensors are gases related to the biogas production and gases that have been identified by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) as highly pollutant and contributing to the greenhouse effect, such as CO2, CH4 and NO2. SYMPHONY smart sensors will be validated in three different relevant scenarios: city pollution monitoring in Cyprus, process control and leakage detection in biogas micro-plants in multiple locations in Europe. With this ambition in mind, SYMPHONY has gathered a transversal consortium, comprising three academic institutions, two research institutes, four companies and two end-users, coming from seven different countries in Europe. The consortium covers the full value chain, including silicon photonics, neuromorphic circuits, silicon microelectronics, integration, packaging, artificial intelligence, gas sensing, the internet of things, biogas production and air pollution monitoring.

ADOPTION works toward the goal of proving a low power and low cost solution for intra-data centre networks employing co-packaging of the optical (CPO) transceivers with the packed switch chip. Hyperscale data centres are a fundamental and inextricable part of our digital society. However, data centre power consumption represents a huge global problem accounting for 1% of the global power consumption. Scaling the capacity of the current architectures for intra-data centre networks is also becoming more and more challenging due to the increasing power consumption of the electrical interconnects between electrical packet switches and pluggable optical transceivers. ADOPTION aims at addressing switch capacities scaling beyond 204.8Tb/s with port speeds of 6.4Tb/s by reducing the electrical interconnect lengths using silicon photonics CPO transceiver engines with high power efficiency targeting around 3pJ/bit. ADOPTION will also develop innovative packaging solutions using a two-part assembly separating the electrical and optical layers to simplify processes and increase yield. An advanced active optical alignment for fibre arrays will also be integrated in the assembly process with the aim of reducing assembly time and improving coupling efficiency. With these solutions ADOPTION is targeting the challenging goal of reducing the cost of the optical interfaces to below 50 cents per Gb/s. ADOPTION will also demonstrate disruptive new network architectures for hyper-scale data centres and AI computing clusters utilising optical switching and routing to increase efficiency and reduce latency. ADOPTION is aiming to create a new ecosystem of research and innovation, building on the complementary expertise of 3 SMEs, 3 large companies and 4 research institutions in the consortium, and to redefine the digital supply chain for CPO transceivers, fostering European competitiveness in this new value chain. To fulfil this vision, the consortium is asking for 5.8 M€.