Indigenous silicon photonics toolkit launched

MeitY rolled out a home-grown Process Design Kit and an automated test engine for photonic chips, built at IIT Madras and offered as a shared national facility.

What happened

• The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) launched two indigenous silicon photonics technology solutions on 24 April 2026, with the launch led by MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan.
• The first is a Silicon Photonics Process Design Kit (PDK) — a design rulebook for fabricating photonic chips. The second is a Universal packaged PPIC (Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuit) Test Engine, an automated characterisation platform for testing such chips.
• Both were developed at the MeitY-sponsored Centre of Excellence in Chip-scale Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuits and Systems (CoE-CPPICS) at IIT Madras.
• The PDK ships with 50+ verified building-block components that engineers can drop into a design to lay out a Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC).
• The facility is positioned as a shared national resource for the Indian photonics R&D community — industry, startups, academia and defence users alike.
• India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) CEO Amitesh Sinha flagged uses across classical and quantum regimes, with possible support under the upcoming ISM 2.0 (R&D vertical) and a future dedicated Silicon Photonics Fab.

Background & context

To read this release you first have to know what silicon photonics is. A conventional microchip moves information using electrons travelling through metal interconnects. A photonic chip instead moves information using photons — particles of light — guided through tiny on-chip waveguides. Light carries more data, dissipates less heat over distance, and does not suffer the same resistive losses as copper, which is why photonics already dominates long-haul fibre-optic communication. Silicon photonics is the specific approach that fabricates these light-guiding circuits on ordinary silicon wafers, using the same CMOS-compatible manufacturing lines that already make electronic chips. That compatibility is the whole point: it lets a photonics industry piggy-back on the mature, high-volume silicon manufacturing base rather than building an exotic new one.

A Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) is to light what a normal integrated circuit is to electric current — many optical functions (lasers, modulators, waveguides, detectors, splitters) packed onto a single chip. A Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuit (PPIC) goes one step further: like a field-programmable gate array in electronics, its optical pathways can be reconfigured after manufacture, so one chip can be tuned to many tasks rather than being hard-wired for one.

Designing such chips is hard because a designer cannot start from raw physics every time. They need a Process Design Kit (PDK) — a library, supplied by or for a particular foundry, that contains pre-characterised, manufacturable component models (each waveguide bend, modulator and coupler) along with the design rules guaranteeing the layout can actually be fabricated. A PDK is the bridge between a circuit designer and a fab. Until now, Indian photonics designers leaned heavily on foreign PDKs tied to foreign foundries. An indigenous PDK with 50-plus verified components lets Indian teams design domestically and own the design knowledge.

This launch sits inside a larger national push. The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), approved in 2021 under the umbrella Semicon India Programme with an outlay of around ₹76,000 crore, is the nodal vehicle for building a domestic semiconductor and display ecosystem; it operates under MeitY and is implemented through the Digital India Corporation. ISM's better-known limbs cover fabs, assembly-test-mark-pack (ATMP/OSAT) units and compound semiconductors. The photonics toolkit is being slotted into the R&D vertical of the planned ISM 2.0, signalling that the mission's second phase intends to fund the design and research layer, not only manufacturing plants. The CoE-CPPICS at IIT Madras is the MeitY-sponsored centre that actually did the engineering, building on India's existing strength in academic photonics.

For Prelims

• What launched: two solutions — a Silicon Photonics Process Design Kit (PDK) and a Universal packaged PPIC Test Engine — launched by MeitY on 24 April 2026.
• Full forms to lock in: PDK = Process Design Kit · PIC = Photonic Integrated Circuit · PPIC = Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuit · CoE-CPPICS = Centre of Excellence in Chip-scale Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuits and Systems · ISM = India Semiconductor Mission · MeitY = Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology.
• Where built: CoE-CPPICS at IIT Madras, sponsored by MeitY.
• Nodal chain: MeitY (ministry) → India Semiconductor Mission (the programme) → CoE-CPPICS, IIT Madras (the executing centre). The launch was made by the MeitY Secretary; the ISM CEO spoke to its placement.
• The core idea: silicon photonics uses photons (light) rather than electrons to carry and process information on a chip, fabricated on CMOS-compatible silicon.
• The PDK: a design-rule library with 50+ verified components for laying out Photonic ICs, usable by industry, startups, academia and defence.
• The Test Engine: an automated characterisation platform for testing/packaging programmable photonic chips — a "universal" packaged tester.
• Manufacturing partners named in the release: a PRDM model on CMOS-compatible silicon photonics; foundry partner SilTerra (Malaysia); packaging partner izmo Microsystems, Bengaluru.
• Application span (per ISM CEO): both classical and quantum regimes; future support possible under ISM 2.0 (R&D vertical) and a planned Silicon Photonics Fab.
• Where it belongs in the family: the Semicon India / India Semiconductor Mission ecosystem, alongside fab, ATMP/OSAT, compound-semiconductor and Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) limbs. Silicon photonics is a design + research capability, not a manufacturing plant.

Why it matters

The problem this addresses is design dependence. India's semiconductor effort has so far concentrated on attracting fabrication and packaging investment. But the highest-value, most strategically sensitive layer of the chip stack is design — and in the emerging field of photonics, Indian designers were reliant on foreign PDKs locked to foreign foundries. Owning an indigenous PDK and a homegrown test engine lets domestic teams iterate, prototype and characterise photonic chips without exporting the design know-how. It is the kind of capability-building that a fab subsidy alone does not deliver.

It also matters because of where photonics is heading. Photonic chips are central to high-bandwidth data-centre interconnects, AI accelerators (where moving data, not computing, is the bottleneck), optical sensing, LiDAR, and quantum information systems — areas where demand is rising sharply. By creating a shared national facility open to startups, academia and defence, the launch lowers the entry barrier for a young Indian photonics industry and pools scarce, expensive characterisation infrastructure. The explicit hook into the planned ISM 2.0 R&D vertical and a future dedicated Silicon Photonics Fab signals an intent to extend the mission from manufacturing plants toward the research-and-design frontier — the gap that has historically kept India a chip consumer rather than a chip originator.

For Mains