Integrated photonics design innovator Wave Photonics has announced that all Process Design Kits (PDKs) hosted, developed, or managed through its PDK Management Platform are officially compatible with Synopsys OptoCompiler. Operating as a unified electronic and photonic design automation platform, Synopsys OptoCompiler fuses dedicated photonic simulation with schematic-driven layouts and circuit verification. This direct software compatibility enables hardware engineers to synthesize, simulate, and verify complex Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) across multiple material stacks and wide-spectrum wavelengths from blue light to standard telecommunications bands.
[ Photonic Design Automation Pipeline ]
[ High-Level PIC Ideation ] ──► [ Wave Photonics PDK Platform ] ──► [ Synopsys OptoCompiler / OptSim ]
Automated S-Parameters & NDA Unified Simulation & Verification
tracking via CORNERSTONE foundry. Pre-calculated layout tape-outs.
The system integration provides a strategic design environment for developers building sub-systems for quantum technologies, data center telecommunications, and advanced optical sensing. Under the unified environment, all compatible PDKs feature pre-calculated S-parameters out of the box, allowing chip designers to execute high-fidelity circuit simulations inside Synopsys OptSim prior to physical foundry tape-out. Led by CEO James Lee, Wave Photonics engineered this cross-tool automation framework to eliminate the manual mapping and installation overhead that typically bottlenecks engineers when dealing with non-standardized component libraries.
For semiconductor foundries, the updated management hub simplifies secure product distribution by automating version control, non-disclosure agreement (NDA) tracking, and black-box intellectual property (IP) cloaking. CORNERSTONE, a prominent UK-based rapid-prototyping silicon photonics foundry managed by PDK Manager Ali Emre Kaplan, has deployed its open-source PDKs directly onto Wave Photonics’ cloud framework to interface with the new tooling. By matching smaller, specialized foundries with advanced Electronic Design Automation (EDA) assets under Synopsys R&D Engineering Director Sander Roosendaal, the platform ensures that emerging, quantum-specific chip processes can be modeled and manufactured with commercial-grade accuracy.
The official electronic design automation statements, foundry integration parameters, and software platform benchmarks can be audited via the Optica Newsroom Network here.
July 1, 2026
