The University of Washington is to offer a silicon photonics multi-project wafer service, co-funded by Intel and fabbed by BAE Systems.
"This program will provide access to high-end semiconductor manufacturing, enabling any researcher in the world to build integrated electronic-photonic circuits in silicon," said the University
The aim is to kick-start the photonics industry.
"We would like the photonics industry, 10 years from now, to function in a way that's very similar to the electronics industry today," said University of Washington researcher Michael Hochberg. "People building optoelectronic systems will send designs out to an inexpensive, reliable third party for manufacturing, so they can focus on being creative about the design."
The service is to be called OpSIS - Optoelectronics Systems Integration in Silicon will permit researchers to reduce costs by more than 100 times, Hochberg claimed.
In developing the rules and protocols, Hochberg aims to create a system so that non-specialists can begin to design and build functioning chips that integrate photonics and electronics.
Creating these rules requires a fine balance.
"You want a minimum of rules because people are going to use the technology in ways that you never imagined," Professor Carver Mead of CalTech. "You want people to use it in ways that seem crazy."
OpSIS already has a half-dozen early users who are participating in 'risk runs' that test the fledgling protocols.
Eventually, the centre plans to offer three runs per year, each of which could accommodate 30 to 40 users.