Photonics is the science that underpins technologies to generate, control, manipulate, and detect light.  It supports a wide range of applications including data communications, optical computing, LiDAR, optical sensing, and renewable energy sources such as high-efficiency solar panels.  Photonic integration is key to enabling the growth of data-hungry AI by reducing the energy and environmental cost of moving huge amounts of data around in datacentres.  Integrated photonics will also be a critical component for IoT sensors and their connectivity. 

Photonics is a systems-enabling technology, with a strong emphasis on integration. That means putting more photonic functionality onto each chip and integrating photonics with other technologies, particularly microelectronics, using both hybrid and monolithic approaches. This leads naturally to larger and more complex designs, tas well as greater design automation and verification capability. The trend toward higher levels of integration naturally favours the adoption of silicon photonics. However, silicon photonics chip volumes are still relatively very small, with current deployments in the high-end market (datacenters, high performance computing (HPC) etc.). 

Access barriers and costs need to be reduced in order for the use of silicon photonics to become universal and fully integrated with other high-performance technologies.