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Bardia Pezeshki
CEO at Avicena Tech
Bardia Pezeshki is the CEO of Avicena Tech, a role he has held since January 2019. He has a distinguished career in the field of optoelectronics, where he has been instrumental in developing and commercializing innovative technologies. Pezeshki's background includes significant achievements such as the development of high-bandwidth optical transceivers and tunable lasers, which have generated substantial revenue in the telecommunications sector.
Education and Early Career
Pezeshki earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Harvey Mudd College. His early career includes positions at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center and SDL Inc., where he gained valuable experience in research and development.
Professional Experience
Before joining Avicena Tech, Pezeshki served as the CEO of Kaiam Corporation from June 2009 to January 2019, where he led the development of multi-wavelength optical transceivers. He also founded Santur Corporation in 2000, which became a leader in the telecom market with its innovative tunable laser technology, capturing a significant market share.
Current Focus
At Avicena Tech, Pezeshki is focused on addressing the interconnect challenges in computing using microLED technology, aiming to enhance chip-to-chip communication efficiency. His leadership is characterized by a strong emphasis on innovation and commercialization, making him a notable figure in the technology sector.123
Highlights
Silicon Photonics Co-packaging. Cool! but is it practical?
Back in 2017, my old company Kaiam arguably started this, with a demo at OFC with Corning of a 1.6Tb/s module. We called it CoPPhI back then and Rob Kalman and I gave a number of talks and seminars proselytizing the approach.. But boy was it hard! I think it still is.
But there is a much better way now. Turns out you don't need lasers if you don't want to go far. And the bottleneck for AI/memory/processors is really only a few meters. GaN LEDs can do speeds greater than 10Gb/s, and the display world knows how to put millions on them on any silicon (with transistors!).
Compared to laser based CPO: LED based links don't go far, but
- no tight single mode coupling - (50um diameter fibers)
- runs at high temp - recent paper went to 400C!
- super reliable - unlike VCSELs - and no need for an external lightsource
- no modal noise issues, isolators needed, polarization problems, bit-error-rate floors due ultimately to speckle
- silicon detectors are amazing in the blue - can even do APDs and piggy back on CIS processors for cameras
- much lower power and massive density (pJ/bit and Tb/s per mm)
- fundamentally wide bus (Hey, clock speeds of chips haven't improved in decades - this is fundamentally what chip guys want)
- And super low cost!
As we have played with this technology over the last few years at Avicena, we've become more and more convinced this will find its way into cables, board mounted optics, chiplets, and ultimately on the chips themselves - in your AI HPC, servers, laptops, even cell phones.
Definitely not as sexy as lasers - but way more practical.
What an amazing Optical Fiber Conference! We showed a live demo of our 1Tbps chip, where you can see the characteristics of each individual lane. Thanks everyone for all the interest!
https://lnkd.in/gs6CCYG8
