SUMMARY AND COMPARISON OF U.S. AND JAPANESE EFFORTS

In the integrated optics area, there is fair parity overall between the United States and Japan. U.S. firms are generally ahead in providing LiNbO ₃ modulators to the market, although Japan offers very good digital telecommunications devices. Japan has a more substantial effort in silica planar lightwave circuits. In semiconductors, Japan appears to be slightly ahead in integrated laser/modulators, because there is a much larger effort and more companies are working on commercial development. Both countries have excellent R&D efforts in photonic integrated circuits.

In packaging, there is parity between the United States and Japan in providing high-performance photonic devices, and both countries have very good efforts in silicon microbench R&D and other R&D for high-performance packages. Japanese companies dominate the package parts and subassembly business. In the area of future high-volume devices (e.g., packaged lasers for FTTC), Japan appears to be investing substantially more resources. For present high-volume devices such as CD lasers, Japan is dominant, except for LEDs, where the United States has a very strong position. Table 4.2 summarizes these results.

Table 4.2
Status of Integrated Optics and Packaging in Japan Compared to U.S.