No technology platform can do it all in integrated photonics. In this article, we take a closer look at a base material that stands out for its seamless integration with existing CMOS infrastructure: silicon. Capable of propagating high data rates at relatively low power dissipation, light is a fantastic carrier of information. Silicon has been the cornerstone of semiconductor technology for decades. It was only a matter of time before two and two were put together: a technology that harnesses the power of light using the very same platform that propelled microelectronics to great heights. After all, why reinvent the wheel when billions and billions of dollars had already been sunk into perfecting the materials and processes used to manufacture microelectronics? And so silicon photonics was born. First explored in the 1980s and starting to gain steam around the turn of the century onward, by now the technology has been commercialized in volume. It’s proving increasingly popular in data centers, in which silicon photonics-based transceivers enable optical connections between servers. As the world’s hunger for data grows, as well as its desire to reduce energy consumption, the technology is expected to balloon in the next decade. Yole Group, a market researcher, projects a blistering compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36 percent for the silicon photonics market over 2021-2027, reaching almost 1 billion dollars by the end of that period.