Hirose Electric Co., Ltd. and AIO Core Co., Ltd. have entered into capital and business alliance. Accordingly, they have agreed to jointly develop high performance active optical connectors.

Utilizing Complementary Strengths

AIO Core will develop a silicon photonics chip with further advanced functionality of the IO Core® optical module. This has already been commercialized by using silicon photonics technology and quantum dot laser technology.

Consequently, Hirose Electric will jointly develop and sell modules and connectorized products that utilize the silicon photonics chip.

With this developed product, Hirose Electric and AIO Core will respond to the growing needs for optical transmission in various fields. Namely, these fields are in medical, telecommunications, and automotive markets.

In medical field, the technology will suit needs for space savings as medical devices have been downsizing. Moreover, the product is also suitable as noise suppression and to lower power consumption. Thus, addressing the problem of heat generation in equipment, heat resistance to withstand sterilization in invasive medical care.

In communication, the new product can meet higher speed transmission inside servers as well as noise suppression. Moreover, it can also meet the need for low power consumption.

Meanwhile in the automotive field, the higher speed and noise suppression features, as well as heat resistant features of the provide can provide the long-term reliability for the CASE trend.

Thus, in the partnership, Hirose Electric’s proprietary modularization and packaging technologies can provide to AIO Core silicon photonics and quantum dot laser technologies. Moreover, they will be able to meet stringent requirements that could not have been met so far.

Future Initiatives

The active optical connectors that Hirose Electric have already developed are suitable in various applications. Among them are medical equipment, measurement equipment etc. Hence, this joint development will support the evolution from telecommunications to optical communications in a wider range of applications and contribute to the development of industry.

10 September 2024