ZURICH -- GigOptix-Helix AG, subsidiary of Palo Alto, CA based GigOptix Inc. (OTCBB: GGOX - News), a fabless semiconductor company, that provides electronic engines for the optically connected digital world and other advanced radio frequency (RF) applications today announced that they will participate in the European Union funded project Silicon-Organic Hybrid Fabrication Platform for Integrated Circuits (“SOFI”). The company’s unique electro-optic polymer which is being used in SOFI, as well as other research projects by leading semiconductor manufacturers, allows new structures to be created on-chip to overcome the inherent speed limitation of silicon. This will enable a new era of ultra fast hybrid silicon-organic integrated circuits. The company will receive close to $500K funding for the project.

The rapid growth of the Internet requires continuous upgrade of the underlying equipment to keep pace with bandwidth demand and simultaneously, due to economic and environmental pressures, the energy has to be minimized. The semiconductor and optics industries have been advancing technology to solve the challenges of a modern communications infrastructure for decades. The SOFI project aims to unite the potential of semiconductor and optics technology to generate a step function in performance needed for the systems and networks of tomorrow. It will create fundamental new technology to enable ultra fast integrated circuits with on board optical modulators combining silicon and organic polymer materials.

The project is coordinated by Prof. Dr. J. Leuthold from the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. “We are confident that we will succeed in making a difference by designing and implementing ultra-fast ultra-low energy consuming modulators,” commented Prof. Dr. J. Leuthold. “This project benefits from years of preparation on the underlying idea, but most importantly, the consortium combines a high level of expertise that is bound to succeed.”

GigOptix Inc. (OTC: GGOX)