VIRTUOSA addresses the needs of the Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry to increase efficiency and reduce cost for media production to meet the growing consumer demand for more content on more channels and more devices and for more live content. Live content is of cultural and social interest for all citizen in Europe and globally; these are sport or music events, daily news, governmental speeches or historical events. The market for Live content is huge and predicted to reach globally USD 545 bn with the clear majority (66%) coming from broadcast Live TV. VIRTUOSA will revolutionise live media production through Virtualisation of network and production resources. It is a new generation of media networks based on cutting-edge IP technology, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology, High Performance Computing, and Cloud Computing. Virtualisation is the key to make live media production more efficient, easy scalable and cost-efficient. It enables sharing production facilities, equipment, resources, and talents across locations with >1000 km in distance . Live media production costs will be reduced by 30-40%, and more Live content can be easily produced in parallel. Objective of the VIRTUOSA project is to demonstrate and validate our new VIRTUOSA product in operational environment and to complete commercial and production preparations for product launch within this 24-month project. Our VIRTUOSA product consists of three core elements: 1) A tailor-made Software Defined Network Architecture solution for SDN-based LAN & WAN and 5G acquisition, 2) High performance SDN-based Media Server and Ethernet/IP switches, and 3) a Software for Media Network Management and self-Service Orchestration. According to the need of our end-users – broadcasters, content producers, media service providers – we design tailor-made solutions for installation at their facilities with and without the connection to remote locations (remote studio, stadium, event).

The rapid rise of quantum computation has raised concerns about conventional encryption methods. In response to this emerging threat, quantum key distribution (QKD) offers an information-theoretically secure key exchange. However, its complexity currently hinders its widespread adoption. QOSiLICIOUS introduces a disruptive “commodity” approach, integrating every element of quantum random number generation (QRNG) and QKD monolithically on silicon. This results in ultra-compact implementations with clear photonic/microelectronic co-integration strategy and excellent cost credentials allowing us to address new QKD markets. A pixel-size (0.01 mm²) QRNG will be realized in 0.18-µm CMOS, including a multi-dot silicon light emitting diode surrounded by a ring-shaped single-photon avalanche detector (SPAD) with co-integrated active quenching. Its true random numbers will feed a QKD transmitter developed on a silicon-photonic BiCMOS platform on a footprint of no more than 1 mm². Simplicity is ensured through a novel GeSi light emitter sourcing a BB84 polarization state encoder. This yields an all-silicon solution free from the burden of complex and costly III-V / silicon hetero-integration. The efforts on QOSiLICIOUS’ QKD transmitter are complemented by surface-normal GeSi SPAD technology for 1550-nm operation at detection efficiencies of 50% under Peltier cooling. The GeSi SPAD will be transferred to the waveguide-based silicon-photonic platform to further yield an integrated QKD receiver including BB84 state analysis. The applicability of QOSiLICIOUS’ technology to commodity segments will be evaluated in techno-economic challenging scenarios (i) intra-datacenter interconnects, (ii) access and 6G networks and (iii) mobile applications with a close-proximity free-space optical key exchange. Performance evaluation activities will target secure-key generation that enables the encryption of co-existing classical data traffic through fast AES key renewal.

To unveil the true potential of graphene and 2D materials and address the increasing demand for industrial applications, it is essential to develop upscaling growth technologies which preserve the pristine quality at large wafer size and enable the wafer-scale integration of the material with a standardized process. Therefore, a green and solvent-free technology offering the solution to transfer single layer graphene and 2D materials in a single step, preserving the same quality in wafer scale processing constitutes a major breakthrough, with the potential to disrupt all the market segments associated with the emerging applications. This project, L2D2, builds upon the IP generated within the H2020-FET-open project LEAF-2D, to deliver the first scalable digital process for growing and integrating graphene (Gr) and the most prominent 2D materials (including MoTe2 and WS2) in terms of optoelectronic properties, quality and uniformity, onto Si photonics and CMOS compatible substrates on-demand. In particular, L2D2 will deliver a two-fold technological breakthrough: 1. The technology to upscale Gr and other 2D materials on the 8-inch scale at industrial grade quality 2. A laser-based, single-step and green printing solution for wafer-scale integration of 2D materials. The exploitable outcomes of L2D2 will lay the foundation for a deep-tech business model which will secure the foreground of the project and transform it to innovations with high exploitation potential. The business model will be realized through the creation of a spin out with a team of co-founders encompassing highly skilled entrepreneurs with equal expertise in technology, innovation and business. The spin-out will follow a viable and fast commercialization pathway, relying on strategic corporate agreements with the world leading companies in Graphene and Si photonics, as well as on IP exploitation.

The rampant growth of ICT applications, such as AI, is moving an increasing amount of computing resources to datacentres. Datacentres are responsible for approximately three quarters of the internet protocol data in the world. The continuous increase in data traffic and bandwidth demands are challenging the status quo of the datacentre interconnect architecture. The outstanding challenge for the next decade is finding scalable and efficient solutions to enable the bandwidth density that will be needed. Co-packaged optics (CPO) is the enabling technology to drive this shift in the computational efficiency paradigm, and the market in silicon photonics with largest forecasted CAGR in 2022-2026, with potential multi-billion dollar revenues beyond 2030. CPO is based on decreasing the distance of power-hungry electrical interfaces by co-integrating optoelectronic modules on the same interposers. In order to drive the scaling in optical edge bandwidth density, multi-wavelength laser sources for densed wavelength division multiplexing will be needed, but state of the art commercial solutions face fundamental scaling issues. Amica builds upon a breakthrough wafer-scalable, super-efficient microcomb technology to realize critical demonstrators in WDM CPO, aiming at petabit-per-second aggregate speeds in a mass-manufacturable platform with unprecedented combination of channel count, efficiency, line spacing and power per line. The consortium brings a synergetic effort among an industrial leader in datacentre interconnects and high-performance computing, academic partners with complementary expertise in integrated photonics and an emerging startup that owns the intellectual property rights for commercialization. The team is complemented with an innovation office to lead the tech to market transition, and two associated partners who will help testing the technology for emerging markets beyond telecom.

IoT, 5G and cloud applications have created a huge growth of datacentre traffic fuelling the market of 400GbE and the ratification of 800GbE and 1.6T standards expected within 2013-2025. Datacentre operators must keep pace with the increasing speeds and to cope with the increasing power consumption required for airflow management and cooling. Moreover, they must address the massive interconnectivity between servers and switches dictated by 5G ultra-low latency applications. 100Gb/s per lane is the next step for the realization of 800GbE modules but this will be the end of pluggables and the start of co-packaged optics with ASICs paving the way to 1.6T and beyond. TWILIGHT aims to bring InP membranes and InP-HBT electronics at unprecedently close distances (110GHz linear drivers and 100GHz TIAs. TWILIGHT will exploit the PI-SOAs to develop 4x4 and16x16 optical space switches exhibiting nanosecond latency and >50% smaller footprint. The O-band and C-band SiP transceiver demonstrators leverage up to 72% and 74% power consumption savings compared to established technologies and target the datacentre market (2-10km) and DCI (<40km), respectively, with estimated cost 0.89€/Gb/s. Exploitation of TWILIGHT’s technologies is aimed via its industrial partner MLNX.