Indie Semiconductor has broadened its photonics portfolio by adding internal capabilities for system testing, packaging, and photonics integration. By combining a class-leading optical component portfolio from the company’s previous acquisitions of TeraXion and Exalos with advanced in-house automated assembly, packaging, and optical test capabilities, Indie can now offer customers comprehensive photonics subsystems for rapid solution evaluation, pre-production validation, and low-volume production. This strategic capability is crucial for developing automotive and mobility applications such as ADAS sensing, head-up displays, gyroscopes, and adjacent industrial segments that demand levels of precision, quality, and reliability similar to the automotive sector.
In 2023, the market for optical components in the automotive segment was estimated at $6.5bn by S&P Global Mobility. This figure is projected to rise to $9.2bn by 2030. The integration of discrete optical components—lasers, superluminescent emitting diodes (SLEDs), photodiodes, and gratings—into photonic subsystems provides substantial additional value by enabling system integrators and automakers to deploy optics-enabled capabilities into their end-user applications swiftly and efficiently, resulting in significantly simplified supply chain logistics and increased reliability.
Through organic growth and strategic acquisitions, Indie Semiconductor has assembled a portfolio of high-quality optical components. The company has received requests from key customers to address challenges related to component integration, reliability, and supply chain logistics by providing comprehensive photonics subsystems, in addition to innovative optical components. A diverse customer and segment base will benefit from indie’s turnkey photonic design, integration, and full-system test capability, which will facilitate time-to-market and commercial deployment opportunities.
Indie Semiconductor is currently developing commercial photonics integration solutions for customers, with initial production deployments expected in the first half of 2025.
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Making lidar systems more affordable and lightweight requires tighter integration of optical components and higher volume manufacturing. For example, integrated photonics can address solid state scanning through optical phased arrays (OPAs). OPAs split a tuneable laser’s output into multiple channels, apply different time delays to each channel, and then recombine them. This process steers the light beam from a semiconductor chip at various angles with fewer secondary beams and no moving parts.
