As the photonics industry transitions from research and development (R&D) to high-volume manufacturing, test and assembly processes must evolve to meet the demands of scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency. Teradyne, Quantifi Photonics, and ficonTEC—each with decades of experience in photonics test and automation—have collaborated to deploy advanced wafer-level test solutions over the past three years. Most recently, we introduced the industry’s first high-volume, double-sided wafer test platform, along with next-generation high-channel-count optical instrumentation. This session will present key insights from real-world deployments and explore the future of photonics test across all major insertion points: wafer, optical engine, and co-packaged optics (CPO). We will examine: Wafer-Level Test: Which optical tests—will remain essential over the next decade? Will active alignment always be required, or can passive techniques scale with improved lithographic precision? How will the continued use of edge coupling—especially for high-density photonic integrated circuits (PICs)—impact alignment strategies and probe card design? What test data best predicts long-term device reliability? Will high-speed electrical tests—such as bit error rate (BER) and eye diagram analysis—be required at production scale? Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) Test: What are the most yield-critical test insertions for CPO? What optical instrumentation is needed at automated test equipment (ATE) and system-level test (SLT) stages to validate optical-electrical co-design, thermal behavior, and system-level performance? We will finish by predicting how photonics test must adapt to support the next generation of silicon photonics and co-packaged optics architectures.
