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The realization of ultra-compact passive silicon photonic devices is becoming more and more important for the future large-scale photonic integration as desired for many systems. Although some compact silicon photonic devices have been demonstrated by using inverse design, the device performance is still insufficient for real applications. Here, we propose and realize several representative ultra-compact advanced passive silicon photonic devices with decent performances by introducing subwavelength-grating (SWG) structures developed by our high-efficiency inverse design method. These devices are designed by optimally manipulating the multimode excitation and the multimode interference in a region defined with SWG structures. These SWG structures with excellent feature-size uniformity are more fabrication-friendly than those random nano-structures used in previous inverse-designed photonic devices. The high-efficiency of our inverse design method is attributed to a novel search-space-dimension control strategy and the efficient problem-oriented electromagnetic-field solvers available for SWG structures. Specifically, we present the realization of a 6-channel mode (de)multiplexer, a broadband 90°-hybrid, and a two-channel flat-top wavelength demultiplexer as some examples, which can hardly be realized by previously reported inverse design approaches. These devices exhibit ultra-compact footprints as well as decent performances when compared to the counterparts developed by the classical theory.