A member of this board sent me a PM asking why POET has to build that ring oscillator. Don't they already have some device currently available that can measure performance?

I don't know what POET has today and how good it may be to measure (or deduce) performance. I believe they can, but it might be quite special and difficult to explain, even difficult to explain to a semiconductor engineer.

This very different with the ring oscillator. I am quoting from the respective Wikipedia article:

• A ring oscillator is often used to demonstrate a new hardware technology, analogous to the way a hello world program is often used to demonstrate a new software technology.

The ring oscillator is a rather simple and well-known device in the industry. And it is especially well-suited to measure the time an inverter need to change its state. An inverter is the main building block of digital logic circuitry. So if you know how good or bad a ring oscillator performs, you have a good impression of the hardware it is made of.

The nice thing with the ring oscillator is you don't have to explain what it is. All the engineers POET Technologies is talking to know that. And if, em, when they'll see the numbers, they'll gasp the implications immediately.