The first market that POET is planning to tackle is Data Centers. “For data centers, power has become critically important. Historically, the way you solve power problems is integrating multiple components monolithically on a single chip and that’s what has driven silicon technology for years. Now the optics world is primed for a similar transition to integrated solutions. POET is a very unique and offers the only integrated platform with gallium arsenide and optics so we are really excited to be rolling out a platform that is initially targeted at data centers.”

There is a significant challenge to move from copper to optics in a way that is cost effective. “POET is tackling the cost equation more so than any other technology by attacking it at the component level, the wafer scale packaging level and at the wafer scale test level. So that’s how we’re able to get the significant reduction in costs that we are looking to achieve. And as we do that, we will potentially become cost competitive with copper technology. At this point, the the advantages of optical connections are tremendous in terms of power savings. The tag line we like to use is: the performance of optics at near the price point of copper.” Other ancillary benefits of optics are lower weight, higher flexibility, smaller size and less Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI), all of which are becoming significant pain points in high density installations.

http://www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2016/01/20/how-poet-technologies-v-ptk-disrupting-opto-electronics-industry