StockkerO I believe it is "when" not If. They have developed all componets of the optical engine already and proven them to work in the lab and also reproduced in high volume wafer runs at wavetech. They are in the process of tweeking wafer runs to acheive a higher pass/fail percentage of chips being produced as well as optimizing the vcsel to what they believe it can acheive. At this stage they

As previously announced, POET intends to commercialize its integrated resonant cavity detector as its first product and demonstrate this prototype by the end of 2016. 6-inch detector wafers based on the POET platform, recently fabricated at POET’s foundry supplier, demonstrated superior responsivity parameters relative to best-in-class performance. POET’s detectors differ from conventional devices in that they are resonant cavity designs, which enable greater sensitivity in detector applications. Benchmark parameters, such as responsivity, on POET’s detector device far exceed the performance of detectors in the market today. At a bias voltage of 3.3V, POET detectors have demonstrated a room temperature thyristor enhanced saturated responsivity of 13A/W at an input optical power threshold of less than 200mW and at an aperture of 10mm. This is about 20X higher on a 3X smaller device relative to typical 850nm PiN diodes. These results from the first set of detector wafers produced at the production foundry provide critical proof points for POET to introduce a differentiated detector product to the market later this year.

The POET team continues to make significant progress in the lab-to-fab transition, achieving a key milestone in successfully validating POET’s process technology transfer to its high volume production foundry supplier. Multiple 6-inch wafer lots of VCSELs and transistors were also processed at the foundry. Testing and characterization of these devices is underway and POET expects to require further development cycles through additional wafer processing to fully achieve the true potential for these integrated opto-electronic devices. Announcements will be forthcoming on the performance of these devices, over the next months, as development progresses.

The POET team continues to make significant progress in the lab-to-fab transition, achieving a key milestone in successfully validating POET’s process technology transfer to its high volume production foundry supplier. Multiple 6-inch wafer lots of VCSELs and transistors were also processed at the foundry. Testing and characterization of these devices is underway and POET expects to require further development cycles through additional wafer processing to fully achieve the true potential for these integrated opto-electronic devices. Announcements will be forthcoming on the performance of these devices, over the next months, as development progresses.

“We are very excited with both the device results so far and the validation of our process transfer to scalable production environment,” said Dr. Subhash Deshmukh, Chief Operating Officer of POET Technologies. “Over the next few months we plan to make additional announcements on our key milestones and device performance as we continue our aggressive drive towards commercialization of POET’s highly differentiated technology.”

There main objective is to optimize all components. The detector is optimized already. The thyrister and other transistors are produced and operates as they should. The Vcsel is working at or slightly better than other market vcsels already. When they are satisfied with the operation of the components then I believe it is just a matter of making the wafer runs of the Optical Engine chips to an expected percentage of pass/fail production that is market viable.

So as of now I beleive they could put out an optical engine at a lower standard than they want and only attract a few lower NRE particpants or wait and bring out a highly disruptive Optical Engine that the majority of companies are looking for and needing. Management believe this can be acheived, and in turn have alot higher NRE's offers and completely dominate the optical integration and data markets for possibly decades to come.

Why rush now when we have been waitng so long for this exact situation that they have said will be available within 10 months.