It is interesting to note that the design-in work for 400G applications which are being paid for by customers provides big advantages for the implementation of POET’s own 100G CWDM product(s). As we know the next generation of 100G is CWDM based transceivers which are expected to be a very high volume, long term market that POET could take over if the stars align.

As we can see from the statements by Suresh in the Q3 presentation there are several  synergistic benefits to  POETs business plans as a result of these agreements. The development needs of the 400G products can be directly applied to the development of 100G which provides POET with great cost savings.

The recent customer orders for products and services have resulted in an acceleration of our plan to develop lasers that will be incorporated in a full “transmit-and-receive optical engine” and to furthermore address the requirements of 400G implementations.

As a result, from now through the first two quarters of 2019, we expect to devote a substantial amount of our development and operational resources to customers who want to design-in all or portions of the Optical Interposer for 400G applications.

We believe that this process will lead them to understand the substantial benefits that a full Optical Interposer implementation will provide. Moreover, there is no better way to introduce technology to market than with substantial financial and engineering support of the leading companies in these markets, since the Optical Interposer and laser platform are speed agnostic and a single solution supports the requirements for both 100G and 400G, and an acceleration of 400G is completely synergistic with the deployment of 100G and within our development and product roadmap.

Therefore, in addition to our immediate focus on securing follow-on business with our lead customers, POET’s strategic plan continues to include the expected release of our own optical engines for qualification during the year as previously announced, which would further expand our customer base and design wins. Another point to note is that the total addressable market size for a complete transmit/receive solution is at least four times larger than that for a receive solution only. Therefore, acceleration of the laser development roadmap is critical to accessing the larger market sooner, particularly given the long qualification time for laser solutions in Datacom and telecom application

When I started this post I had planned to provide some additional info supporting Oz’s  post. As Oz’s posted the Pin Photodetector on the receive side has been qualified.  In addition what becomes really important to understand is that receiver sensitivity plays a very big role in the power budget. Having very sensitive detectors means that the light source power can be lowered which lowers the power budget of the link. And what is also  very important to  the power budget which ultimately determines the power requirments of the lasers is the insertion losses that occur across the link. The fact that POET is targeting insertion loss that exceeds the industry norms and is doing it without optics in an automated process provides a recipe for perfection in diverse applications like LIDAR. Look at the bakground of the people that are joining POET. This company is building for the future and there will in my opinion be a pretty extreme turning point in market perception.

And then we can all do  the dance...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk8mm1Qmt-Y