I would feel remise if I did not comment on the discussions that took place yesterday.

So everything appears to be on track. The buyer of DL is eager to take over that facility and expand the operation with some very substantial investments (big plans). The technology is progressing with really the only limitations to development being time and money. The sale of DL will certainly help in both those areas. So one area that Suresh addressed which has been noted on this board was concerns over IP protection. At DenseLight there is a core group who work on the Optical Interposer. In general this group will stay with POET (those details are still being worked out). Also POET will have their own equipment within the DenseLight foundry in keeping with the fab-light business model.

As a side note we have all read the proliferation of hiring with many stating duties required at other locations. Those requirements will continue to exist at other facilities where work is being performed (ie subcon locations).

We talked a little bit about disaggregation and the advantages this provides. It gives them the ability to mix and match the best devices without the same limitations that are suffered by monolithic type silicon photonic approaches. It has been noted that POET can integrate a light source into silicon photonics and it sounds like that is what a lot of companies who have huge investments in silicon photonics want initially. That is seen as a first step kind of like an introduction to the POET platform. Ultimately the strength and advantages of the total dielectric optical interposer based platform and very low cost assembly, packaging and test will compel these companies to convert.

The superior athermal waveguides, the ability to control the thermal profile by the geometry of the platform combined with exceptional low loss (.5db/cm waveguide loss and .5db insertion loss) which by the way that metric is holding up as advertised in customer demonstration. It makes it very difficult for the silicon photonics players to ignore. We talked about Rockley as having a very advanced silicon platform. Recall that Andrew uses the “bigger is better” approach to silicon waveguides. Well that is true bigger is better for silicon waveguides (as we have discussed here on this forum in the past) but it is recognized that POETs dielectric has significant advantages. But as I have commented in the past there is potential for POET to work with Rockley.

The disaggregation provides really great advantages to product development as well. For example Almae’s 56Ghz InP modulator is ideal for  the 400G optical engine. And they are also working with silicon modulators which are also very good. In other words POET does not need to build everything. They can build everything,  but they don’t need to. They are using the ecosystem that is established and providing the connectivity that is needed to drive down industry cost.

When we talk about the ASIC it was noted that they cost a lot of money and they are highly reliable. Photonics components on the other hand are generally less reliable so there has to be a certain amount of redundancy retained. 100G transceivers are a plug-in form factor that can be replaced without anywhere near the same cost as a laser failure that is integrated into the ASIC. Again however we can talk about the advantages of POET to avoid those high temperatures, control the thermal profile and use highly reliable optical components. This made me think about Ayer Labs and how they have to maintain the silicon chip at 125’C in order to keep the waveguides, modulators, lasers tuned to the correct wavelength. How does make sense? Clearly this would cause accelerated aging.

POET not only has a great advantage in a disruptive cost but Suresh can take the best devices in terms of efficiency and reliability and mix and match and connect without having to optimizing all elements within the same die which causes huge trade-offs in the existing platforms today.

The existing detectors that are being used in silicon are very inferior to what can be connected in the disaggregated approach that POET provides.

Time and money are the only constraints. There are so many applications that are waiting in line that the POET platform can improve. For now they are focused on the big ones that exist today in datacom and telecom. It is interesting when my POET partner (who has strong business sense) left our meeting he kind of chuckled when talking about the PON margins. They were considered low at 35%. The reality is those are great margins by most business standards. They are not the extraordinary margins that will be realised by the datacom optical engines but the volumes required are very large.

We can expect to continue to see more companies coming on board to finance product development as there is great interest. They are dealing with very big global companies. So I think we will see a lot of interest generated first when the buyer of DL and the details around the agreements are announced and then again when POET is  able to  announced the design-ins with major companies. We should begin to see POET rise well above the radar. I put in my usual request to see video content provided on the POET website to explain in a way that people can understand what the POET platform is. Again it is  time and money but they are thinking about it and I  will take every opportunity to remind them of this need  to  help  investors understand this breakthrough.