Additional info on today's news

Aiming to become the global leader in chip-scale photonic solutions by deploying Optical Interposer technology to enable the seamless integration of electronics and photonics for a broad range of vertical market applications

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Adrian Brijbassi

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Additional info on today's news

posted on Sep 15, 2021 12:35AM

Hi everyone,

Today was a momentous day for POET. The company is on a steady march to commercialization that is expected to be achieved in Q4 2021. The press release refers to alpha samples that will be tested for 2,400 hours. That is an industry standard process. The very good news is POET and its partners have worked in lockstep to make this achievement happen. There is extreme confidence that the 100G Tx Optical Engine will meet its qualification requirements. In fact, most devices that fail do so within the first 500 hours of testing. POET, internally, has stress-tested its devices far beyond the industry standard and they have passed. POET's team has also smartly anticipated some changes that will speed up the Beta process, allowing samples to go from sampling to production within the timeline stated in the company's roadmap. That timeline to revenue — the important one — remains unchanged.

For a better understanding of how the company got to this stage. Here are, in brief, just some of the steps that needed to happen:

Epi wafers produced (multiple steps)

Epi wafers processed into laser chips (multiple steps)

Lasers delivered, tested and binned

Detectors and monitors tested and binned

Interposer wafers shipped to Singapore

Interposer wafer processed (thinning and dicing)

Lasers bonded to Interposer

Detectors and monitors bonded to Interposer

Lasers and Detectors on Interposer tested post-bonding

Binned for performance in all 4 channels

Evaluation boards (EVBs) and software designed, built and tested

Populated Interposer chips mounted on EVBs

Populated Interposer chips tested and binned after mounting

Fiber Attach Units mounted on Interposer Chips

In order to get this all done, partially completed wafers, chips, lasers, detectors and assembled devices are shipped multiple times to the USA, China, Singapore, etc. With each shipment there is the possibility of loss or damage. At each step of the assembly or fabrication, multiple things can go wrong. And there is a chip supply shortage that has impacted the world, with foundry capacity for even the smallest processes completely dried up for some. I would think many investors would agree that announcing when every cracked wafer occurred or when a chip delivery wasn't received would be unhealthy for the stock price and an unnecessary distraction from the end goal.

The company reached a major milestone today. It happened in tremendously difficult conditions. Best of all: better news is ahead.

Note: I was travelling today (and will be on the road the next couple of days) so have been slow to get back to the messages/emails sent. I'll answer those as soon as I can. It's also likely I will be reviewing press releases before they're published going forward.