https://www.laserfocusworld.com/optics/article/14297009/photonics-hardware-is-powering-chatgpt-and-the-ai-revolution

Among the companies poised to be a significant player in this growth is POET Technologies. The company has architected light source and light engine solutions to lower the cost for AI developers and is currently supplying the market with our initial products within this sector.

POET makes an optical engine with high-power continuous-wave (CW) lasers passively attached to its optical interposer (see figure). The optical engine can be integrated on a host board and connected to chips and ASICs with built-in silicon photonics. POET also developed a complete packaged light source that incorporates passive optical components and is connected on the electrical and optical ends.

These light source solutions manage the data flow among microchips within an AI system. It makes data transmission faster and less power-hungry. There are also advantages of cost and scale.

4 keys to help customers

• POET’s Starlight complete packaged light source integrates active components like lasers into its optical interposer with wafer-scale passive alignment techniques.
• It can be integrated on a host board and connected to chips and application-specific integrated circuits  (ASICs) with built-in silicon photonics.
• High-power CW lasers, monitor photodiodes, and thermistors are integrated into our optical interposer with standard pick-and-place methods.
• Optical splitters, combiners, multiplexers, and demultiplexers are monolithically built into the interposer platform for a multiwavelength multichannel light output that powers several channels with the same source. This capability supports continuous-wave wavelength division multiplexing multisource agreement (CW-WDM MSA) wavelengths and power requirements.

By using best-of-breed or known-good components, including directly modulated lasers (DMLs) from suppliers like Lumentum, POET has demonstrated excellent side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) and power uniformity, which are essential to creating efficiency.

Underscoring importance of hardware devices

Recent research articles underscore the importance of hardware devices such as those developed from our optical interposer. Hardware is increasingly recognized as being critical to the long-term growth of the AI industry.

A July report by Semianalysis discusses how large chipmakers are using some form of silicon photonics to attempt to meet the demand for more memory and compute data. Notably, the article cites the use of through-silicon vias (TSVs) and flip-chip bonders as being key elements to deliver the required signal integrity and efficiency needed for AI.

These key features are already part of POET’s optical interposer. Meanwhile, an article in the Financial Timeson July 21, 2023 points out how the explosion in AI startups this year has both disrupted the industry and complemented its growth. The development of hardware solutions that use optical technology are smartly being designed to satisfy the needs of behemoths like Nvidia, which achieved trillion-dollar market-capitalization status in May and is continuing to see high demand for its AI chips.

Overall, photonics’ ability to transmit data quickly and accurately over long distances, as well as process and analyze data from various sources, makes it indispensable for the development of advanced AI systems. Being at the leading edge of this rapidly evolving industry is tremendously exciting for the team at POET. As one of the few AI hardware companies in the world, we believe we are in the right place at the right time with the right solution for this sector.