It was mentioned during the panel discussion regarding remote lasers that one of the countermeasures to get the signal strength to adequate levels (to overcome inefficient coupling) was to push the laser beyond optimum power levels. This is not a solution but creates more issues. Increased aging, increased heat and increased power requirements. Consensus even then was that remote lasers made the most sense.  Remove the laser from the hot environment away from the switch ASIC. Make it replaceable without an outage. POET meets those needs with a pluggable now.

That being said they have been working on the next generation light sources for at least 8 or 9 months now. I believe Suresh would not have disclosed the following unless he had a great deal of confidence. 

We’re developing brand-new architectures and concepts around the interposer that can build multiple lanes of lasers on the interposer with frequency spacings down to 50 gigahertz in an uncooled application, which is unheard of. So these are things that we’re working on now, and more to follow.