The POET Optical Interposer — Ready to Power the Next Wave of Photonics Technology
The need for technology companies to deliver more and faster data communication has become urgent. Societies around the world are as connected as they have ever been and supporting that connectivity requires complex infrastructure that has been stretched to the extremes of its capability.
The semiconductor and optoelectronics industry has invested colossal amounts of money and resources in pushing for solutions that can support the next wave of data communications and device architecture.
At POET Technologies, a team of engineers has created a hardware platform designed to address the demand for greater performance and has done it by also reducing costs. POET’s Optical Interposer™ brings to the market the seamless integration of electronic and photonic devices into a single multi-chip module built and tested entirely at wafer scale. That harmony between two distinct fields of optoelectronics engineering opens the door to new applications and vast improvements in existing ones.
Key Attributes of the Optical Interposer™
At the heart of the Optical Interposer™ is its low-loss waveguides that allow for laser light to pass through and connect with photonic devices and or from optical fibers with much lower loss than competing technologies. The waveguides include complex structures that manipulate the light to allow the coding and decoding of different frequencies carrying multiple data streams. They also allow different types of devices to be placed on the Optical Interposer™ without testing the connection each time a device is placed. Both attributes are critical to the Optical Interposer’s achievements of higher performance and lower cost.
POET has decreased the number of components needed for optoelectonic manufacturing and that reduction leads to better power efficiency and less expense. A key to the Optical Interposer’s affordability — which can save customers up to 40% over existing market prices — is how the platform automates the assembly process for silicon-based photonics solutions. POET removes costly assembly and testing steps, and condenses the bill of materials to a fraction of the usual number of components.
Placement of component devices, which are determined by the requirements of the specific application, is done with automated semiconductor techniques without the need for the active alignment and testing of each device.
Built on a 200mm silicon wafer, the Optical Interposer™ incorporates passive optical and electrical components, optical interconnects (waveguides), and electrical interconnects using standard semiconductor process equipment. In addition, the process of creating the Optical Interposer™ and assembling an Optical Engine populated with light producing and detecting devices is compatible with standard semiconductor techniques, referred to as “CMOS”. In December 2020, POET announced an industry first: The flip-chip assembly of photonics that enables a true single-chip, fully integrated Optical Engine (OE) to be produced at wafer-scale.
It took years to build a workable, integrated device that could hold up to the rigors of mass production. Now, the world of optoelectronic device manufacturing has taken notice.
Customers Arrive for POET’s Tech
In September, the company facilitated live demonstrations of six different applications of the POET Optical Interposer™. The demos, which took place at two leading industry conferences in China, encompassed both standard and custom products developed for initial clients. Attendees were so impressed that POET has rapidly increased its customer engagements in China and received a commitment from Shenzhen Fibertop Technology Co., Ltd., a transceiver module supplier, for a purchase order. That contract, which will be fulfilled by POET’s joint venture partner, Super Photonics Xiamen (SPX), is expected to be finalized once the Optical Interposer™ products complete qualification, which is anticipated in early 2022.
Outside of Asia, POET announced an agreement with a Tier 1 customer in October. (A Tier 1 customer is one that is at the head of its supply chain and either sells directly to data center operators or provides the foundational equipment or architecture for networking products sold by large manufacturers.) The customer provided POET with $1.2 million in non-recurring engineering revenue (NRE) in exchange for customized multi-engine designs for 100G CWDM4 and 100G LR4 Optical Engines. The third-party interest in POET’s products validates the vision of POET CEO Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, who focused the company on developing the Optical Interposer™ to suit the demands of the industry.
As of November 2021, POET has sent Alpha samples of products to dozens of customers, and expects to sign multiple contracts for production or test-cycle products in the coming months. With the industry desire to move forward to 400G and fifth-generation (5G) devices, the search for innovation that can bring new efficiencies to existing processes in data and telecommunications is intense. The POET solution is among the most compelling advances to enter the marketplace.
The Photonics Market Opportunity for
Given the estimated total available market (TAM) for 100G transceivers of approximately $2.5 billion, POET believes that SPX can achieve annual revenue of over $100 million within that single market segment by 2025–2026. Within the next 5–7 years, POET forecasts being a billion-dollar company that operates across multiple verticals.
POET anticipated that it would need substantial manufacturing capacity to demonstrate that it could scale to the volumes needed to achieve such revenues. In 2020, the joint venture with Sanan IC, the world leader in compound semiconductor manufacturing, was established. Based in Xiamen, China, the Super Photonics joint venture exclusively executes the assembly, testing, marketing, and sales of POET’s Optical Engine products for 100G and 200G OE products globally, and for the greater China market for 400G OE products.
With a proprietary technology protected by more than 40 patents and patents pending, POET is an emerging leader in the world of high-tech data and telecommunications. It’s a company that demonstrates how, through photonics, the world will see the light of faster applications and more reliable networking.
