Sorry, folks, but I can really not understand why a few people here react in an overbearing and huffish way to ctblizzard's question. It is a totally legitimate question by a newbie and should be answered calmly and unexitedly. Remember, we all have been newbies to this technology once.
We should treat each other more respectful!
Here's my answer to ctblizzard's question:
- POET Technologies has developed the POET platform, which is a process to manufacture semiconductor chips with much higher speed, much less power consumption, and in many cases much lower production cost. Manufactures, so-called "fabs", won't need any new and expensive machinery to produce POET chips. All they have to do is to make some inexpensive modifications to their current equipment.
- The POET platform has been tested and verified by BAE Systems.
- The POET platform is production-ready. Technical documentation is available, so that POET Technologies' customers and partners can deploy the process on their own equipment to produce POET chips.
- According to POET Technologies' news releases and communications, the company is currently is in confidential negotiations with large companies which could become customers or partners. POET Technologies expects to receive first revenues in late 2014 or early 2015.
- The market potential is immense, because there are a lot of vertical markets which could benefit from the POET technology. The global semiconductor market had a volume of more than $300 billion in 2013 and is expected to grow fast to over $500 billion in the years to come.
- Traditional silicon-based chips have come to an end, since they cannot be made smaller and faster at the same cost (see Moore's law). Chip makers are desperately researching viable alternatives.
- POET Technologies does not have any competition. Alternative approaches are either still in their infancy or cover just a fraction of what POET addresses.
- The technological underpinning is using gallium-arsenide (GaAs) instead of silicon (Si) as primary material. While GaAs is already much faster than Si with respect to its electrical properties, additional gains can be won by a) also using optical processing and by b) integrating electrical and optical processing on the same chip. The intellectual property (IP) is protected by numerous patents.
- As an additional prospect for future applications and revenues, quantum computing on a chip looms at the horizon. The quantum computing technology is also protected by patents.
Well, this is a high-level summary lacking many details people here usually talk about. But I am trying to give you the idea. If you find that appealing, you should do your own due diligence, check whether what I said is true – or whether you can at least find enough evidence to base an investment decision on. Good luck!
Again, folks, please take questions as questions and not as personal assaults! I know what I am talking about.
Andrea (""Powered by POET")
