The POET AOC is an end to end product addressing cost and power in a way that has never been achieved before. It is a very big opportunity for POET and will be a product that they sell. Their initial main focus is with the Short Reach and Very Short Reach Active Optical Cable to displace copper links so that large energy savings can be achieved for the data centers. In other words take over that market. That is a blue ocean product for POET because no other solutions can do this.
POET controls all parts of the AOC. The optical engine that will go into the AOC is much smaller than anything available in the market because all VCSELs, detectors and FETs are integrate on one die for a very small footprint (single mode fiber is 1/10 the diameter of a human hair). That is what is taking place right now in Q2…the integration of these components.
Because the optical engine is so small they provide a very big advantage to bond directly with silicon so that chips can communicate optically. This is a very large market and I expect that this is what POETs customers are very interested in. So once POET has proven integration expected in Q2 those customers and partners are expected to sign very quickly in order to gain first mover advantage. That early adopter advantage is paid for through NRE. So the large companies that POET is reporting to will be very eager to sign on as soon as they see success in optical integration. The earlier they get started the earlier they can get POET into their design.
What POET is doing right now with the detector is to provide an adjacent market for industry associated with IR sensing. I think it is probably ether for military needs especially after seeing the metrics that are associated with the detector and/or consumer mobile devices…we know who is on the TRAB.
