POET Technologies Inc.

I have not posted for a while, largely because I’ve nothing to say of importance. POET Technologies is in quiet mode and we are indulging in speculation in this forum. I do not wish to add my pennyworth to this. However, I was reviewing the CEO’s slides presented at the THM and which are available from this forum. It was on this talk I wish to write. Many on this forum do not have a science background and the technology, particularly when referring to opto-electronics is confusing. This is because of a liberal sprinkling of acronyms and high technology terms; this is disconcerting and must make the average punter’s eyes glaze or induce a cold sweat. I spent years in medicine most of which involves regular repetition of acronyms or technical terms in order to confuse sufficiently to imply mammoth intelligence. The truth is much more mundane and debilitating for doctors. You know the sort of thing: “Yes madam, you have coryza, my stethoscope positively vibrates with your rhonchi and crepitations. Have an NSAID, ante cibum” (literally: you’ve a cold, I can hear it, here’s some tablets before you eat)

All this said, I felt it important that you understood what is on offer here. I do this to encourage you to continue believing in this company for, I believe, this is exceptional technology. I am only going to deal with two aspects of what a much wider offering because it is likely to be the first products we see; though it is possible that the PET chip (that the chip without the light component) which we know exists but nobody speaks about and which may emerge before.

If you have read my posts from the past, you will be aware that the POET chip merges electronic information transfer, memory, and laser and receiver technology on a single chip. Nobody else, in current knowledge, can do this. In these circumstances it is easily possible to take an electronic signal whizzing around a chip, transfer it to a VCSEL (this stands for a vertical cavity surface emitting laser – which means the light comes off the flat surface of the chip and not the side|) and with suitable programming turn this into light information.

You then transfer this light information along a cable (not unlike an optical cable to a loudspeaker, amplifier or TV) and transfer where ever you want it to go. At the other end you put another POET chip and Bob’s your aunty, you turn it back into an electronic signal, which shunts it way around good old silicon circuitry in the memory banks or servers of the cloud computing systems.. So, you have a connector at each end, two chips and a cable, and you can send your information anywhere at the speed of light. Oh great! I hear you say, but nothing goes faster than light in this universe of ours (so we like to think) and when it does so, it requires very little energy and it does so without raising the temperature. So it’s efficient.

But, here‘s the real McCoy; look at slides 14 – 17 in the talk. The acronyms are important because they conceal the clever bit. The VCSEL in a POET chip is designed to produce light at a very narrow wavelength in the red end of the spectrum. This means the light cable is a SMF (as opposed to an MMF) this stands for Single Mode Fibre as opposed to a Multi Mode Fibre. When light travels down a glass fibre the light waves bounce off the interface between the glass and its covering, and because in a Single Mode Fibre the light is of a specific wavelength it travels a lot further without requiring amplification. The distances can be many kilometres. It also faithfully reproduces the electronic signal and is less likely to glitches. The cable is also much narrower that Multi Mode Fibre and so negotiates corners and bend much better. All this can be achieved at a cost similar to copper wiring. Although all this can be done with silicon technology it cannot be done on the chip. So each cable requires motherboard circuitry, usually with 4 components, to produce a light signal; costly and slower and hot. A similar technology also applies to detectors which are also in the pipeline.

So, there you have it; why this is a killer, a game changer, you connect a cable with POET chips at each end into the back of you server, memory bank etc. And put the other end into the other servers, memory backs etc and save yourself a fortune in heat loss and speeds up everything. Just to let you know, Wall Street exchanges link themselves all over the US by light cable. They did this so that money market changes would get to buyers and sellers of currency faster than those who did not have such cables. It meant you had a major advantage during currency fluctuations between US cities. The same applies to stock exchanges, and other commodity markets. Fast makes you richer, greed is good. That’s why there is a killer in our midst.

I say all this to whet your appetites for what is to come. The diagrams in the slides of this talk imply these cables are to be manufactured by POET Technologies, presumably at the new acquisitions, though I am not certain on this point. It is one of many vertical markets for the POET chip. The schematic of the slide suggests a 2017 production target. Hang on in there folks, looks very good.

David