For people that may be in the dark about what Suresh is talking about (re the THM quotes). One of the in-plane designs of the POET utilizes a whispering mode gallery which can be very lossy. Bending light into a circle. The other approach which creates total confinement is to use mirrors on a 45' angle to move light into a rectangular configuration...basically a rectangular waveguide (resonator) with Evanescent Wave Coupling for modulation and demodulation. Extremely efficient and that is where BB photonics and Denslights IP really comes into play.
The POET optical engine (for the AOC and ASIC bonding) is pretty basic but a highly efficient transceiver at a single fixed wavelength. And as Abel talked about the magic is that it is all done in a very tiny footprint using one single process flow...Maybe $4 to produce it and test it at the wafer level. It still has to be packaged and think that happens at DenseLight?
For those that read the length of time it requires for a finFET to go through the line rest assured the POET process flow is rally fast by comparison.
