Good post McWitty…no one has supported this company more than many of us on this board. I have always held the belief that the technology will become disruptive and that management will lead us to the Promised Land. The journey is anything but easy and I think most of us are aware of this and can certainly see this. It is becoming increasingly important for management to explain the changes that have occurred along the way that have brought us to where we are now where there seems to be more questions than answers.
We are left to try and interpret and piece together what we can to rationalize what is going on (which has always been the case). It can’t all be spelled out for us for obvious reasons such as NDA’s but at the very least we should be given clear direction on what can be discussed rather than operate in a vacuum to try and draw our own conclusions based on what we think is going on from extracting information from every possible source.
For example we have discussed the removal of the White Paper and speculated on the reasons why. I think the main reason why it was removed is there have been changes to how the platform is being implemented.
There is a very big plus associated with the description of the POET VCSEL in the White Paper:
The unique structure and construction of the POET VCSEL results in single mode operation, which is typically not possible with the standard VCSEL.
Since the POET VCSEL is single mode, it is further expected that using the POET VCSEL with SMF will allow a data rate of 25Gbps per channel up to 500m. This solution would provide a very attractive single chip alternative to existing SiP approaches.
The above information expresses a real plus of the VCSEL based optical transceiver. By far the greatest benefit of the POET optical engine is in the ability to integrate 4 chips into a single monolithic die in a very small package and that has not changed. But I think the effort to make it single mode has been very difficult and when we look at the integration capability of DL and BB using InP it becomes a much more desirable alternative for management to ease the burden on the GaAs 850nm POET platform and simplify the design to get a product built. Much of this is speculation on my part.
As we can see in the Investor Presentation the POET optical engine shows up as both SMF and MMF. I believe single mode is still there but I think it will be done at 980nm.
As we can see the POET optical engine is now expressed for use at 100nm to 1cm.
I believe that DL and BB have provided a path for longer reach utilizing InP as the substrate at longer wavelength. And I also believe that many of the benefits of the POET platform will be increased by uniting these technologies in longer reach applications.
