Over several years, we have been informed about a number of components that are to be included on a POET chip. This has included transistors, oscillators, laser components etc. Patents have been applied to a number of these components as well as this recent patent which applies collectively to an integrated chip. This appears to cover a lot of items and must represent substantial legal protection against copying throughout the developed world.

We also know that these components, mentioned above, have been included in a variety of items that are printed onto a chip during manufacture. Not least are items such as memory banks which, because of the unique properties of Group 111- V substrates, allow all types of memory e.g. RAM, flash etc. to be included on the chip. We know that power consumption is a fraction of an equivalent Silicon product and functioning speeds at least substantially greater than the equivalent Silicon nodal size. We are aware that testable chips have been already manufactured though excluding the laser product.

I’ve put all this technical fodder in for one simple reason. This is technology at the absolute outer reaches of current technical advancement. Sometimes referred to as the "cutting edge". It is moving towards an arena where the predicted developments of the whole information/cybernetic cosmos is heading: robotics, Internet of Things, advanced motoring technologies, electric vehicles, communications, cloud storage. I cannot actually think of anything where this revolutionary chip cannot usefully help.

To get to the stage, where a marketable product can be sold is outside my ken; I simply do not know. But, I can be sure this is not an easy path. It seems clearly within the area of doability, but timetabling has to be questionable. Also, I strongly suspect there are existing products on which it is essential to be silent. Indeed, I am not even sure it is wise to discuss such matters for fear of harming sensitive arrangements.

So, steady on with criticism of the management, give some thought to what has already been achieved. Demonstrate patience or, if you're worried about your investment, maybe you’re better off out. Lay off Sula, he's my brother, he ain’t heavy (he’s just loss 2 stone). No good being negative about management who are, without doubt, remarkably talented in a number of respects and in whom I have full confidence. There will come a day when the share price will move up, nobody knows when with certainty, it’s the only absolute thing am sure about.

David

The importance of this patent is that it describes the layering of a wafer to produce the components that make up a POET chip. Clearly, this is highly complex and only decipherable, in any meaningful sense, to a handful of advanced engineers and reasearchers. The legal aspects of a patent are intended to prevent someone else coming along and copying this. It seems, as least to me, an essential precursor patent to establish legal protection before the announcement of a fully integrated POET chip to prevent copying.

The information given offers the layers required to produce the controlling features of both the electronic and optical aspects of an integrated chip including thyristors and transistors of various types and other components and their connections. There is reference to resonant cavities, mirrors and other aspects of the VCSELS and their controllers.

This patent application was submitted in June 2015 and the patent granted in September 2016; that is quick, perhaps implying a desire for speed; look back at the length others have taken. It may beg a question: who is pushing this? But, again, it may reflect the uniqueness of the POET concept and it was easy to grant the patent because there is no competition. This looks good to me. If this system works, we are awaiting confirmation, then this is truly a remarkable advancement on current technology. Remember, a single integrated chip, which controls light and electronic information, at top Silicion speeds and low electrical power consumption. No one else can do this and it reinforces the Geoff Taylor statement "all roads lead to POET" claim. I believe he is right and it appears to correspond to the announced timetables. We can await developments with some confidence

David

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

I had no idea I could create such controversy, so try this you curmudgeons. Something’s up I say. Some of this PET project was in existence long before CEO and COO were appointed or a glimmer in AM’s eye. I think it was a major reason for them to join the company. Look at it again, this time with insight and great care:

·Why employ a programme writer for a project with no prototype for 15 months?

·Why tell us they were going to make it and then say nothing at a shareholders’ meeting?

·Why order wafers not to make anything?

·Why the London meeting with nothing to show.

·Why all the laboratory work and the new equipment (you know, the one that went wrong) and tell us of the delays, then say it’s all about POET in late 2016/2017?

No, no, no, PET is a great chip: fast, relatively large nodal size, easily manufactured, low power consumption. There must be some interested in that. Did you know that you can mass produce a chip of standard design and, with appropriate software, control the functional aspects of the chip to do what you like, don’t have to make individual chips for specialty purposes now. You can’t tell me your going to forget PET and wait for POET before the money comes, doesn’t make sense. I believe silence is golden, expect results ladies and gentlemen.

As an aside, my television tells me Canada has a new left of centre government: Trudeau Mark II. We, over this side of the pond, managed to avoid this for another 5 years. I hope you understand what the left do, far be it from me to complain about the people’s choice but wiser politicians than I have said things about all this:

Democracy is the worst form of government save all the rest - Winston Churchill.

Socialism is a wonderful creed until the money runs out – Margaret Thatcher.

No self respecting socialist can make a political speech without sticking his hand in your pocket, take the cash and tell you he’ll spend better than you can – Michael Heseltine (Minister of Defence, UK., 1984).

So, all you Maple Leaf investors, save hard to pay for what’s coming, I hope you have rock solid tax-free investment accounts (they’ll be after them) change your wills you older ones, think hard you younger ones. Try our brand of socialism, when you can’t tax any more, borrow instead; inflict the costs on your grand kids. Good luck.

David

I have not written for some time, not because of loss of interest but the sense I cannot contribute a great deal without overt speculation. I am not a great correspondent and constant writing is not me. However, events have occurred and I have been following. Like the rest of you I want to be rich quickly. So, under extreme family pressure, I make a further contribution to this great forum.

The recent question and answer shareholder session was a mixed bag. Mixed because it contained encouraging features and, yet, a sense of disappointment as success, at least superficially, seemed more distant. My interpretation, having listened and read the transcripts, notes that this was all about the POET platform. Essentially, we are promised working prototypes in something like 12 to 15 months time. There was enthusiasm about its anticipated performance and its ability to revolutionise the market. Emphasis was placed on the servers of the cloud computing, large storage market. It explained why Geoff Taylor had left the board to concentrate on its development. In all, while the message was very upbeat, the effect put off financial success until, perhaps, 2017 even later. That does not matter to me. I sit here retired, with a good pension, my lovely partner and my family all relatively close by. Who am I to fuss too much about waiting another 18 months. Such complacency will be anathema to our younger readers who should have been rich yesterday. My immediate response was a phone call to my brother (remember him, yes! The polyresponder and Valium supplier to this forum, known by the vernacular calming Sulasailor). A large whiskey later (JW Black Label) and all was fine with the world.

When recovered, a further thought, weedled into my head: this meeting was notable not for what was said but what it hadn’t. Why would they do this? For those reading who may be not quite aware, POET is planning 2 basic microchips. There’s the one with the laser and the other without, know as PET. We’ve been told all about the light but PET is in darkness. How come there was nothing about it? What we do know from the past is that there are prototypes. We know BAE are probably involved in producing them. We know that Synopsis is involved in producing the code for both manufacture and development and that, on this timetable at least, they will not be currently involved in POET coding. We know there is a fruit company executive about. We know that all this occurred in later 2014.

Then, if you like connecting dots, I thought why do they not tell us anything about PET. The hopeful assumption is probably they can’t, they said at the recent meeting they couldn’t tell us all and this may be for legal reasons known as non disclosure agreements (NDA). The other assumption could be PET is a failure, though I seriously doubt it (they’d be legally obliged to disclose this). If you read the transcript with care, I believe there were some subliminal messages given. I give you a statement like “expect results” from the CEO. As the subject of the meeting was the development of POET and they told us when to expect prototypes in late 2016, then expect results seemed, at least to me, a long way off, and this was strange. So, I think, “expect results” is a subliminal message regarding PET which does not break NDA requirements. Why address a question about Synopsis which is not working on POET currently? Again, this is a subliminal message about something else i.e., PET.

Also, why arrange a road show to encourage investment when the prototypes are 15 to 18 months away and there are sufficient funds to develop it. Why give all those adverts, remember them. So, here’s what I think. I believe they are much closer to PET contracts than the meeting implied and “expect results” relate to that. I think there’s a surprise to come. PET will be one of the fastest microchips on the market but at substantially lower power demand than all other available chips with substantial cost savings in circuitry. Surely, this is a godsend to mobile markets. You can put everything save light on this chip: multipurpose memory, central processing units, analogue and digital inputs and outputs – one chip does the lot, got to be good for mobile technology e.g. smartphones, watches etc., that’s a huge market.

Above all else is the glaring, standout, monstrous elephant in the room: why would such well paid, highly sought after, obviously competent executives such as Ajit Manocha, the CEO and COO, join a company as small as POET Technologies, with some fancy future idea unless they could see both immediate and future potential of real substance?

Clan POET members, I think we are about to be surprised, I feel it, I think it, it’s there, hazy, shimmering, vague but it is there.

David

All of us on this board will be familiar with the physical phenomenon known as light. What may be less well known is its importance to the PTK project. In my view, the speed of a POET or PET chip, its coolness of operation, its ease and relative cheapness of manufacture are all major assets. It is its capacity to manipulate light that is its greatest asset and my intention in this post is to convince you why. Also, remember, in the past, POET was a company that was originally a manufacturer of solar equipment and the Geoff Taylor input was in the control of these. It was after the withdrawal of government investment in such technology that the company experienced its difficulties and changed direction.

Whether you realise it or not, light is a remarkable physical property. Atomic theory envisages light in the concept of the photon. This theory has developed from the start of the 20^th century when Albert Einstein described the photoelectric effect (light striking certain materials could induce an electric current and he showed that this effect meant that light was particulate). Isaac Newton postulated this in the 16^th century, in the 19^th light was considered a wave because of some of its behaviour. Modern theory has come up with the concept of duality, that light is a packet of energy with both wave and particle behaviour, this later became named the photon. It is considered a fundamental entity, i.e. it cannot be broken into smaller components.

Light has a velocity (30,000,000 metres per second approximately) in a vacuum. If you divide this number by the medium’s refractive index you can get its velocity in air, water, glass etc. That means a photon will travel in a straight line at that velocity. In glass, such as a fibreoptic cable, at about 2/3 of that velocity, that is very, very fast. Not only that, photons transfer very little of their energy to the medium in which they travel and so transfer is cool and fast, significantly faster than electron transfer in a wire (also known as an electric current). This fact means that light transfer of information is inherently faster and cooler, physics dictates that.

When a photon hits the retina of your eye it induces a nerve impulse to your brain which interprets an image. The photon is a wave and has a wavelength and that determines the colour you see, lots of photons mean more intense light and different colours and so an image is rapidly built up.

What you may not realise is that nothing in the known universe travels faster that a photon and Einstein’s Relativity theory (which explains every known physical phenomenon very accurately) is dependent on that. This produces counter-intuitive properties. In the early 20^th century, he was a patent officer in Bern, Switzerland and travelled home by tram from the office. He used to look at the city clock tower and imagine what happened to the time as the clock receded in the distance. He thought that if he could travel away from the clock at the speed of light, the time would not change, he would only see the photons that left the clock as he started. Yet, someone outside would see the clock ticking away and time changing and his watch would tick away too and time would change. It was this hazy idea of variable time frames that inspired his general theory of Relativity whose primary concept is that time is not fixed, it changes with relative velocity. Thus the Newtonian idea of fixed time for all objects throughout the universe could not be right. It is sufficient to tell you that Newtonian physics can still be used because our relative velocities’, in normal experience, is extremely small and doesn’t alter the mathematics in any significant way.

I digress, because I must tell you one other fact. Light is binary phenomenon, it is either no light or it is light, off/on. So, if you have off and on, you have 0 and 1 and can transfer any information as a binary number – remember those – 0,1,10,11,100,101,111,1000 equals 0,1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc. So light can transfer numbers very fast and very cooly. Here is the hidden secret of POET; Silicon can’t do this on chip. We are awaiting the VCSEL announcement. That is a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser. Most chips emit signal from their edge but a VCSEL emits from the flat surface of a chip, it make connection to the outside easier and more sophisticated. And, because you can do lots of other things in a chip, like processing numbers, flexible and comprehensive memory etc. you can convert any signal generated into light and transfer this at the fastest speed known in the universe. This is why the new CEO thinks the future lies with opto-electronics.

Silicon controlled lasers have to transfer information by wire to other parts of a circuit board to generate the light signal and then transfer elsewhere; it can’t do the on-chip function. Less components, cheaper and ground breaking. So you end up with a very fast, very cool microchip that can give you light or electronic signals on a single chip. We are at the tipping point. Brilliant uh!

David