Dr. Suresh Venkatesan reports

POET ANNOUNCES DESIGN WIN AND COLLABORATION WITH FOXCONN INTERCONNECT TECHNOLOGY FOR HIGH-SPEED AI SYSTEMS

Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT), a market leader of interconnect solutions for communication infrastructure and several other large, high-growth markets, has selected Poet Technologies Inc.'s optical engines, which are silicon photonics integrated circuits (PIC), for its 800G and 1.6T optical transceiver modules.

Poet and FIT have entered into a collaboration to develop 800G and 1.6T pluggable optical transceiver modules using Poet optical engines with an aim to address the growth in demand from cutting-edge artificial-intelligence applications and high-speed data centre networks. As part of the collaboration, Poet will develop and supply its silicon photonics integrated circuit optical engines based on the patented Poet Optical Interposer technology, and FIT, one of the world's leading manufacturers of interconnect technologies, will design and supply the high-speed pluggable optical transceivers for delivery to some of the largest end-customers in the world.

"The growth in demand from emerging applications such as artificial intelligence and machine learning requires continuous innovation to keep pace with power and cost requirements," said Joseph Wang, chief technology officer at FIT. "We are excited to partner with Poet on this development. Poet's hybrid-integration platform technology will enable us to use best-of-breed components and ramp to high volume at a much-faster pace and in a cost-efficient manner."

"Poet's vision is to 'semiconductorize' photonics by integrating electronic and photonic components on the interposer to enable wafer-scale assembly," said Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, Poet's chairman and chief executive officer. "We are honoured to work with an industry leader like FIT, capable of ramping to high-volume production with its expertise in transceiver design and manufacturing. We look forward to expanding our collaboration to future projects once this initial project is complete."

Poet's transmit optical engines integrate externally modulated lasers (EMLs), EML drivers, monitor photodiodes, optical waveguides, thermistors and an optical multiplexer, where applicable, onto an optical interposer-based PIC. The receive optical engines integrate high-speed photodiodes, transimpedance amplifiers, optical waveguides and optical demultiplexers, where applicable. All components are passively assembled on the interposer at wafer scale using standard pick-and-place semiconductor equipment. Passive alignment of the photonic elements and use of high-speed RF traces between the electronic and photonic components to avoid wire bonds are two hallmarks of the technology.

Poet expects to complete the design of the optical engines for FIT by the third quarter of 2024 and start optical engine production at its joint venture, Super Photonics Xiamen, by Q4 2024.

The global optical transceiver market for 800G and 1.6T speed is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33 per cent, from $2.5-billion in 2024 to $10.5-billion by 2029, according to Lightcounting Market's forecast.

About Poet Technologies Inc.

Poet Technologies is a design and development company offering integration solutions based on the Poet Optical Interposer, a novel platform that allows the seamless integration of electronic and photonic devices into a single multichip module using advanced wafer-level semiconductor manufacturing techniques and packaging methods. Poet's Optical Interposer eliminates costly components and labour-intensive assembly, alignment, burn-in and testing methods employed in conventional photonics. The cost-efficient integration scheme and scalability of the Poet Optical Interposer brings value to any device or system that integrates electronics and photonics, including some of the highest-growth areas of computing, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, autonomous vehicles, and high-speed networking for cloud service providers and data centres. Poet is headquartered in Toronto, with operations in Allentown, Pa., Shenzhen, China, and Singapore.

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