Did you ever have a close look into Thunderbolt? Version 2.1 is using 6 chips in each plug! And the new 3.0 will again have a complete transceiver in each plug. Did you ever buy a 2m TBOLT cable? 50 USD for 2meters!

Difficult to find details about the hardware Intel will use for optical 3.0. It seems they first will use copper and plan to change to optical in 2016. But we know how complex this will be - using Silicon photonics. But isn't there another technology based on GaAs which can do this job at low price?
Yes, exactly this is the focust of POET. And I am sure they will be able to offer the very best hardware, a one chip solution. In the POET presentation it was called USD 4.0 (as Thunderbolt is a project of Intel)

Soon we will see...

Poet will eat lunch.