I'd say that's were POET was five years ago with the integrated pulsed laser, except they did it all in GaAs, because:

Silicon cannot lase.

And that's why the Hong Kong University et. al. researchers still use GaAs to create the laser, see tombot's post.

Besides that, POET has so much more than just a breakthrough in the lab. We have a variety of optical and electronical components, incl. the optical thyristor, which we can put together to form a lot of different products, like an integrated VCSEL transceiver. Seems doing everything in GaAs instead of Si makes things somewhat easier.

Gallium arsenide can lase, and detect, and switch, and conduct and more.