To give you a better understanding of where we are today with the integrated VCSEL transceiver, here's a little picture:

The two green rectangles are printed circuits boards (PCB). They are within a housing at each end of the active optical cable (AOC). With their electrical contacts (yellow) they are plugged into an appropriate network socket in a server or in other network device.

On each board there's a single POET Integrated VCSEL Transceiver chip (dark blue). It consists of four components:

• The Transmission Control receives data as electrical pulses from the local server (red incoming arrow). Together with the VCSEL it converts them to light pulses. The Transmission Control component consists of HFET (transistor). It is completed, so I painted it in light blue.
• The VCSEL actually creates the light pulses and sends them via the fiber link to the communication partner. POET has successfully integrated the VCSEL with the Photodetector on the same chip, but it is not yet optimized, thus the orange color.
• The Photodetector receives light pulses from the remote end. It is highly efficient and complete (light blue).
• The Reception Control converts the received light pulses to electrical ones and sends them to the local network node (red outgoing arrow). Like the Transmission Control, the Reception Control is an HFET component and complete (light blue).

Since Transmission Control and Reception Control are both HFETs, POET treats them as a single component. VCSEL and Photodetector on the other hand are both technically different, so it makes sense to treat them as separate components each and talk about three different components: Photodetector, VCSEL, HFET.

So the orange box is what we are waiting for while the POET team is busily working on it.