POET’s optical interposer is an extension of the packaging that has made high end smartphones so thin and efficient. POET currently boasts the smallest DML flip chip in the industry.

The flip-chip assembly technique enables a true single-chip, fully integrated optical engine to be produced at wafer-scale, resulting in the lowest-cost, smallest-size 100G CWDM4 optical engine with a form factor of nine millimetres by six millimetres, while including banks of four lasers, four monitor photodiodes, four high-speed photodiodes, a multiplexer, demultiplexer, taps for power monitoring and features supporting a self-aligned fibre attach unit. 

When you look at the wristband wearable footprint that Rockely has created using a silicon based spectrometer and integration techniques it kind of reminds me of the large size of the first cell phones. I would guess that all the major cell phone companies have been approached by Rockley so they have established  a  model of what a health monitor wrist wearable is at this point in time.  POET  has provided a means to create a much smaller footprint with highly efficient laser coupling with very accurate wavelength filtering capabilities resulting in a much more compact device with power requirements for smart watch integration.

It’s one of those shiny rocks that Suresh spoke of a year ago. I believe there will be many more to come. I also believe that the flexibility of design is going to accelerate development well ahead of the competition in many verticals. The diversity of applications is going to give POET a lot of cards to play with.