News: Optoelectronics
22 February 2023
POET to design optical engines for Beijing FeiYunYi’s 100G optical transceiver modules
POET Technologies Inc of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — a designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer and photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for the data-center, telecom and artificial intelligence (AI) markets — has announced an agreement with Beijing FeiYunYi Technology Ltd (BFYY) to design optical engines for deployment in optical modules in the telecom market globally, beginning in China. The agreement, valued at up to $1m over a two-year period, includes non-recurring engineering (NRE) for POET and an initial purchase order for 10,000 units that will be used to sample customers.
BFYY was formed recently for the purpose of selling modules using POET-designed optical engines sourced from POET’s joint venture company Super Photonics Xiamen (SPX). With deep connections to the telecom industry in China, BFYY is investing in assembly facilities to build, market and sell modules for the data-center market, specifically focused on large telecom service providers.
POET has agreed to design a single-chip optical engine solution that incorporates complete transmit and receive functionalities for implementation in a 100G optical transceiver for BFYY’s initial product offering. The unique single-chip solution POET ONE aims to offer significant performance advantages along with minimizing the transceiver design cycle time for BFYY. In addition to the cost benefits of POET’s wafer-scale assembly, the single-chip solution will enable BFYY to cost effectively ramp to high-volume production. BFYY has forecasted optical engine purchases from SPX at more than US$30m over a three-year period.
“The number of 5G and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers in China is growing considerably. To keep up with the bandwidth demand, several major service providers are exploring ways to transform their networks,” notes BFYY’s CEO Wei Zhang (Wesley Zhang). “Top-tier service providers in China believe that transceivers with POET’s Optical Interposer technology can provide a cost-effective and scalable solution to achieve their network automation goals. BFYY plans to utilize its transceiver design and manufacturing capabilities along with the benefits of POET’s integration platform to quickly ramp to high-volume production,” he adds.
“We are excited to work with BFYY on this initial product and plan to leverage their capabilities and business relationships with service providers to be part of the network transformation journey in China,” says Vivek Rajgarhia, president & general manager of POET and vice-chairman of SPX. “We will continue to offer differentiated solutions to our customers for high-speed optical communications in data and tele-communications markets.”
