News: Optoelectronics
25 March 2025
POET to demo light source and 1.6T optical engines for AI applications at OFC
In booth 5315 at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference & Exposition (OFC 2025) in San Francisco, CA, USA (1-3 April), POET Technologies Inc of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and light sources for the hyperscale data-center, telecom and artificial intelligence (AI) markets — is demonstrating its latest technology innovations and products, detailed as follows.
POET Blazar demo (invitation only): Senior technical and business management of select companies can observe the Blazar prototype in private meetings with POET management. Built on the POET Optical Interposer platform, Blazar is a light source solution to power both co-packaged optics (CPO) and high-bandwidth, chip-to-chip, light-based datacoms links. Named after an extremely bright galactic object, Blazar utilizes POET’s wafer-level chip-scale packaging technology to create a multi-wavelength light source as an alternative to traditional DFB laser-based solutions. Wafer-level chip-scale technology lowers the cost of the light source by an order of magnitude, provides larger scale and better reliability, and promises to increase the effective global supply of indium phosphide (InP).
“Given the vast potential of our ELS (external light source) solution and the sensitive nature of the technology, we have opted to limit its exposure, which is why we are selecting a number of senior technologists and executives who can see it to an invitation-only list,” says chairman & CEO Dr Suresh Venkatesan. “The Blazar can transform the economies of scale for AI connectivity with an architecture that reduces costs and increases scale and manufacturing efficiency,” he adds. “With the massive amount of compute power that AI demands, we believe that Blazar offers an economically practical solution to achieving next-generation performance. It is a crucial component to getting to 3.2T in optical modules and achieving the higher speeds, bandwidth and low latency needed for chip-to-chip data communication links.”
POET Teralight 1.6T optical engine (live public demo): In partnership with Mitsubishi Electric, POET is unveiling its Teralight product line of 1.6T highly integrated transmit and receive optical engines offering a complete optical system-on-chip architecture that reduces cost and simplifies module design. The 1.6T transmit engine includes only four externally modulated laser chips, rather than the standard eight lasers for 1.6T transceivers, due to Mitsubishi Electric’s unique 2x200G EML laser design, a reduction in the most expensive transmit component. Built-in high-speed drivers, monitor photodiodes, a thermistor and optical multiplexers (for FR4 applications) make this the most highly integrated system-on-chip available on the market, it is claimed. The receive engine includes photodiodes, trans-impedance amplifiers (TIAs) and demultiplexers (for FR4 applications). The POET Optical Interposer design eliminates the use of wire bonds between devices to reduce the RF crosstalk to achieve what is claimed to be industry-leading performance at the highest speeds available on the market. The system-on-chip architecture allows customers to use the same board design for 1.6T DR8 and 2xFR4 pluggable modules, a feature unique to POET that eliminates the need for separate DR and FR engineering teams, which has been a standard development approach within the industry.
Leading module customers incorporating POET optical engines: Among the leading suppliers offering modules based on POET’s optical engines, Luxshare Tech is demonstrating 400G and 800G DR and FR modules in booth #4905 and Adtran is demonstrating a highly integrated Quattro 100G LR4 in their private demo room. Quattro LR4 integrates four instances of 100G LR4 into a single QSFP-DD form factor, quadrupling the density of 100G ports in 400G switch and routing platforms. This module has gained intense interest from both hyperscalers and telecom network providers for its performance and cost-effectiveness.
Also at its booth, POET has a product showcase of its current portfolio suite of optical engines and light sources. Some of those products have been designed into customer solutions that are being demonstrated at POET’s booth as market-ready applications.
Also at OFC, POET’s representatives are collecting the recently announced Elite Score award statue at the Lightwave+BTR Innovations Reviews Reception, which is being held at the conference’s host venue, the Moscone Center.
POET ships optical engine samples to three global customers for AI applications
POET expands capacity to meet AI infrastructure demand
POET and Mitsubishi Electric Collaborate to advance AI Networks
