POET Enters Optical Module Market with 800G Transceiver for Artificial Intelligence Networks

TORONTO and SAN DIEGO, March 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- POET Technologies Inc. (“POET” or the “Company”) (TSX Venture: PTK; NASDAQ: POET), the designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer and Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for the data center, telecommunication and AI markets, today announced its first entry into the optical module market for artificial intelligence and cloud data center markets with an 800G pluggable transceiver. The Wavelight is an 800G 2xFR4 OSFP module that incorporates the Company’s POET Optical Interposer technology and related optical engine products.

Wavelight is the Company’s first POET-branded module and its initial entry into the pluggable optical module market, representing a key milestone in its commercialization roadmap. POET debuts in the module market at the leading edge of module designs at a speed and performance that is highly sought after by AI network operators such as Google, Meta, Nvidia and AWS. The Company will showcase Wavelight modules at the OFC 2024 conference in San Diego from March 26-28 (Booth #5001) and customer sampling will begin in Q3 2024.

“The move to offer modules to end-users was a strategic imperative for the Company and the next logical step in our development of the POET Optical Interposer and the Optical Interposer-based leading-edge optical engines that we have produced over the past two years,” noted Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, the Company’s Chairman & CEO. “We are now able to showcase our technology to major end-users during a period of high demand for 800G transceivers, driven primarily by AI, and we are confident that it will lead to direct sales by POET to customers.” Dr. Venkatesan added, “This is the most significant commercial milestone that our Company has reached since its founding.”

Wavelight has 8 lanes of electrical input and output channels operating at 106.25Gbps per channel. It consists of two 400G silicon photonics transmitters and one integrated 800G receiver, operating on four ITU-defined CWDM wavelengths. The transceiver is designed for use in 800 gigabit ethernet links for up to 2km of reach over single mode fiber. According to LightCounting, the market for 800G 2xFR4 transceivers in 2024 is $750 million and is forecasted to grow to $1.7 billion by 2027, with more than half of the demand driven by AI networks. The POET transceiver architecture delivers a solution that is cost optimized and highly scalable.