RE: Skorpios Tech Their tech doesn't appear to have the breadth that POET has. They claim to be targeting a CMOS ASIC market (see at bottom). ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit which are ICs that are made to order for a specific purpose. They are not suitable for general microchip applications the way POET is advertised to be.
This situation sounds a great deal like what Lee Shepherd was talking about at the TO meeting. The fact that some companies have solved a very specific problem in electronic/photonic integration which couldn't be broadened ad hoc.
Another thing is that they don't appear to have the patent protection that OPEL has. Here is the Skorpios patent portfolio, it consists of only 2 patents.
And finally, their process still requires bonding between Silicon and some other III-V material - in this case Germanium. It leaves me wondering why anyone would want to deal in a plurality of materials when they could have it all (including faster and further-scalable transistors) in GaAs with POET using traditional processes. Once it is known what POET can do in a material that has been coveted for decades but never properly utilized, I don't think anyone will be mucking around making "Customer Specific Standard Products" when they can make generalized chips that can be made in mass quantities (e.g., ARM, Intel, etc.) used by anyone for any purpose.
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From Skorpios: https://www.skorpiosinc.com/technology-and-products.php
"Skorpios’ unique technology enables the generation, detection and modulation of light to be monolithically integrated with existing mature CMOS technologies on a single chip, the Skorpios Optical ASIC (SO-ASIC). SO-ASICs combine the scale and economics of the silicon industry with the power and flexibility of optics in a wafer scale process. This enables a number of important benefits, including lower power consumption, cost reduction, and significantly higher density.
In a similar modular approach to the electronic ASIC industry, SO-ASICs are constructed from a set of photonic and electrical “macrocell” building blocks. Our macrocells include modulators, detectors, lasers, and other active elements and can be configured together with companion CMOS control electronics to form Customer Specifc Standard Products (CSSPs). The CSSPs can thus be rapidly designed to address varied applications, both custom, and subject to multi-source agreements (MSAs). The modular macrocell approach also greatly reduces development expense and technical risk, whilst improving time to market. It is our ability to offer all of these fundamental macrocells within the standard CMOS manufacturing environment coupled with the modularity of the SO-ASIC approach which differentiates Skorpios from other companies in this market space."