Some weekend thoughtsA couple of thoughts on how POET is managing information flow. Firstly it would be extremely narrow sited of us to not recognize the workload that the technical staff is under. This company could have continued on the path of accessing SBIR funding but that represents workload. As posted on Agoracom by NP 56:
US DoD Launches Competition For Integrated Photonics Manufacturing Institute
3rd October 2014
$100 million in federal investment matched by $100 million or more in private investment to the winning consortia
https://www.compoundsemiconductor.net/article/95263-us-dod-launches-competition-for-integrated-photonics-manufacturing-institute.html
As described by Geoff Taylor at the event honouring his POET achievements…Optical integration is the problem. Industry can continue putting incredible efforts and money towards research to improve electronics with silicon to make it faster by trying to deposit III-V channels and shape it so that an acceptable bond can be achieved and alter the silicon process so that gains can be realised without destroying yield. It is a pretty simplistic way of describing it and the silicon industry will do everything they can to make people believe that this will be an acceptable solution. Maybe it can be but it may not be. Why is so much money being thrown at graphene? It could provide a very fast and efficient electronics material but again it is so new and so difficult that it will take many years and a lot of money to provide an electronics complimentary logic platform if ever.
But again the real problem that ultimately must be solved is optical integration and this is where one of the greatest values of POET resides.
Back on the topic of workload. Will POET take a role in this institute of integrated photonics institute? Not unless they plan on hiring a lot of very experienced scientists that can come up to speed on POET very quickly.
Geoff’s team have been with him for a long time and they have taken on a lot of roles in the past associated with SBIR investigation, patent application…So there are some really smart guys in that group that have been a big part of the R&D and each is very specialized in their field of expertise. I bet they are now being stretched to the limit with new responsibilities at the 3
rd party fab.
Which takes me to a new topic. POET has neither the time nor the desire to actively dispute or respond to the various publications or blogs. I was very surprised to see the response provided in the EETimes article which by the way provided more clarity about the technology then I have ever seen provided publicly. The guy who wrote the SA blog promoting POET as a good short. POET would not give him the time of day…why? Was it because they cannot justify the time and effort to provide a response. Maybe. But maybe it is a whole lot more than that.
In the EETimes response POET made the following closing statement:
In summary, POET technology will not replace, but supplement CMOS in applications requiring the highest performance, integration and/or lowest power. Our vision is that many foundries will eventually offer POET Technologies processes along side of their existing processes to their existing customer base to enable solutions that are not realizable today with any other process out there.
A few people read that and said “Why are they making this statement?”
POET has put extremely limited efforts into publicly stating the benefits of POET. Are they walking softly and carrying a big stick? Maybe Ajit is the big stick? Are they afraid if they attract too much attention that some giant is just going to step on them?
Their presence at the Google event for me was significant and anything that took place behind the scenes has never been discussed on a forum. But there was most definitely an introduction made. To think otherwise would be very foolish. POETs presence at that event was at the very least a show that the company now has a level of comfort that they can rub shoulders with one of the biggest companies without threat of being taken advantage of. Why? They have been very cautious in who they meet with out of fear of being consumed while still in the infancy of their commercialization phase.
So why hasn’t POET made a big effort to promote this company with flashy billboards.
Just maybe if the world knew how disruptive POET is as described in small circles like the AGM audience by AM and by the other POET management team then POET could become not just a disruptive technology but a threat to one of the biggest and most powerful industries on the planet.
It would be so much better if they could gradually fit in with a much lower profile with limited public fanfare with the following less threatening position:
In summary, POET technology will not replace, but supplement CMOS in applications requiring the highest performance, integration and/or lowest power.