POET Technologies Inc. (TSX Venture: PTK; NASDAQ: POET) has unveiled its POET Starlight packaged light source for external laser source requirements in AI applications. POET says that Celestial AI has signed on for development and production of the POET Starlight for use in its Packet Fabric platform; the AI accelerator startup also has issued an advanced purchase order to POET for initial production units.
The POET Starlight leverages POET's LightBar platform technology. The devices integrate active components such as lasers with passive optical components and functions, including multiplexers, demultiplexers, splitters, combiners, and waveguides, along with electrical components. In production, CW lasers and monitor photodiodes are flip chipped and passively attached to the optical interposer platform. The POET Starlight light sources can be integrated on a host board and connected to chips and ASICs with built-in silicon photonics.
POET expects to complete design verification testing and reliability qualification of the Starlight engines by the end of this year, with production following in the second half of 2024.
“External light sources for artificial intelligence applications has been one of the key verticals for POET Technologies. We are delighted to continue to work with Celestial AI to provide a high-volume manufacturable solution for their optical interconnect technology platform,” commented Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, chairman and CEO of POET Technologies. “The ability for POET to passively attach high-power CW lasers on its optical interposer at wafer scale enables the use of single known-good laser chips and eliminates the need for laser arrays which can be cost-prohibitive for high-volume applications. The POET team has worked closely with Celestial AI to define a low-cost packaging solution that is up to 75% lower in cost than competing solutions and is highly scalable for the volumes that Celestial AI is projecting.”
Who is Celestial AI?
The two companies announced their collaboration toward this goal in February 2022, shortly after Celestial AI revealed receipt of a $56 million Series A investment led by Koch Disruptive Technologies with participation from Temasek’s Xora Innovation fund, The Engine (a venture firm spun out of MIT), Tyche Partners (Merck’s corporate venture fund), M-Ventures, IMEC XPand, and Fitz Gate (a venture capital investor in the Princeton University ecosystem). Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is an optical interconnect technology platform designed to support the disaggregation of memory and compute for next-generation data centers.
“POET’s Starlight chips and its technology roadmap are complementary to our advanced silicon photonics and system-in-package technologies,” said Preet Virk, co-founder and COO of Celestial AI. “We are pleased to continue our collaboration with POET Technologies, building on its optical interposer technology to enable us to meet our performance, scale, and cost targets.”
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