The collaboration aims to co-develop integrated optical engine chipsets for 3.2T pluggable transceivers, an increasingly important product for optical connectivity in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence networking market. POET and Mitsubishi Electric will jointly support product demonstrations with major customers.
“Mitsubishi Electric is committed to ensuring we give our customers the technological advantage to maintain their positions as industry leaders in their own sectors. We believe POET’s optical engines will open the possibility of creating new products where electronics photonics convergence is successfully achieved at an advanced level of integration between InP and Si-based interposer, which take us and our valued customers into the next generation of data networking for AI and hyperscale data centres,” said Yasuhiro Yamauchi, General Manager, Optical Device Department at Mitsubishi Electric.
Mitsubishi Electric will contribute its highly differentiated 400G Electro-absorption Modulator integrated Lasers (EMLs) to the project. Using its optical interposer platform technology, POET will then integrate the EMLs along with drivers, optical waveguides, and other key functional building blocks to produce 1.6T and 3.2T optical engine chipsets.
“The AI and datacom networks need a pluggable transceiver solution for 3.2T and POET’s optical interposer is one of the few technologies that can achieve that performance. When our Mitsubishi Electric colleagues understood the full functionality of the optical interposer and its potential to optimise the performance of their leading-edge lasers, they knew that we offered the right solution for their needs,” said Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, POET Chairman and CEO.
“POET’s products are steadily being adopted by the industry and we expect demand to accelerate as our customers gain further understanding of the power efficiency and cost savings that we offer to them and their customers.”
POET and Mitsubishi Electric said that their aim was to complete the 1.6T and 3.2T optical engine chipsets in early 2025 and to then demonstrate the innovation during the first half of that year.
AI and cloud datacentre networks are the leading consumers of pluggable optics. The global optical transceiver market for 800G and 1.6T is projected to grow at a CAGR of 33% from $2.5 billion in 2024 to $10.5 billion by 2029, according to figures from LightCounting.
