What is Lightwave’s potential market share and adoption rate? Well, our first market, as you can see, is the hyper scale and datacom data center market as optical engines for pluggable transceivers, and as I read this, both by material for chromophore polymers, as well as a modulator product. We expect this adoption rate to quickly replace the incumbent technologies. We know silicon’s really struggling. We know some of these other technologies are hitting a wall. We expect our technology to replace the incumbent technology. We also see our material being utilized in other markets – instruments, scientific, as well as consumer.
Is the current state of the technology, of the Company’s technology enough for commercialization of product polymer modulators? Well, our current performance is suitable for live trials with the data centers. Another way of saying data centers is what people use today as hyper scaling. I don’t know where that word came from, but yes, our performance is suitable for those companies. We engage with these companies today. That includes the tier ones. For these companies, we are providing reliability data as well because that’s what they want to see.
Will Lightwave supply modulators for transceivers? We’re making polymer modulators that are specified to go in as an engine to a pluggable transceiver. This is what we’re looking as 800G using the material we have today. The material production will be here, as well as the polymer material for licensing. The materials we’re going to keep in Colorado. This is where we generate the materials. Nobody else is going to do that. Not unless there’s going to be a situation where we’ll need a second source, but we haven’t come across that yet.
Will all the modulators be under a volt and over 70 gigahertz? Device performance is working well. A lot of people are just really interested in under 2 volts today. One volt has really got everybody excited. If you provide something in the under 2 volts range, the 200 gigabits per second, there’s a lot of excitement. Bandwidth of 70 gigahertz means we have very clean, open eyes at 200 gigabits per second. Those are the key metrics.
If you’re under 1 volt, clearly you make it easier for these companies to drive the modulators because you can drive it directly from CMOS chips. You don’t need dedicated driver chips.
Do you expect competition to take significant market share? Which is your biggest competitive strength? We do see other technologies for the position. Now, you’ve got a new opportunity that is (audio interference) competition—are they listening in? We do see other technologies. Now, you’ve got a situation where you’ve got a big market opportunity. You’ve got customers wanting to look at new technologies. Of course, you’re not going to be the only player in town. Everybody else is going to look at this and all jump in as well and try and get a piece of the action.
Yes, we’ve seen things like thin film lithium niobate. We’ve seen things like barium titanate, which are exotic materials. It’s actually very difficult to utilize in silicon foundries. But yes, we’ve seen silicon rings. But we believe that none of these have the performance headroom that electro-optic polymers have, and over the next decade to go beyond 200 gigabits per second per lane and go up to the 400 per lane, and even 800 per lane.
We feel, competitively, yes, there’s other people there. In fact, I just got told recently, you’ve heard of the CHIPS Act in the U.S. and the CHIPS Act in Europe. Apparently, there’s a CHIPS Act in Korea and close to $10 million has been set aside for electro-optic polymer. The Koreans are taking it very seriously. The CHIPS Act in Europe and the CHIPS Act in the States is really just silicon ICs. There’s not a lot of photonics there at all. The Koreans are certainly taking this seriously. We expect more competition. That’s why we have to be very careful about protecting our technology.
How is testing completed at Lightwave or at the foundries? Will polymer be wafer scale and automated? Testing is undertaken at Lightwave. At a certain lot volume, we’re going to transfer that to the foundry, which makes more logical sense. We want to have good control of the testing, automate the testing and then at a certain point we will let the foundries take over because that’s what they do. That’s the same in the silicon model.
What falls in the silicon model there? In terms of [indiscernible], as I indicated last year, we do not see poling as an issue. I know there’s been a lot of conjecture out there. A lot of talk about poling by research scientists and universities and such but we do not see this as an issue at all.
What’s the next one? Will there be standards for modulators or allow for different materials, thin film lithium nitrate, barium titanate polymer, et cetera? Well, the fact of the matter is standards take two to four years. Multi source agreements, MSAs, took two to three years. There hasn’t been any yet, and I don’t think you’re going to see a lot because the demands by the data center folks to say we just need the technology tomorrow and we’re not going to wait for standards. This is what typically happens. Standards will probably come after the technology gets implemented. I think you will see standards, and you’ll see MSAs, but that’s not going to be [indiscernible]. If it’s a slow moving technology, then you’re going to try to put standards together. This is fast moving technology. Our expectation is that standards will follow and not lead.
What is the difference between Perkinamine 2, 3, 5 and 6, and how is Perkinamine 6 better? Well, each polymer material has different characteristics. This is not a technical talk so I’m not going to go into that. But it’s alignment, so they align with different customer specifications, and so R33 optical glass transition temperature, these are key metrics, and PK6 is the highest performing one that we’re aiming for the 400G lane.
What performance is needed for 400G? Before I answer this question, I just want to introduce everybody to Claudia. Claudia, will you just stand up and raise your hand? Claudia is the CEO of Polariton, and in fact, collaboration with Claudia that got us to 400G results and that turned a lot of heads. We certainly turned a lot of heads with our 1 volt 200G, but we also showed at the same conference we can go to the next level. This is an important collaboration. Claudia’s got a team designing modulators using our material and they did some really nice work with ETH Zurich. From that standpoint, thank you, Claudia.
But on to this question. We need to have a bandwidth somewhere in the range of 100 to 140 gigahertz, and I think in the last technical presentation the foundry modulators that I showed have, I think was 86 gigahertz. They weren’t even optimized; we know we can go a lot faster. We’re not worried. We feel that we’re going to be in a very strong situation of meeting 400G lanes, both with the collaboration with Polariton as well as our own device work here. We don’t see that as an issue at all. The question in our minds internally is, what do we say, what do we do to go beyond that? We know we’ve got ideas to do that but we’re not becoming public with that right now.
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