Transcript, Transcript, Transcript.
Exciting times ahead.
Here is a transcript of the update: read and judge for yourself.
YLM:
First. Let’s explain the significance of our milestone recent announcement:
Reminder, OLEDs took a while, but are now everywhere!
EO Polymers are on the same trajectory!
For memory, traditional polymers issues were relating to Temperature, Sensitivity to light, Reaction to Oxygen exposure.
- Chromophores in Perkinamine were designed, from the molecular level up, to withstand high temps (High Tg, and wide spread between To and Tg)
- Resistance to photo bleaching has already been tested successfully in the past
- Last week’s PR was a breakthrough in Reliability and resistance to O2: the tests were conducted on thin films, based on work requested for aTier-1 Telco customer and the results, as noted were very, very good.
- In addition, the very good results were obtained from a Gen2 ALD encapsulation and recent tests on Gen4 ALD yields results 5x better than state-of-the-art Gold Boxes. Will help future product generations at LWLG.
Next step is to conduct the same tests on customers’ devices ( packaged modulators or devices, optical engines… designed by our customers) in Stage3 of the commercialization cycle. The above results on material reliability were critical to convince customers to proceed to stage 3.
Other steps will be conducted at foundries, used by our partners customers.
Emergence of CPO gives LWLG a long runway in scale UP, as LWLG strength comes from Low power consumption, small size, compatibility with CMOS foundries on top of exceptionally high bandwidth (>200G/L). In the meantime, transceivers are our focus for the short term in Scale-OUT applications. So at LWLG, we have to keep working on speed (400G and above), low power, small size, CMOS compatibility to meet the final customers objectives, while working with their design offices, foundries and assembly partners.
At LWLG, we have been very busy with customer engagement, across all 3 geographical regions (China and Asia – Taiwan and Singapore-, US and finally Europe including Israel) in the last few months since OFC. A few examples:
- A Fortune 500 company in Asia engaged with us a few months ago – a Tier 1 customer -, and we are processing their 3rd generation SiP 200G/sec/L test chips in our Fab in Denver (BEOL applying our EO polymer, Perkinamine), in order to validate the design and performance of their 200G “FLOPs”. At completion we expect to move to step-3 of transceiver-design program in the commercialization cycle, using Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) chips. We‘re also working on selecting the Tier-1 end-customers’ best matched foundry for the SOH chips augmented with EOP for high volume production and high yields.
- We’re also working on a 400G/L technical program, with a Tier 1 AI-connectivity firm [NLDR: AVGO??], on CPO configuration. This is early stage (stage 1?) that will require specific tuning to EO polymers and will also include a stringent qualification campaign, on packaging and assembly PDKs with their manufacturing partner [NLDR: TSMC?? For Nvidia??] in order to achieve a much tighter integration of the PIC to the electrical IC.
- In parallel, LWLG is engaged w several SiP design houses, some vertically integrated, others not, from Tier1 to smaller, hungry, VC-funded startups. Goal is to intercept 200G/L opportunities and move them to 400G where our features favor us.
Expect some engagements to reach stage 3 in the next few quarters.
But engagement is not exclusively for stage 3: also bringing in some new stage 1 customers. One is a Tier1 hyperscaler, transitioning from 200G to 400G, to whom we will be shipping “our” (?!?) 400G/L modulators prototypes soon for evaluation in their labs.
These engagements make us confident that these customers are willing to accept our polymers vs traditional materials.
Like any new technology, many obstacles remain to be overcome but the momentum is excellent. We are now spending quality time planning the processes and scaling of our production.
Also engaging with foundries for both front-end and BEOL processes, while being in partnership with some of our customers.
Reaffirming the “3-5 stage-3 customers by year end 2025” target.
Thanks are extended to the whole LWLG team without which any of this would be possible.
Q&A:
1) Could the gen4 ALD encapsulation be used as a source of revenue with traditional CMOS chips manufacturers like Samsung, LG or other OLED-using companies like Apple…
Gen 4 ALD was not developed in that spirit, more in line with our ongoing product and processes improvement efforts. Interesting thought for the future, but at present LWLG is laser focused on existing efforts with transceiver manufacturers and CPO designs, as well as the foundries they are working with, in order to access our identified Serviceable Markets opportunities ASAP.
2) Was the GR468 testing performed on devices?
GR468 tests were performed on thin film materials, not on customers’ devices. But it was critical to move some customers to stage3 of the cycle, where the tests will then be performed on our customers’ devices designs. However, in the mean time, to avoid surprises later on, LWLG has started doing some internal “red-flag” testing on our internal PICs, that will help build confidence and know-how pointers for when we do 3rd-party testing.
3) Foundry partnerships?
LWLG keeps working on improving their existing PDKs with improved materials and processes both on front-end and back-end (BEOL). AMF was already announced earlier this year, but LWLG is also exploring additional partnerships to prepare for the move from 200mm wafers to 300mm wafers in anticipation of the industry transition as volumes requirements grow.
4) Expected milestones on the road to commercial deployment?
The 18-24 months cycle was presented at the ASM25 last May, with some tasks that are directly under our control, some that are joint with our customers and some that are completely out of our control. Some are exclusively with our partners and some involve our partners’ end-customers acceptance.
5) CPO development
Very Interesting but still very new and without standards yet: several proprietary options are being evaluated in the industry. LWLG is working with several design groups. It looks like our features in term of speed, power, size and CMOS compatibility position LWLG very favorably, especially vs III-V materials like LiN or InP.
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