ODIS, Inc. - Business Overview
A coming major force in the $515 Billion Military (FY2009 Dept. of Defense Budget) and $300+ Billion
by 2010 (reported by Business Wire Inc.) Commercial Semiconductor Industries is Optoelectronics which
meets the market need for high volume, rapidly growing optoelectronics, wireless and sensor market
segments which demand greater bandwidth, increase processing power and integration, with lower power
dissipation while being cost effective. These markets are established, but are at a threshold where a new
technology or technical dislocation is needed. Lower-priced implementations will permit these markets to
achieve their potential volumes along with additional applications being addressed.
Products for these emerging markets are not served by silicon components, owing to the physical limitations of silicon.
Solutions currently are based on high-cost hybrid manufacturing technology using Silicon Germanium
(SiGe), Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), or Indium Phosphide (InP) technologies: a new solution is needed.
ODIS Inc., with its R&D facilities located on the campus of the University of Connecticut, has developed
and proven a new semiconductor process based on a new Group III-V materials system. This process,
POET (Planar OptoElectronic Technology), is uniquely capable of producing monolithic IC solutions to
meet the emerging needs of these emerging markets. POET allows ODIS to produce ICs with dense
packing of active optical elements together with packing of high-performance electronic elements at a
density similar to that of silicon. These monolithic implementations have a large advantage over today’s
hybrid-based solutions in density, reliability, and power dissipation, at a cost much lower than the best
available competitors. ODIS will produce a market dislocation by providing monolithic IC components
for these high volume high-performance markets with high-reliability, smaller, lower-power components
at disruptively lower prices.
POET is differentiated from competing semiconductor processes, silicon, gallium arsenide, or indium
phosphide by its more comprehensive set of elemental capabilities, and its ability to integrate them. POET
can integrate lasers, modulators, photoreceivers, passive optics and high-speed, low-power electronics in
monolithically-fabricated die: no other existing process can do so. This gives ODIS ICs their much lower
cost structure, power savings and increased reliability.
Patent and trade secret protection on POET, plus ODIS’s specific design knowledge using POET
elements give ODIS a large, defensible barrier to competition.
Market Conditions & Drivers
Progress in the electronics industry over the past four decades has both driven and been driven by our
ability to create and serve markets with faster, cheaper, and smaller monolithic integrated circuits. Each
product advance in turn becomes the driver for the next wave of IC technology. Many new generations of
IC technology from the earliest small-scale bipolar devices with 4 transistors through 0.09-micron feature
size CMOS circuits with nearly 1-billion gate density have continually increased the ICs capabilities and
thus those of the products in which they serve. Advances in PCs, communications, and many consumer
devices have been powered by this continual development in semiconductor technology.
Today however, this paradigm is falling short. Particularly in the arenas of optoelectronics and very highspeed
mixed-signal circuits silicon ICs will not serve, and no good monolithic (single-chip) technology
exists. Today’s implementations in these markets are not benefiting from the cost savings of integrated
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technologies, but rather are based on hybrid or multi-component approaches. In the hybrid approach
multiple individual semiconductor components of multiple technologies are interconnected to form
circuits satisfying the needs of a particular application. This approach is used successfully to bring
solutions to limited-size markets, particularly those in which performance is at a premium, but at a higher
price. However, as the need for high-speed services spreads, and higher-volume markets emerge, this
hybrid approach to implementation cannot produce competitive solutions. While hybrid technology will
serve for limited-size markets, those able to tolerate higher price tags, it cannot serve truly large,
competitive markets. A dislocation in technology is needed.
Today’s semiconductor industry is typically seen as being dominated by silicon products, with the silicon
IC industry then being divided into the PC/memory segment and the fabless IC segment. The fabless
business segment is then split into a triad of separate industries providing: design tools, IC designs, and
IC fabrication, all operating independently but synergistically. While this is a good description of the
silicon portion of the semiconductor industry, it is not a model of the whole semiconductor industry. Left
unaddressed is a multi-billion dollar cost-sensitive market for analog, mixed-signal, RF, and optical
products that is currently served by a combination of non-silicon technologies: Si-Ge (silicongermainum),
GaAs (Gallium Arsenide), InP (Indium Phosphide), and GaN (Gallium Nitride).
ODIS Technology
ODIS’s new and patented semiconductor fabrication process, POET is based on a unique Group III-V
materials structure. The heart of POET is a unique and patented Group III-V materials system that
supports monolithic fabrication of ICs containing active and passive optical elements, together with highperformance
analog and digital elements. For the first time an economical integration of many optical
devices together with dense, high-speed analog and high-speed, low-power digital elements are possible
in monolithic ICs.
The processing of these wafers into products is done using a series of steps similar to those used in silicon
processing, and is scalable to deep submicron feature sizes. POET device yield will thus be similar to that
of silicon, much higher than that characteristic of many current III-V processes. This gives ODIS a
technology basis that is uniquely powerful, that is economical to produce, and that is extensible in
generations. POET is a uniquely-powerful mixed-signal process, integrating high-performance analog and
digital electronics with high-performance active optical elements. ODIS ICs integrate a dense mix of
active optical elements and optical waveguides together with logic and mixed-signal elements on a single
chip, thus manufactured in one serial process. Capitalizing on POET capabilities, ODIS offers product
solutions into the communications, optoelectronic, RF/wireless, sensor, and imaging markets.
POET allows ODIS to fundamentally alter the landscape for a broad range of applications by offering
components with dramatically lowered cost together with increased speed, density, and reliability.
Addressable Target Markets
Military
POET’s technology platform for optoelectronic integration exploits the optoelectronic and electronic
behaviors of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor material. One of the benefits of this material, from
a space electronics perspective, is that GaAs is significantly less susceptible to x-ray and gamma-ray total
integrated dose (TID) radiation. GaAs is the long-standing choice for high-frequency (e.g. RF) devices
and circuits, although, GaAs digital devices do not provide the performance that Metal Oxide
Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor, (MOSFET) devices provide.
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Important to military applications are the electronic devices that can be integrated into the POET
architecture including both complementary heterostructure field effect transistors and complementary
heterojunction bipolar transistors. These transistors enable both analog and digital functions in POET
hybrid optoelectronic devices. Important to the military is ODIS’s ability to integrate digital, RF, and
optical technologies in a single device makes POET an important, high-performance capability that
satisfies documented needs for multiple space systems and all Military Departments and Agency Tech
Areas.
Commercial
Progress in the commercial electronics industry over the past four decades has both driven and been
driven by our ability to create and serve markets with faster, cheaper, and smaller monolithic integrated
circuits. Each product advance in turn becomes the driver for the next wave of IC technology. Many new
generations of IC technology from the earliest small-scale bipolar devices with 4 transistors through 0.09-
micron feature size CMOS circuits with nearly 1-billion gate density have continually increased the ICs
capabilities and thus those of the products in which they serve. Advances in PCs, communications, and
many consumer devices have been powered by this continual development in semiconductor technology.
Today however, this paradigm is falling short. Particularly in the arenas of optoelectronics and very highspeed
mixed-signal circuits silicon ICs will not serve, and no good monolithic technology exists. A recent
Electronic News Article stated that the optoelectronics market is forecast to surpass the discrete
semiconductor market and become the second largest segment in the semiconductor industry behind
integrated circuits, according to a report published by industry researcher IC Insights.
