The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) has unveiled its latest project: an open-standard networking switch powered by photonics.

The Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) Subproject aims to develop an interconnect system that leverages light instead of electrons to transmit data at far faster speeds.

Peter Roorda, general manager of switching at Lumentum, explained: “Unlike traditional electrical switching, OCS leverages photonic technology to route data optically, reducing power consumption and enhancing reliability for large-scale AI workloads.”

Amid an explosion of global data traffic, photonics is rapidly emerging as an alternative to traditional data transmission technologies, as network and cluster operators seek ultra-fast, energy-efficient data transfer methods to support AI, cloud, and 5G demands.

Where traditional electronic chips struggle to meet that need, photonics can manage massive data rates at far greater bandwidth and lower latency.

OCP and its members are looking to develop an open stack for the technology that would enable it to be integrated into existing network architectures. The project, unveiled ahead of the nonprofit’s APAC Summit in Taiwan, will also see the group create principles and standards for photonic networking.

Lumentum and iPronics will lead the project, with initial participants including Google, Microsoft, and Oriole Networks, among others.

OCP said the project aims to promote interoperability for photonic switching to “unlock the full potential of OCS for data centers, AI clusters, and beyond.”

Ryohei Urata, a principal engineer at Google Cloud, said: “Google extensively uses Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) technology in our data centers as part of our Jupiter/AI network architectures, through our Project Apollo initiative, within our TPU systems for superior performance and total cost of ownership.

“Google is pleased to partner with industry experts in OCP to define software interfaces (building on gNMI, gNOI, gNSI, and OpenConfig) that enable OCS technology to further scale across the ecosystem in an interoperable manner.”

Roorda added: “As AI clusters scale to meet the computational demands of generative AI and large language models (LLM), OCS provides a scalable and sustainable solution to handle the massive data throughput required, ensuring seamless integration with any networking protocols while also lending itself to the same software-defined networking APIs and management frameworks.”

Where there’s an open effort, there’s a proprietary equivalent from Nvidia. At its GTC event earlier this year, the world’s most valuable company unveiled a photonics-based version of its Spectrum-X networking switch, marking the chip giant’s first dip into the nascent world of photonics.