During ICC News interview with QXP Chief Engineer Spark Xu, Mr. Xu said that the rise of AI had not only driven the development of high-speed optical modules in the data center market, but that the use of optical switching (OCS) had begun to gain traction since a paper published by Google last year. Optical switches can replace part of the spine switches in data centers, enabling signals routing in the optical domain, and can effectively reduce the number of O-E-O conversion. This change not only reduces power consumption, but also significantly reduces costs.

In recent years, multi-channel NxN optical switches have gradually become a hot topic in the industry. At present, there are three mainstream optical switch technologies in the industry. One is based on MEMS technology, using rotating mirrors to achieve optical path switching. At this year's OFC exhibition, it can be seen that the maximum number of ports for MEMS optical switches has reached 384 x 384. The second technology is based on a liquid crystal scheme, which achieves an optical switch array with 300 x 300 ports. Another technology uses piezoelectric ceramics to drive the rotation of fiber optic collimators, achieving direct port switching. At the OFC 2024 exhibition, the maximum number of ports for this method has reached 576 x 576 optical switch products.

The QXP optical switch is a chip scheme, with the switch unit in the chip being a thermally tuned MZ. This scheme has the advantages of low insertion loss, high reliability, and also supports polarization maintaining applications.