Silicon Photonics Switching: From Technology to Deployment

Author: Daniel Pérez-López, Founder and CTO, iPronics Collection: 2026 OCP EMEA Summit – Photonics

Summary

iPronics founder Daniel Pérez-López argues that silicon photonics-based optical circuit switches (OCS) are the "missing link" for super scale-up networking, and presents his company's deployed product as evidence that the technology is ready now. The core thesis is that expanding the scale-up domain beyond a single rack — connecting hundreds or thousands of GPUs coherently — requires OCS with extreme port density, $100/port cost, and sub-millisecond reconfiguration speed, none of which existing MEMS- or piezo-based solutions can simultaneously deliver.

iPronics has spent ten years developing a proprietary programmable silicon photonics platform built on standard foundry processes (no moving parts, no specialty fabrication), integrating thousands of Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) 2×2 switch elements on a single 20×23 mm die. The current shipping product, ONE32, is a gain-controlled 32×32 optical switch covering the full O-band (1260–1340 nm, compatible with DR, LWDM, and CWDM standards) with less than 1.5 decade BER degradation. Engineering samples have been in the hands of hyperscalers since OFC April 2025, and a 64-port version is available in Q4-2026.

The form-factor advantage over MEMS is the defining commercial differentiator: iPronics achieves 256 ports per 1U versus 37 for regular MEMS, and can deploy 100 OCS using only 48U of rack space (1.2 extra cabinets embedded in existing racks) versus 400U (~14 cabinets) for first-generation MEMS-based OCS. For a 576-GPU cluster, this translates to eliminating 14 dedicated OCS cabinets. Power contribution of the OCS is estimated at just 14W/GPU (3% of total networking power, 0.5% of total system power), and cost at $1,800/GPU (9% of networking cost, 2% of total). The roadmap projects dropping insertion loss from ~10 dB today to ~4 dB as fabric architecture improves, reducing or eliminating the need for on-board SOA amplification.