How photonic networking can help data centres

In light of rapidly increasing demand for ultra-high speed data transmission, data centres are under pressure to provide ever increasing data transmission through their networks and at the same time improve the quality of data handling in terms of reduced latency, increased scalability and improved channel speed for users. However as data rates increase, present electronic switching technology using current data centre architecture is becoming increasingly difficult to scale despite improved data management. In this paper electronic scalability issues will be discussed and alternative optical solutions will be reviewed including a novel and highly scalable optical interconnect.