Optical components for datacenters

There is currently little near-term incentive for large-scale datacenter operators to change the way the build datacenters. Future datacenters will becoming increasingly difficult once the data rate for a single switch chip saturates. - When this will occur is subject to debate. (Best guess is around 25 Tb/s.) When the data rate for a single switch chip saturates, the existing architectural solutions will have to deal with some from of undesirable scaling although several workarounds have already been demonstrated. Saturation point of single-chip seems to be the most promising insertion point for some form of hybrid flow-level electrical/optical switching. The component/system-level ecosystem to support this transition is under development but needs further work.