Optical circuit switching has stayed out of scale-up not because it fails to save power, but because it is two to three orders of magnitude slower than AI communication bursts. At OCP APAC, Linque showed a 64-channel silicon photonics OCS reconfiguring in 15 µs, clearing the “switch is too slow” hurdle. The other half—cutting transceiver lock time from milliseconds to nanoseconds—is the real battleground.