AI compute is growing 2.5X a year and electrical switching is hitting its limits. An OFC 2026 workshop showed how optical circuit switching (OCS), with its low latency and low power, is becoming a core technology for NVIDIA and the hyperscalers building next-generation AI supercomputers.

NTT cut the junction capacitance of a III-V electro-absorption modulator to 26fF with a membrane structure, pushing device bandwidth past 67GHz at just 0.75 pJ/bit system energy. We walk through all 11 figures of this VLSI 2026 paper.

AI infrastructure's next bottleneck isn't compute but connecting distributed compute with optics. With the three AICC models, NTT and OCP move DCI from a supporting role to center stage. Is this a tailwind for Taiwan's optical supply chain, or still far off? Three signals to watch.

Edgecore admitted 1.6T LPO is "not yet successful," so the stopgap is gone and CPO can no longer wait a generation. Three MSAs at OFC 2026 push CPO toward swappable engines, while SONiC only now has the models it needs. Hardware decides who ships; software decides who deploys at scale.