An all-optical Ethernet switch is a network switch whose service ports are entirely optical, meaning every interface uses fiber rather than copper. This design enables end-to-end optical signal transmission, avoiding the conversion between electrical and optical signals at the switch port level. NVIDIA's co-packaged optics (CPO) switches with integrated silicon photonics are the world's most advanced networking solution for the era of agentic AI. Replacing pluggable transceivers with silicon photonics on the same package as the ASIC, NVIDIA CPO innovations provide 5x better power. 1State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications (IPOC), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 10 Xitucheng Rd, Bei Tai Ping Zhuang, Haidian Qu, Beijing, 100876, China 2IPI-ECO Research Institute, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600MB Eindhoven, The. Power the backbone for AI networking with innovations in optical open line systems, transponders, and pluggable coherent optics to connect back-end AI scale-across and front-end DCI/WAN for access, edge, metro, long-haul, and subsea applications. They can function as core, aggregation, and access devices on campus networks and connect to upstream and downstream devices. An all-optical network is a type of optical network in which all communication functions—such as signal storage, transmission, and switching—are performed entirely in the optical domain.
