Resources
Welcome to the OCP Networking – Optical Circuit Switching Sub-Project.
This Project is open to the public and we want to welcome all those who would like to be involved.
Disclaimer: Please do not submit any confidential information to the Project Community. All presentation materials, proposals, meeting minutes and/or supporting documents are published by OCP and are open to the public in accordance to OCP’s Bylaws and IP Policy. This can be found on the OCP Policies page. If you have any questions please contact OCP.
Overview of the OCS Subproject
The rapid evolution of data-intensive applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and high-performance computing, demands innovative networking solutions that deliver high bandwidth, low latency, and energy efficiency. Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) is the perfect candidate to meet these needs within data centers and AI clusters. To accelerate its adoption and ensure seamless integration into modern network architectures, we propose the creation of an OCS Subproject within the OCP Networking Project.
This subproject will be dedicated to developing guiding principles, open standards, and a fully open network technology stack for OCS. The OCS Subproject aims to empower users and manufacturers by fostering collaboration, interoperability, and innovation in optical networking.
Mission Statement
The mission of the OCS Subproject is to standardize and advance Optical Circuit Switching as an open, scalable, and efficient solution for next-generation networking. By creating open specifications, integrating OCS with Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and promoting interoperability, we aim to unlock the full potential of OCS for data centers, AI clusters, and beyond—aligned with the OCP vision of openness, scalability, efficiency, and community-driven innovation.
Project Charter
The project charter document can be found here. This document outlines the broad goals and scope of the project and serves as the initial guidance for the community to work from. It is expected that this will evolve over time as work progresses.
OCS Application Papers
We are collecting a list of relevant papers published that describe relevant OCS applications and the associated benefits.
- Jupiter Evolving: Transforming Google’s Datacenter Network via Optical Circuit Switches and Software-Defined Networking (Google)
- Lightwave Fabrics: At-Scale Optical Circuit Switching for Datacenter and Machine Learning Systems (Google)
- Mission Apollo: Landing Optical Circuit Switching at Datacenter Scale (Google)
- Resiliency at Scale: Managing Google’s TPUv4 Machine Learning Supercomputer (Google)
- MixNet: A Runtime Reconfigurable Optical-Electrical Fabric for Distributed Mixture-of-Experts Training (HK University of Science & Tech, Meta, etc..)
- Photonic switching in high-performance datacenters (Columbia University)
- TopoOpt: Co-optimizing Network Topology and Parallelization Strategy for Distributed Training Jobs (MIT, CMU, Meta, Telescent)
- Optical switching for data centers and advanced computing systems (Nvidia)
- Helios: a hybrid electrical/optical switch architecture for modular data centers (SIGCOMM’10)
- c-Through: part-time optics in data centers (SIGCOMM’10)
- OSA: An optical switching architecture for data center networks with unprecedented flexibility (NSDI’12)
- Circuit Switching Under the Radar with REACToR (NSDI’14)
- RotorNet: A Scalable, Low-complexity, Optical Datacenter Network (SIGCOMM’17)
- NEPHELE: An End-to-End Scalable and Dynamically Reconfigurable Optical Architecture for Application-Aware SDN Cloud Data Centers (IEEE Communications Magazine’18)
- RDC: Energy-Efficient Data Center Network Congestion Relief with Topological Reconfigurability at the Edge (NSDI’22)
- Time-division TCP for reconfigurable data center networks (SIGCOMM’22)
- Uniform-Cost Multi-Path Routing for Reconfigurable Data Center Networks (SIGCOM’24)
- Revolutionizing Datacenter Networks via Reconfigurable Topologies (CACM’25)
- TopoOpt: Co-optimizing Network Topology and Parallelization Strategy for Distributed Training Jobs (NSDI’23)
- RAMP: A flat nanosecond optical network and MPI operations for distributed deep learning systems (Journal of Optical Switching and Networking’24)
- MixNet: A Runtime Reconfigurable Optical-Electrical Fabric for Distributed Mixture-of-Experts Training (SIGCOMM’25)
- ACTINA: Adapting Circuit-Switching Techniques for AI Networking Architectures (SC’25)
- InfiniteHBD: Building Datacenter-Scale High-Bandwidth Domain for LLM with Optical Circuit Switching Transceivers (SIGCOMM’25)
Key Decision Made from Past Calls
List of key decisions made from the past call can be found in the following link https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dDKV20J5NG847M4oJgJMKE_FBuQ3NaeBnp_i4BB6ewo/edit?tab=t.0
Recordings from Past Calls
The regular project call is currently held every Wednesday at 9AM PST. Notes for all past meetings are available from the links below. The notes documents contain links to meeting recordings and any slide decks that were presented.
- Optical Circuit Switching call recordings (YouTube playlist)
2026
- 09-16-2026 meeting Notes
- 09-02-2026 meeting Notes
- 08-19-2026 meeting Notes
- 08-05-2026 meeting Notes
- 07-22-2026 meeting Notes
- 07-08-2026 meeting Notes
- 06-10-2026 meeting Notes
- 05-27-2026 meeting Notes
- 04-29-2026 meeting Notes
- 04-15-2026 meeting Notes
- 04-01-2026 meeting Notes
- 03-04-2026 meeting Notes
- 02-18-2026 meeting Notes
- 02-09-2026 meeting Notes
- 02-04-2026 meeting Notes Recording (recording no longer available)
- 01-28-2026 meeting Notes
- 01-21-2026 meeting Notes
- 01-14-2026 meeting Notes
2025
- 12-10-2025 meeting Notes
- 12-03-2025 meeting Notes
- 11-19-2025 meeting Notes
- 11-12-2025 meeting Notes
- 10-29-2025 meeting Notes
- 10-22-2025 meeting Notes
- 10-15-2025 in person meeting at OCP global summit Notes
- 10-08-2025 meeting Notes
- 09-24-2025 meeting Notes
- 09-17-2025 meeting Notes
- 09-10-2025 meeting Notes
- 09-03-2025 meeting Notes
- 08-27-2025 Kickoff meeting Notes
Call Calendar
These meeting are recorded via audio and video. By participating you consent that these recordings may be made publicly available. Any presentation materials, proposals and meeting minutes are published on the respective project’s wiki page and are open to the public in accordance to OCP’s Bylaws and IP Policy. This can be found at http://www.opencompute.org/about/ocp-policies/. If you have any questions please contact OCP.