Optics enabled networks and architectures for data center cost and power efficiency [Invited]

Bandwidth demand for data center networks continues as performance increases and is further fueled by the exploding demand for artificial intelligence and new high-performance computing workloads. Managing power and costs will require a range of solutions including new networking and workload specialized architectures, composable systems, and optical circuit switching. In this paper, we focus primarily on two topics: examining the benefits of flatter networks (enabled mainly by means of co-packaged-optics-enabled switches) and the utilization improvement potential for composable (disaggregated) systems, while discussing specialized hardware and networks, and optical circuit switching more briefly.