- Finchetto develops photonic packet switch eliminating electronic control bottlenecks
- Dual-wavelength innovation enables optical routing without electronic memory slowdown
- Future-proof passive optics promise scalability beyond terabit network generations
Photonics chip startup Finchetto is working on an optical packet switch which could help hyperscale networks scale into the AGI era. The design could potentially switch data up to 1000 times faster, while using less power and remaining scalable for future network speeds.
At a basic level, a digital packet switch receives data on one port, reads the header stored in memory, and forwards the packet out through the right port. That is straightforward in electronics, but not in photonics.
The problem with an optical packet switch is that light cannot be stored. A light beam carrying a data packet cannot be paused while its header is read, so conventional designs revert to slower electronic processing.
Future-proof
Finchetto’s co-founder, Mike Pearcey, realized that the data and header could instead be transmitted on two separate wavelengths simultaneously.
One carries the payload, the other the destination, allowing the switch to route packets optically.
Finchetto CEO Mark Rushworth told Blocks & Files: “We’ve eliminated the electrical control signal, the rate limiter on how granular you can get your switching in the circuit switches. We’re talking tens of microseconds, reconfiguration time, others are looking at less than a microsecond reconfiguration time, but that’s not fast enough to do a hundred gig network even, which is fairly low small fry these days. By eliminating that electronic control signal that says; switch this way, switch that way; that’s taking tens of microseconds or hundreds of nanoseconds and replacing it with light controlling lights, we’ve reduced that switching time to low nanoseconds.”
He added that the processing part of the switch “is actually taking those two parallel wavelengths and it is transposing the data onto the addressed wavelength. So only one wavelength comes out … on the destination wavelength, and then you have demultiplexer would send them out. Then you can physically get the data to the correct destination based on what wavelength it is on.”
Rushworth also stressed, “The packet remains integral as an Ethernet or Infiniband packet. Whatever protocol you’re using stays so that it can be understood at each end without any issues. We keep the same protocol that the system has.”
He argued the all-optical design is inherently future-proof: “At the moment, cutting edge is 800 gigabits per second. They’re pushing on 1.6 terabyte per second. In two, three years it’ll be 3.4 and so on. But because the switch is passive optics, it doesn’t matter what speed the signal comes in, because whatever the speed, we’ll pass it through.”
Finchetto is still in the early stages, with hurdles ahead including flow control in a bufferless optical system and completing the firmware, software, and management layers needed for a full network solution.
If successful, the company expects to have a lab-ready product within 12–18 months.