Finchetto has announced that it has secured funding from Innovate UK to develop and test the world’s first fully optical, fully passive network switch, a technology that can significantly reduce energy usage in AI and communications networks.
Finchetto's switches deliver up to 20x lower power and ultra-low latency by eliminating electronics from the switching plane. With increased scrutiny on data center energy usage, this provides a concrete path to scaling AI without increasing power demand.
The agreement with Innovate UK will take Finchetto's photonics technology from the lab to commercial deployment, and is the first for all-optical packet and circuit switching.
Finchetto's optical network switches are capable of both circuit switching and packet switching and will be trialled in data communications use cases. Following completion of the project, this installation will be advanced towards commercial development.
Finchetto is addressing one of the most pressing challenges facing AI and telecommunications today: the increasing energy consumption of data centers and hyperscalers. These energy consumption already account for more than 1.5% of the world's electricity usage. To realize the full potential of AI, data center infrastructure must become significantly more energy efficient.
Compared to today's industry-leading electronic switches, Finchetto's first generation optical switches reduce power requirements by up to 20x. The all-optical passive architecture eliminates the need for electronics within the switch, enables ultra-low latency networking, and supports advanced topologies such as Intel's PolarFly for large-scale distributed computing.
Mark Rushworth, CEO and Co-Founder
This Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation funding will accelerate our mission to reinvent networks at the speed of light and bring complete optical infrastructure from the lab to the real world. AI is redefining the world, but it is currently doing so at a pace that our planet cannot tolerate. Data centers are on track to become one of the world's largest consumers of power, and simply scaling out more silicon and more power is not a viable future. Finchetto was founded to break the trade-off between energy and performance.
