Integrated magneto‐optic (MO) modulators are an attractive but not fully explored alternative to electro‐optic (EO) modulators. They are current driven, structurally simple, and could potentially achieve high efficiency in cryogenic and room temperature environments where fJ bit−1 optical interfaces are needed. In this paper, the performance and energy efficiency of a novel MO modulator at room temperature are for the first time assessed. First, a model of the micro‐ring‐based modulator is implemented to investigate the design parameters and their influence on the performance. Then, a fabricated device is experimentally characterized to assess its performance in terms of bit rate and energy efficiency. The model shows efficient operation at 1.2 Gbps using a 16 mA drive current, consuming only 155 fJ bit−1. The experimental results show that the MO effect is suitable for modulation, achieving error‐free operation above 16 mA with a power consumption of 258 fJ bit−1 at a transient limited data rate of 1.2 Gbps.

Scalability and operation of O-band SOA-based Broadcast & Select switches are experimentally assessed using 100 Gb/s commercial transceivers. Results show error-free operation for a 32-port switch with < 1.8 dB power penalty and 10 − 8 for a 64-port switch.

We investigate the viability of optically switched network for ML accelerator clusters and compare it to a leaf-spine network with 256/1024 GPUs. Results show almost ideal throughput, sub-µs latency and zero packet-loss for ¡0.6 traffic-load.