This article provides an overview of optical switch architectures for next-generation data center and high-performance computing (HPC) networks. Traditional Electrical Packet‐Switch (EPS) fabrics increasingly struggle with congestion, power consumption, and scalability constraints as. Valencia, Spain – March 31, 2025 – iPronics, a leader in software-defined photonics, today launched its Optical Networking Engine, ONE-32, the world's first Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) product based on silicon photonics. Tailored for AI workloads and energy-efficient cloud infrastructure, the. This paper first summarizes the topologies and traffic characteristics in data centers and analyzes the reasons and importance of moving to optical switching.