Salience Labs and Keysight Collaborate to Develop First Optical Circuit Switch Testing Environment

Key Terms

optical circuit switch technical

An optical circuit switch is a network device that directs data carried as pulses of light through fiber-optic cables without converting the light into electrical signals. Think of it as a railway switch for light that can open or close direct, high-speed paths between endpoints; investors care because it can lower latency, cut energy use, and increase capacity in telecom and data-center networks, which affects growth, costs and competitive advantage for companies that build or use them.

silicon photonics technical

Silicon photonics is the technology that uses tiny structures etched into silicon chips to generate, control and detect light for moving data and sensing, essentially putting optical fiber functions onto a computer chip. For investors, it matters because it can dramatically increase data speed and energy efficiency in data centers, telecom networks and advanced sensors, potentially lowering costs and enabling new products much like replacing many metal wires with faster, low-power optical highways.

all-optical switching technical

All-optical switching is a technology that routes or changes light signals using other light beams, without converting those signals into electrical currents. Think of it as traffic lights for data that are controlled by the cars themselves rather than a central operator; this can make communication networks and data centers faster, use less energy, and reduce delays. Investors watch it because widespread adoption can lower operating costs, enable higher-speed services, and create growth opportunities in networking and telecom equipment markets.

hyperscalers technical

Hyperscalers are large technology companies that operate massive computing networks and data centers to provide cloud services, data storage, and online infrastructure at an enormous scale. They are essential to the digital economy because they enable businesses and organizations to handle vast amounts of data and run complex applications efficiently. For investors, hyperscalers represent powerful engines of growth and innovation in the technology sector.

Joint solution will be showcased at OFC Conference March 17-19, demonstrating the value of optical technology for AI workloads

OXFORD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Salience Labs Limited, a leader in photonic solutions targeting connectivity for AI datacenter infrastructure, and Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS), today announced a strategic collaboration to develop the first optical circuit switch (OCS) testing environment. This collaboration positions Keysight as the leader in OCS testing and measurement, establishing it as the expert in how silicon photonics is advancing the performance and reliability of AI workloads. Salience Labs is providing the industry’s highest performing silicon photonics based all-optical switching platform. Using Salience Labs product line, Keysight will demonstrate this new testing solution at OFC 2026, March 17-19 in Los Angeles.

According to Bain & Company, AI will account for close to half of datacenter workloads by 2030. To address this increase in demand, next generation AI datacenters will be required to maximize performance, decrease network latency, reduce power consumption and increase reliability. The Salience Labs and Keysight collaboration offers datacenters with the advanced analysis and research on optical circuit switch technology to identify the solutions required to address those challenges and to meet the needs of AI datacenters today and in the future.

“AI is driving exponential growth in the datacenter market, increasing the demand for scalable networking architectures that deliver high performance, reliability, and cost efficiency,” said Ram Periakaruppan, Vice President and General Manager, Network Test & Security Solutions at Keysight Technologies. “Alongside Salience Labs, we are expanding our industry-leading KAI Data Center Builder validation capabilities to include optical circuit switching technologies, enabling datacenter operators and hyperscalers to confidently validate and deploy next-generation infrastructure at scale.”

Salience Labs all-optical switch product line, including its recently released 32-port all-optical silicon photonic switch, enables datacenters to greatly reduce network latency, improving end user performance for scale up networks within the rack and across multiple racks. The Keysight testing environment shows how improving the interconnect capabilities will unlock performance gains utilizing optical circuit switching technology. The result is faster completion times of AI requests for training and inference workloads, along with significant cost and power savings for hyperscalers and large enterprises.

“Our suite of optical circuit solutions is transforming the networking layer of datacenters, enabling a more resilient AI infrastructure today and into the future,” said Vaysh Kewada, CEO and co-founder of Salience Labs. “We have created a robust partner ecosystem with leaders from across the photonics market. Keysight leads the market with the first optical circuit switch testing environment that is allowing Salience Labs to accelerate our development and innovation.”

A demonstration of Keysight’s optical circuit switch environment using Salience Lab’s product line will be shown in Keysight’s Booth #1300 at the OFC conference, March 17-19, 2026. To book a meeting and request a technology demonstration at the show, please reach out to saliencelabs@wireside.com.

About Salience Labs

Salience Labs Limited is a leader in photonic solutions targeting connectivity for AI datacenter infrastructure. Founded in 2021 and backed by over a decade of research from the University of Oxford in the UK and the University of Münster in Germany, Salience’s innovative developments in photonic switching technology enable high-speed, ultra-low latency networking fabrics that remove infrastructure bottlenecks for AI workloads. Learn more at www.saliencelabs.ai.

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Media Contacts

Kathryn Ghita

Wireside Communications for Salience Labs

saliencelabs@wireside.com

Andrea Mueller, Americas

Keysight Technologies

andrea.mueller@keysight.com

Source: Salience Labs Limited