SWITCHES, DISPLAYS AND UIs


Smarter switching and the energy equation:


A new focus for data centre efficiency By Darren Watkins, chief revenue officer at VIRTUS Data Centres


A


s the digital economy continues to scale, the pressure on data centres to deliver performance without excessive power use is rising fast. Operators are being asked to do more with less - less space, less carbon and less certainty about future demand.


This challenge has triggered major investment in more efficient power and cooling systems. But a less obvious part of the infrastructure stack is starting to demand attention: switching. Whilst switching has long been seen as a stable, almost background function of data centre operations, its role in energy consumption is growing. As data volumes surge and workloads become increasingly complex, especially in AI-rich environments, the traditional model of optoelectronic switching is struggling to keep pace. The


result is unnecessary power consumption, increased cooling loads and constraints on scalability.


Switching and the performance bottleneck


Every time data is moved inside a data centre - between central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), storage or servers - it is routed through a switch. In most modern data centres, that process involves converting signals from light to electricity (and back again) to make routing decisions. These conversions take place millions of times per second and have a cost - in energy, in heat and in latency. The more data that moves, and the more frequently it moves, the bigger that cost becomes. In AI deployments in particular, the pattern of data flow can be highly


16 OCTOBER 2025 | ELECTRONICS FOR ENGINEERS


unpredictable and bandwidth-hungry, with east-west traffic dominating. This dynamic traffic pattern is exactly where traditional switching starts to create friction - not just in terms of throughput, but in its contribution to energy and thermal loads.


Rethinking the switch To address this, some operators are exploring the shift to optical switching. Unlike conventional designs, optical switches route data entirely in the light domain, eliminating the need for constant conversion. This substantially reduces energy use and eliminates much of the heat produced by switching hardware.


One company at the centre of this innovation is Finchetto, a UK-based developer of passive optical switching technology. Finchetto’s fully optical switches


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