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Panel: Interconnect Insights on the Photonics Enabling AI Factory Scale and Multi-Data Center Future

Wednesday, May 20, 2026
9:20 AM - 10:00 AM ET
Location: Osceola Ballroom (Ballroom / Level 2)
The race to exascale AI and beyond is driving a fundamental shift in how AI factory building blocks are designed and operated, with networking and photonics as a critical enabler for interconnects within and between AI data centers. The Open Compute Project proudly brings together a panel of leading experts to discuss the practical realities and future direction of revolutionizing data movement—from photonic integrated circuits (PICs), to scale-up AI pods, to scale-out AI factories and scale-across AI multi-data center clusters. As data moves within AI clusters, so too does it move in and out. We’ll look at connectivity requirements of AI applications to the backbone computing continuum from central cloud to edge to endpoint. Beyond trends, this panel aims to cover technologies like recent breakthroughs in silicon photonics, the rise of linear and co-packaged optics (CPO), and advanced optical interconnects such as optical circuit switching (OCS), emphasizing their technical and market impacts on overcoming bottlenecks in data transfer for AI training and inference, as well as their role in enabling next-generation AI accelerators and memory hierarchies.