Introducing Scale1
Our first photonic network switch
Scale1 is LightScale's first photonic network switch, built to turn the platform into a concrete interconnect product for AI infrastructure.
It is the first switch built for Hyperlane, our topology-on-demand network architecture, with a focus on faster data movement, lower communication overhead, and more adaptive connectivity across bandwidth-heavy workloads.
From die to faceplate
Latency reduction
The switching path is designed to reconfigure at packet cadence, fast enough to change topology within a collective operation, not just between runs. The goal is to make connectivity changes cheap enough to use inside the data path, not as a slow control-plane action layered on top of it.
Hyperlane — topology on demand
Topology, routing, and link assignment are exposed to the control plane. Operators can match fabric shape to workload patterns (training, inference serving, MoE routing) and feed congestion and link-health signals back into reconfiguration decisions in real time.
Non-thermal switching
Scale1 uses a non-thermal photonic switching matrix, integrated at the device level rather than assembled from discrete optical components. It is designed to scale switch radix without the thermal load or per-port power overhead of conventional reconfigurable optics.
AI infrastructure is hitting a communications wall
The bottleneck
Compute scaled. The network didn't. As clusters grow, moving data — not raw FLOPs — is what holds them back. Every electronic hop converts light to electrons and back again, paying for it in power, latency, and cost per bit. At a hundred thousand GPUs, the network alone runs to tens of megawatts.
What has to change
A faster version of the same thing won't close the gap. The interconnect has to move more data per joule and reshape itself as quickly as the workload does. Optical switching already shows the energy savings are real; what's missing is the speed to use it inside a running job.
Designed for AI training and inference
AI collectives — all-reduce, all-to-all, MoE routing, bandwidth-heavy inference — want the fabric to reshape on µs-to-ns timescales, inside a single operation. Today's interconnects can't go there. Ours is built for it.
Built for high-speed, low-energy switching
Our platform targets switching speed, energy, and footprint in regimes that conventional approaches struggle to reach.
Ultrafast switching
Push optical switching into a faster operating regime than conventional platforms allow.
No moving parts
A field reroutes the light, not a mirror, a heater, or an injected carrier. Solid-state photonic switching with nothing to wear, warm, or wobble.
Lower switching energy
Energy stored, not burned. Target per-switch energy roughly 1,000× lower than current silicon photonic switches, by replacing heat-driven control with non-thermal switching.