The end of long copper: Silicon photonics marches toward the GPU

With the announcement of two networking switch products at its own GPU Technology Conference (GTC), Nvidia last year fired the starting gun for the adoption of silicon photonics in data centers. It wasn’t clear, however, how long the race would take. A few years? Or the better part of a decade?

One year later, following GTC 2026, we have a much better idea of how Nvidia intends to transition to optical networking. And it’s happening faster than many expected.