HUBER+SUHNER breaks ground on new POLATIS optical circuit switch production site

HUBER+SUHNER AG / Key word(s): Miscellaneous HUBER+SUHNER breaks ground on new POLATIS optical circuit switch production site 02.05.2024 / 06:45 CET/CEST 02.05.2024

HUBER+SUHNER is building a new state-of-the-art manufacturing site in Pisary, Poland, to produce their POLATIS optical circuit switch (OCS) portfolio at scale, acknowledging the substantial upsurge of interest in using OCS to increase utilisation and energy efficiency in high-performance computer clusters driven by the hyperscale data center boom in artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

The existing POLATIS OCS production facility in Krzeszowice, Poland, is currently running at maximum capacity. The new production facility for POLATIS OCS products broke ground in nearby Pisary. With a total area of around 3,000 m2, the facility is expected to be finished by the end of 2024. It will feature air-source heat pumps, together with photovoltaic panels for solar power generation and will also be equipped with its own waste water purification plant. 

The new location will enable HUBER+SUHNER to capitalise on the growing opportunities and volume potential being presented by the AI data center market. AI applications have been widely used in many areas over the last twelve months. As a result, hyperscale data center operators and other providers of high-performance and cloud computing services are developing new architectures to scale their computing platforms to meet new demands in processing power, latency, scalability and energy efficiency that result from AI applications.

Optical circuit switches, also known as all-optical switches, are highly efficient for rapidly switching large volumes of high-bit-rate traffic between fibers with low latency, which is essential for AI. An OCS enables network operators to rapidly provision, protect, test and monitor terabit/second scale cross-connect traffic directly at the fiber layer. 

All-optical switching technology removes the need for power-hungry optical-to-electrical signal conversion around the switch core, enabling transparent, future-proof connectivity with speed-of-light data latency. OCS technology helps to maximise network uptime, lower power consumption and reduce infrastructure capital expenditure. Use of OCS also makes remote operations possible, which results in optimised operating costs.