iPronics, BSC partner on AI optical networking
iPronics ONE will be integrated into BSC's GPU and HPC infrastructure to explore dynamic optical connectivity for AI workloads.
iPronics and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) have announced a two-year collaboration to advance programmable optical networking for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.
Under the collaboration, iPronics will integrate its ONE programmable optical circuit switching platform into BSC's GPU and HPC infrastructure. The partners will explore how dynamically reconfigurable optical connectivity can be combined with software to better match network resources to AI workloads.
iPronics will provide its optical switching platform, low-level software and application programming interfaces, while BSC will develop software above the switch-management layer. The teams will investigate workload-aware networking approaches for AI training and inference, including large language model and mixture-of-experts workloads.
The companies said the collaboration aims to generate system-level insights into how programmable optical networking can improve GPU utilisation, reduce latency and lower energy consumption without requiring changes to existing software stacks.
“As AI and HPC systems scale, the interconnect is becoming an increasingly important part of overall system architecture,” said Antonio J. Peña, leading researcher and group leader at BSC-CNS. “Our collaboration with iPronics gives us the opportunity to explore how programmable optical networking and the software stack can work together to support more dynamic and efficient computing infrastructures.”
The collaboration follows iPronics' recent $125 million Series B funding round, which brought the company's total funding to $177 million. The company is also expanding its presence in the US with a new office in Santa Clara, California.
