Data center networks (DCNs) form the backbone infrastructure of many large-scale enterprise
applications as well as emerging cloud computing providers. This paper describes the design,
implementation and evaluation of OSA, a novel Optical Switching Architecture for DCNs.
Leveraging runtime reconfigurable optical devices, OSA dynamically changes its topology and link
capacities, thereby achieving unprecedented flexibility to adapt to dynamic traffic patterns. Extensive
analytical simulations using both real and synthetic traffic patterns demonstrate that OSA can deliver
high bisection bandwidth (60%-100% of the non-blocking architecture). Implementation and
evaluation of a small-scale functional prototype further demonstrate the feasibility of OSA.