mems optical switchers were supposed to be the savior of linespeed networking about 10 years ago, and people are constantly bringing them up, but the photonics guys, as smart as they are, just don't have the research capital to keep up with the semiconductor guys; transistors are continually outpacing photonics, even in fiber routing applications. it's actually faster to uart a fiber signal, route it, then emit it back out into fiber bandwidth than it is to route the light with the fastest tiniest refractory devices that exist.
