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Spatially integrated switching architectures have been recently investigated in an attempt to provide switching capability for networks based on spatial division multiplexing (SDM) fibers, as well as to reduce the implementation cost. These architectures rely on the following switching paradigms, furnishing different degrees of spectral and spatial switching granularity: independent switching, which offers full spatial-spectral flexibility; joint-switching, which treats all spatial modes as a single entity; and fractional-joint switching, whereby subgroups of spatial modes are switched together as independent units. The last two paradigms are categorized as spatial group switching solutions since the spatial resources (modes, cores, or single-mode fibers) are switched in groups. In this paper, we compare the performance (in terms of spectral utilization, data occupancy, and network switching infrastructure cost) of the SDM …