Based on the transmission of coupled gap solitons in nonlinear periodic media, we present an all-optical switching scheme which has a novel architecture and principle. The proposed switch with an extremely small switching element can be realized on a semiconductor waveguide. We here investigate the switching performance with a GaAs waveguide in order to give criteria for the experimental realization of the all-optical switching phenomena. We also suggest a variation of an index-matching scheme to solve the technical problem such as the input-energy coupling into a periodic waveguide.