Photonics replaces copper in data centre wiring — SkimNews
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- Data centres use approximately 400 tonnes of copper per typical 100MW facility, with up to 70 tonnes in computer servers and 20 tonnes in the network wiring targeted for replacement (per Digital Realty CTO Chris Sharp).
- Photonics technology sends data as light instead of electrons, eliminating the heating that drives data centre cooling loads — Cornerstone Labs' Callum Littlejohns says operators 'can save so much energy.'
- Nvidia has thrown its weight behind photonics, helping push the technology 'from the lab into widespread application,' according to Tyndall Research Institute's Peter O'Brien.
- Final assembly of photonics is concentrated in so-called packaging houses clustered in Taiwan, creating a distributed supply chain that is still working to bring costs down (per Hewlett Packard Labs' Andrew Wheeler).
- Optical components remain highly heat-sensitive even as they generate less heat themselves, because other data centre equipment keeps local environments hot — raising reliability concerns unless operators hold strict thermal limits.
- Resolight.ai is developing all-optical network switches that keep data in the optical domain entirely, avoiding the repeated photon-electron-photon conversions that limit current photonics gains.
- Cornerstone Labs is repurposing older silicon manufacturing equipment — including a tool from a former Intel Pentium 4 production line — because photonics components are generally larger than modern silicon chips.
Why it matters: Switching even the 20 tonnes of networking copper per 100MW facility to photonics could meaningfully cut cooling energy at a time when AI workloads are pushing data centre power demand sharply higher, but heat sensitivity of optical components and assembly concentrated in Taiwan create concrete reliability and supply-chain risks that must be solved first.
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