Photonics research projects addressing the energy and scalability need of future data centres

The current artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is fuelled by vast amounts of multimodal data (images, text, audio, video, scientific measurements, heterogeneous data, etc.) combined with ever-increasing computational power (GPUs). The potential to exploit AI technologies and generate value for both businesses and consumers has led to massive investment in computational resources, hosted by a growing number of data centres around the world. While the introduction of AI may be transformative for economies and societies, the impact of establishing more and more data centres—particularly in terms of energy consumption and environmental footprint—cannot be ignored.

Although the sustainability of EU data centres has been addressed from an energy-consumption perspective, the establishment of European AI factories alone is expected to triple Europe’s computational capacity by 2025, leading to increased energy use with current technologies. This is because both training and deploying AI models (e.g., inferencing when users pose questions) are highly energy-intensive operations that rely on thousands of interconnected chips (GPUs) and hundreds of clusters spread across data centres worldwide.

Furthermore, existing data centre network architectures that rely on traditional electrical switches do not always scale well for inter- and intra-processing communications, both within and between data centres. While processing capacity has grown exponentially over the last decade, with AI data centres now hosting up to 100 000 GPUs, traditional electronic communication networks were not designed for such scale. One promising solution to this communication bottleneck lies in novel optical interconnect components based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and next-generation optical network architectures.

In this context, the Horizon Europe Digital-funded research projects managed by HaDEA push the boundaries of scalability and energy reduction in communication networks by developing novel hardware components and architectures that rely on PICs.

From a hardware perspective, co-packaged optics is expected to be a game-changer for energy efficiency and high-speed data exchange between server clusters. In this respect, ADOPTION is developing novel co-packaged photonic components that significantly improve how data is exchanged inside hyperscale data centres. Co-packaged photonics brings optical interfaces closer to the switching silicon, reducing the distance electrical signals must travel and therefore lowering power consumption and network latency. A key objective is to enable more efficient data exchange between network nodes in demanding applications such as AI training and digital twins. This approach improves both speed and energy efficiency compared with traditional electrical links. ADOPTION also aims to build a European ecosystem spanning chip fabrication, advanced assembly, system integration, and deployment in cloud data centres.

From a networking point of view, DYNAMOS is developing a novel, dynamically reconfigurable data centre network based on energy-efficient photonic components integrated into Dynamic In-line Photonic System (DIPS) cards. Its objective is to demonstrate a fast, modular and highly scalable opto-electronic network configuration capable of addressing current bottlenecks in data centres and high-performance computing systems. This new architecture will boost the overall performance of distributed machine-learning tasks by dramatically reducing the time required to exchange large volumes of data between computer clusters, while also cutting power consumption by roughly an order of magnitude.

OCTAPUS is developing a new low-cost and energy-efficient PIC technology framework for telecommunication networks, in which service components are decentralised and positioned closer to the end user—i.e., at the network edge. This technological approach has the potential to revolutionise data-centre interconnects, 5G, Industry 4.0 and IoT applications by enabling low-energy, high-capacity, software-defined network components that can be dynamically reconfigured based on actual demand.

The PUNCH project is creating a new paradigm for optical switching that addresses several industrial requirements, including reliable, low-latency communication with guaranteed service quality; reduced network congestion (and therefore less data loss or delay); lower power consumption; and decreased transmission-interface costs. To achieve this, PUNCH will develop novel photonic components and interface electronics, establish scalable integration and photonics-packaging processes, and manufacture multiple prototypes, which will be demonstrated and validated in industrial 5G and data-centre testbeds.

Background

In 2025, the initiative to establish AI gigafactories was launched, in order to establish extensive computing infrastructure with over 100k advanced AI chips. Complementing the European Chips Act, Horizon Europe’s Cluster 4 Digital program focuses on strengthening European chip manufacturing value chains and hardware components for cloud/edge, low-latency and high-bandwidth data transmission network infrastructures.

Horizon Europe is the research and innovation programme of the EU for the period 2021-2027.