HP announced plans Wednesday to research ways to reduce power consumption in data centers.

Some of the techniques involve replacing copper wiring in servers with laser-based communication. Chandrakant Patel, HP Fellow and Director of HP's Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab, said that the idea was to set up circuit boards in close proximity that communicate with light.

Optical laser connections within server equipment would be more flexible and 20 times more efficient than standard copper wires.  It would be possible to have laser connections that could span 100 nanometers to 100 meters.
 
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