AI data centers are a growing concern for the energy supply. New data centers are popping up at a blazing speed requiring ever more electrical energy to run their specialized high power processors. The growing demand of electrical power for the data centers is as much an infrastructure problem as an environmental problem.
Optics and photonics can help to reign in the power hunger of the data centers. Communication and even processing are much more efficient when done with light rather than electrical signals. At the processor level photonics even has the potential to deliver much more processing power at lower energy consumption than classic electronic processors.
Dr. Adrian Mahlkow, CEO of OpTecBB (https://optecbb.de/en/index.html), the network for optics and photonics in Berlin/Brandenburg, is going to give us an deeper view of the potentials when replacing electrons by photons. On April 25th 2026 18:00 GMT (20:00 CEST) we will have an online presentation with discussion on the Big Blue Button server:
[https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gui-j2e-jh1-sbw](https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gui-j2e-jh1-sbw)
The event will be recorded. If you don’t want to appear in the recording just keep your camera and mike off. Questions will also be possible via the text chat, which will not be part of the recording.