The Big Question: Is glass the answer to increasing data centre efficiency?
Ephos co-founder and CEO, Andrea Rocchetto, sheds light on how glass chips, instead of silicon chips, can revolutionise data centre energy efficiency.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/03/17/the-big-question-is-glass-the-answer-to-increasing-data-centre-efficiency
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Ephos co-founder and CEO, Andrea Rocchetto, sheds light on how glass chips, instead of silicon chips, can revolutionise data centre energy efficiency.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/03/17/the-big-question-is-glass-the-answer-to-increasing-data-centre-efficiency
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
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NewsTranscript
00:00The growth of energy consumption coming from data centers will keep rising.
00:05Company building in the tech space, it's harder in Europe.
00:08Let's keep funding that because prosperity ultimately comes from there.
00:19Welcome to The Big Question, the series from Euronews where we speak to some of the most
00:25influential people in the world of business.
00:27And today I'm joined by Andrea Rocchetto, the CEO of EFOS.
00:34Andrea, thank you very much for joining us on the show.
00:36Thank you very much for having me.
00:39Now, chip manufacturing, a hot topic at the moment and where they're coming from, where
00:44they're going to.
00:46But can you explain what photonic chip manufacturing is?
00:50Because EFOS is a photonic chip manufacturing company and not everybody watching is going
00:55to know what that is.
00:57Well, photonics is the science and engineering of light because our chips process information
01:03that is encoded in light.
01:04So our chips are special in one way in particular.
01:08We build chips with glass rather than silicon.
01:12So all the semiconductor industry builds chips in silicon.
01:16Most of our competitors in the photonic chip space build chips in silicon.
01:21Silicon glass has a certain special property which is the same material of which optical
01:26fibres are made of and that's how we get internet in our homes and in our offices.
01:31And by using the same material as the optical fibres, we can minimise signal degradation
01:37that occurs when you stick together an optical fibre and a chip.
01:41It can be 100x more powerful in terms of data rates than a copper wire.
01:48Okay, and what are these chips being used for at the moment?
01:52So the range of applications of these chips is varied from data centres where they're
01:57used for networking to building quantum computers, quantum sensors, quantum communication systems.
02:09If a company wanted to use your chips for example, what would be the benefits of using
02:14the glass chips over silicon?
02:16In the context of data centres, it's mostly a reduction in energy consumption.
02:21Quantifying that is a complex endeavour because the overall energy footprint of a data centre
02:27is extremely complex.
02:28There are lots of variables.
02:29We can use the example of Google.
02:31They are the only ones that really deployed this technology of scale in a data centre.
02:35Sorry, glass technology of scale?
02:37Just the photonic technology of networking.
02:40And in the case of Google, we have a 40% reduction in energy consumption.
02:46That resulted in a 30% reduction in financial costs of setting up the network infrastructure
02:52of the data centre.
02:53With glass chips, you could do even better than that.
02:57But again, there are lots of variables at play, so let's stick with a conservative estimate
03:01of what the savings would be.
03:02And using your glass chips, you say that less energy will be used by using these glass chips
03:09that you're manufacturing.
03:11Can you explain how?
03:13One of the reasons we waste energy when using photonics is because we lose information at
03:20the interface between the optical fibre that carries the information from A to B and the
03:26chip which instead process the information.
03:29By virtue of using the same material, we can keep the light happier so that it doesn't
03:36go away at this chip-to-fibre interface.
03:39We can be 20x more efficient.
03:41Our chips function at room temperature and in general help to reduce the overall energy
03:46footprint of a data centre.
03:48So bear in mind that about 10% of the energy cost of a data centre goes into networking
03:56and about 40% goes into cooling.
03:59So this roughly 50% can be reduced by using photonic technologies like the one built by
04:06EFOS.
04:07Now the general consensus is that of course we know quantum computing is the next big
04:12revolution, but how is that going to affect data centre energy needs going forward?
04:17How do your chips play into that?
04:20I would say the trend for the growth of energy consumption coming from data centres will
04:28keep rising no matter what happens to quantum computers.
04:31It's certainly not a solution that will have any impact in the immediate term and we all
04:37expect computing demands to increase significantly in the next decades.
04:42So whatever effect quantum computers are going to have, we're going to see the increase in
04:47energy consumption no matter what.
04:48And chip ports, shortages of course too, a hot topic with Europe relying very heavily
04:55on other parts of the world to import them, Taiwan for example.
04:59So producing your glass-based ones in Europe, what could that do for Europe's independence
05:04and competitiveness on the world stage?
05:08The production at the moment is completely done by us.
05:12We have built our pilot fabrication plant in Milan, Italy and that's where we do our
05:19chips.
05:20We start from the raw materials that in our case are pieces of glass very similar to the
05:25glass of your iPhone, the Gorilla Glass.
05:29And from there we build the chip all the way down to the control software used to control
05:34what the chip does.
05:35So chips are very much at the centre of geo-strategic competition and certainly having an in-house
05:42manufacturing capacity is a great asset to have.
05:46Especially in the case of tensions in the Indo-Pacific between China and the US, that
05:52capacity could prove particularly useful.
05:56And have you found any obstacles with pushing forward your company, your product in Europe,
06:01regulations that have got in the way?
06:04In general, I mean, company building in the tech space is harder in Europe and we should
06:09not shy away of that.
06:10And I think there are three main reasons for that.
06:13One is culture, one is regulation and the third one is talent.
06:19And they're all a bit in-between together, but regulation is something that makes it
06:24harder to transfer the technology from an academic lab into a startup.
06:29Regulation is what makes it harder to fire people when there is a crisis in the semiconductor
06:35industry, which is a very cyclical industry.
06:38Talent.
06:39There are lots of bright engineers here in Europe, but few of them have built companies
06:45in the tech space at scale.
06:47So you need that expertise to scale a company at some point.
06:50And the way that you're using photonics to replace materials such as silicon in chip
06:54manufacturing, do you think this sort of creative thinking can be applied to find new materials
06:59for an important element in other industries in Europe?
07:03I would call more than creative thinking, this is just hard science behind what we do.
07:08So ultimately, this is just a call for funding more basic science.
07:13We should never forget that from AI to quantum computing to fusion, it all comes from basic
07:21science.
07:23So let's keep funding that because prosperity ultimately comes from there.
07:28Brilliant.
07:29Well, Andrea, I won't keep you any longer, but thank you ever so much for sharing your
07:32insights and helping us to understand photonics in more detail and how it can help the industry
07:38become more energy efficient.
07:39So thank you very much.
07:41And thank you all for joining us on this episode of The Big Question.
07:45Don't forget, you can watch all our shows on the Euronews.com website, just head over
07:50to our business section.
07:52You can also check out all our shows on the Euronews YouTube channel.
07:56See you next time.