Data centre industry weighs replacing copper wiring with optical connections

Digital Realty's chief technology officer Chris Sharp says the data centre industry is moving away from copper for internal networking, though not electrical power or cooling systems. A typical 100MW facility uses around 400 tonnes of copper overall, with up to 20 tonnes used specifically in the wiring that connects servers together. Sharp argues this copper wiring between GPUs and CPUs is now a bottleneck limiting performance.