Hewlett-Packard’s research arm believes that the carbon dioxide emissions caused by and linked to today’s data center installations can be reduced by 75%. The company said that it is working on replacing copper wiring in servers with laser light beams and is developing tools for measuring and managing the amount of energy used to develop products.

According to Hewlett-Packard (HP), an average data center that consumes five megawatts of electricity annually, which is enough to supply power to about 4300 U.S. homes.

HP says that photonic interconnections make it possible "to fit dozens, and eventually hundreds, of processors on server system chips." These connections are estimated to be 20 times more efficient than today’s copper wires, helping companies to drive down IT costs. HP also claims that photonic interconnects, which range in distance from 100 meters to 100 nanometers, enable more flexible system configurations that can be quickly redeployed based on business needs.