I'm curious if this is something POET would have appied for,

The ARPA-E Newsletter: June 22, 2017

Department of Energy Advances $32 Million in Funding for Advanced Technologies


Last week, DOE announced up to $32 million in funding for 16 projects as part of two new ARPA-E programs: ENergy-efficient Light-wave Integrated Technology Enabling Networks that Enhance Datacenters (ENLITENED) and Power Nitride Doping Innovation Offers Devices Enabling SWITCHES (PNDIODES).
 
ENLITENED: ENergy-efficient Light-wave Integrated Technology Enabling Networks that Enhance Datacenters – $25 Million
 
The explosive growth of the internet has led to an increase in energy consumption by the Information Communications Technology sector, particularly by datacenters that store and process information in the “cloud.” Datacenters currently consume 2.5 percent of U.S. electricity – a figure that is projected to double in just eight years. Efforts to improve their energy efficiency will ultimately be limited by metal interconnects currently used to transmit information between the devices within a datacenter.

ENLITENED seeks to overcome these limitations by advancing high density, energy-efficient photonic interconnects and related novel network designs that take advantage of integrated photonics technologies. Because photonic interconnects do not rely on electrons flowing through metal to transmit information, instead relying on light, it is possible to transmit information with far greater speed and bandwidth using significantly less energy. If successful, ENLITENED projects could result in an overall doubling in datacenter energy efficiency.
 
Details on the nine ENLITENED projects can be found HERE.

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=program-listing