UK research lab to test Lumai’s light-based AI servers
The ARIA-funded trial will examine performance in a commercial data center and assess energy-saving claims that lack independent verification.
Oxford startup Lumai said its Iris servers will undergo testing at the Scaling Inference Lab, which receives funding from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). The trial will use multiple machines at a commercial data center to assess how the technology handles AI models, electricity requirements and cooling.
Operated by the nonprofit CommonAI with £50 million in ARIA backing, the lab will make Iris its first platform for optical computing. Lumai’s servers encode information in light beams and use optical chips for AI calculations, leaving other tasks to conventional electronics.
The hardware targets the initial processing of a user’s prompt, known as “prefill.” Conventional chips would remain responsible for generating the model’s response. Lumai emerged from Oxford University in 2021.
Lumai says its technology could reduce data center electricity consumption by up to 90%. It also claims that combining its system with standard chips delivers at least 16 times the energy efficiency per request of silicon alone. Neither claim has been independently verified; the lab’s testing is intended to evaluate those figures.
