5 ms·

Isn't that part of the world usually has warmer climate? Unless the electricity there is somehow extremely cheap, I can't see how they can compete with Iceland,

Isn't that part of the world usually has warmer climate? Unless the electricity there is somehow extremely cheap, I can't see how they can compete with Iceland, for example.

slt2021 2y ago
its hard to serve customers in Asia from a DC in Iceland
- porphyra 2y ago
  and the cold northern parts of Asia are mostly Russia and China. I guess maybe a Hokkaido data center would be cool, although over half of Hokkaido's energy still comes from fossil fuels. Singapore, unlike Japan, is very attractive from a geopolitical standpoint as it is one of the few places that's friendly to both the West and to China, making it uniquely suited to doing business with both.
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  Does 50-100ms latency matters when LLM takes few seconds to minutes to produce answer?
  - frontfor 2y ago
    This is stating the obvious, but LLM is not the only use case for a data centre.
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      Of course, but looking at next 10 years we will be seeing 10-100x growth specifically in LLM and AI, both can be located ~anywhere in the world.
      - muzani 2y ago
        LLM latency has also gone down 10-100x in the last 5 years. Back then, you could only give it a few sentences, now it's like $10 for 10 novels worth of text.
scarab92 2y ago
It's hot and humid, which means no free cooling and no evaporative cooling. It's all refrigerative, which is expensive. Colo costs are 2x to 5x that of the US, depending on your power density requirements. Absolutely no one is deploying racks to SEA to save money. They are only doing it only to reduce latency to SEA customers.
BurningFrog 2y ago
There are plenty of cold mountains almost everywhere, if that's really decisive.
thisishard 2y ago
Malaysia's commercial electricity prices is about 0.13 USD/kWh, it's moderately cheap but not extremely cheap. Its advantage is that it has ample sunshine and over the past few years, the government has introduced various incentives for promoting residential and commercial solar energy investments One can learn more about it from their renewal energy roadmap website https://www.seda.gov.my/reportal/ https://www.seda.gov.my/reportal/
- muzani 2y ago
  SE Asia has weaker solar than many similar regions, possibly because of all the rain. [0] Most of the renewables come from hydro and biomass/biodiesel (lots of plantations too). Malaysia is still about 50% powered by natural gas, but it's gone down from 70% in 2000. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
tonyhart7 2y ago
"I can't see how they can compete with Iceland" Yeah but that's the problem its in iceland You want to make data center close as possible to your customer

Isn't that part of the world usually has warmer climate? Unless the electricity there is somehow extremely cheap, I can't see how they can compete with Iceland, for example.

slt2021 2y ago

its hard to serve customers in Asia from a DC in Iceland

porphyra 2y ago
and the cold northern parts of Asia are mostly Russia and China. I guess maybe a Hokkaido data center would be cool, although over half of Hokkaido's energy still comes from fossil fuels. Singapore, unlike Japan, is very attractive from a geopolitical standpoint as it is one of the few places that's friendly to both the West and to China, making it uniquely suited to doing business with both.
dzhiurgis 2y ago
Does 50-100ms latency matters when LLM takes few seconds to minutes to produce answer?
- frontfor 2y ago
  This is stating the obvious, but LLM is not the only use case for a data centre.
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    Of course, but looking at next 10 years we will be seeing 10-100x growth specifically in LLM and AI, both can be located ~anywhere in the world.
    - muzani 2y ago
      LLM latency has also gone down 10-100x in the last 5 years. Back then, you could only give it a few sentences, now it's like $10 for 10 novels worth of text.

scarab92 2y ago

It's hot and humid, which means no free cooling and no evaporative cooling. It's all refrigerative, which is expensive. Colo costs are 2x to 5x that of the US, depending on your power density requirements. Absolutely no one is deploying racks to SEA to save money. They are only doing it only to reduce latency to SEA customers.

BurningFrog 2y ago

There are plenty of cold mountains almost everywhere, if that's really decisive.

thisishard 2y ago

Malaysia's commercial electricity prices is about 0.13 USD/kWh, it's moderately cheap but not extremely cheap. Its advantage is that it has ample sunshine and over the past few years, the government has introduced various incentives for promoting residential and commercial solar energy investments One can learn more about it from their renewal energy roadmap website https://www.seda.gov.my/reportal/ https://www.seda.gov.my/reportal/

muzani 2y ago
SE Asia has weaker solar than many similar regions, possibly because of all the rain. [0] Most of the renewables come from hydro and biomass/biodiesel (lots of plantations too). Malaysia is still about 50% powered by natural gas, but it's gone down from 70% in 2000. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country

tonyhart7 2y ago

"I can't see how they can compete with Iceland" Yeah but that's the problem its in iceland You want to make data center close as possible to your customer