5 ms·
I'd imagine that a large part of the demand for data centres in the South is driven by the need for extreme low latency with the City of London and other financ
by kristianc 11mo ago
I'd imagine that a large part of the demand for data centres in the South is driven by the need for extreme low latency with the City of London and other financial centres like Frankfurt.
It's all well to say there should be more incentive to build data centres in the North, but physics is physics.
- afavour 11mo agoIt could be that. Or it could just be that it’s logistically easier to keep your data centre close to your London office.
- chii 11mo agowhich is why the price in electricity isn't truly being reflected properly by the cost of distribution. If it costs less up north, then there would be incentive to move demand there (for data centers, which is more location agnostic). But if the price is the same up north, then the locality becomes a deciding factor.
- parineum 11mo agoThrow this in the bin of "fun consequences of price controls".
- baq 11mo agoOTOH a market without a regulator is literally a jungle
- pas 11mo agoa diverse productive ecosystem?
- baq 11mo agoA system in which your the stronger you are, the more rights you have
- pas 11mo agothat's not a jungle, rights come from a social contract and all the complicated social technology we usually operate to try to manifest said rights. in a jungle there are niches, and opportunities, and even though there are very strong participants, no one is invincible, especially outside their niche.
- baq 11mo agothe jungle is a place where the social contract is decided by the physically strongest players. the strongest player in the jungle is the man and the jungle only exists because he decided to not level it and turn it into a palm oil farm. in that sense you're right, I completely agree, no one is invincible there.
- sysguest 11mo agowell is the demand about inference or training?
- kristianc 11mo agoThe existing cluster of data centres in West London pre-dates the current AI boom, and the UK's "IT corridor" is generally based between London and Reading and Oxford and Cambridge. There's an emerging tech hub in the North West, but generally it's not there yet.
- novok 11mo agomaybe time to move the city of london's data centers too? meta doesn't have a huge data center in their corporate offices either.
- colechristensen 11mo agothe amount of DC space that is actually interested in those extremely low latencies is very small
- flowerthoughts 11mo agoIt seems fine that financial centers subsidise other regions. GP wasn't asking to ban building the data centers there, just make it more expensive. Because the delivery is more expensive.
- jillesvangurp 11mo agoLow latency is desirable for stock traders. Most of the data center growth isn't driven by that but by non latency critical workloads such as AI. The reason, data centers choose to be near London is because there is no pricing advantage to go up north. Even though energy is plentiful, readily accessible, and often curtailed when there's too much of it there. If there was a pricing difference, you'd see a lot more economic activity up north. Basically the physical advantage is there but the lack of economics cover it up and wipe out the advantage.
- vasco 11mo agoI have a much better proposal, we move the City of London (not London itself), to the North. The bankers would learn about scotland and everyone else would be better off.
- jjgreen 11mo agoPlease do this, please