Facebook Inc yesterday said it would spend more than US$1 billion to build a data center in Singapore, its first in Asia, powered by renewable energy and adapted to the city-state’s tropical climate.
The center is expected to be operational around 2022 and would host Facebook servers and centralize its information-technology operations, Facebook vice president of infrastructure data centers Thomas Furlong told reporters.
The 170,000m2 site in the land-scarce city-state would be stacked over 11 stories and come with custom features to cope with the steamy temperatures, which rarely drop below 25oC.
These include a new state-of-the-art cooling system that uses water rather than air and would work better in the humidity, as well as a building facade made of perforated, lightweight material to allow for better air flow.
The company expects it to be run on 100 percent renewable energy, like its other data centers.
The S$1.4 billion ($1.02 billion) facility would be the first data center designed and constructed by Facebook in Asia as the company increasingly relies on custom-built facilities to meet its needs, Furlong said.
It would be Facebook’s 15th data center worldwide.
Furlong said Facebook, which had 2.23 billion monthly active users as of the end of June, chose Singapore because of its robust infrastructure, availability of skilled labor and ease of doing business with the government.
Google has also built two data centers in the city-state and this month announced that it was starting work on a third, bringing its investment in the sites to US$850 million.
Despite its popularity in Asia, Facebook has also faced criticism, particularly in Myanmar, where it was used as a platform for the army and Buddhist hardliners to spread hate speech against the Muslim Rohingya minority.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San