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Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

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Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#71

Post by refurb »

decimalenough wrote: post #35
refurb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note, in the last 1 to 2 years there has already begun a shift in terms of multi-national investment in APAC outside of Singapore. Singapore used to be the obvious location for MNC offices in APAC. Especially since Hong Kong's return to China, Singapore has benefited and see an increase in head offices and employment. However, over the last couple of decades surrounding countries have improved significan…

While multinationals are investing elsewhere in SE Asia to serve SE Asian markets, I'm not seeing them move their HQs out of Singapore though, because they don't trust the Malaysian/Thai/Indonesian legal system and regulatory environment. Cyberjaya (yes, you can cringe at the name) in Malaysia was built with the explicit goal of attracting them, but it's mostly call centers, not R&D. Even Malaysian success stories li…

https://www.thevibes.com/articles/world/101600/singapore-los...

Some are moving HQ, some are just downsizing HQ and expanding offices in Malaysia or Thailand.

I agree it’s not a wholesale move out, but the trend is noticeable.

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#72

Post by decimalenough »

scarab92 wrote: post #54
crowcroft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an insane idea, but would be epic if someone could figure it out. I don’t know much about how electricity grids work, but that seems fraught with so many challenges, not all of them technical.

I believe they have the technical challenges solved (at least on paper), and the Singaporean and Australian governments have both approved the project. I'm a little surprised Singapore approved it, as it'll need to supply about 10% of Singapore's power in order to cover the cost of the cable, which seems like a big vulnerability to me. Next question is, can they find enough buyers in Singapore for that much power.

Singapore's electricity is currently produced mostly from LNG piped in from Malaysia and Indonesia, so more diversification is welcome.

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#73

Post by dzhiurgis »

frontfor wrote: post #46
dzhiurgis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does 50-100ms latency matters when LLM takes few seconds to minutes to produce answer?

This is stating the obvious, but LLM is not the only use case for a data centre.

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.

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#74

Post by muzani »

chabska wrote: post #58
nsoonhui wrote: post #36

I'm a Chinese Malaysian, and I feel the need to highlight the other side of the coin—the risks multinational corporations (MNCs) face when setting up data centers in Malaysia. Despite being elected on the promise of reform, the government's actual performance has been anything but. The press is still frequently suppressed; social media platforms are required to obtain a yearly license or risk being fined or shut down…

> the MCMC backed down after massive public outcry, but the government's authoritarian tendencies remain palpable. That contradicts your thesis. They did listen to feedback from the people, that's democracy.

Back when BN ruled, the government blocked Medium (which was reporting the 1MDB case), proposed "fake news" laws to silence people on social media. Govt parties owned majority share in all newspapers. They erased images from newspapers like party flags or KLCC.

After Anwar's party took over, one of the first things they did was remove the ban on Medium and the "fake news" laws. They did cut funding to newspapers (which probably a revenge policy). But we're making lots of progress in this space.

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#75

Post by muzani »

frontfor wrote: post #68
chabska wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the MCMC backed down after massive public outcry, but the government's authoritarian tendencies remain palpable. That contradicts your thesis. They did listen to feedback from the people, that's democracy.

This is simplistic. China famously ended the COVID lockdown after protests broke out. Would you call that a democracy?

I would. Autocracy would be arresting the protestors.

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#76

Post by frontfor »

muzani wrote: post #75
frontfor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simplistic. China famously ended the COVID lockdown after protests broke out. Would you call that a democracy?

I would. Autocracy would be arresting the protestors.

This is a very black and white thinking. Autocracy and democracy lies on a spectrum. Just because China doesn’t lie on the extreme end of Autocracy doesn’t mean it’s a democracy.

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#77

Post by muzani »

thisishard wrote: post #30
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #13

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.

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/

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

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#78

Post by muzani »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #73
frontfor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is stating the obvious, but LLM is not the only use case for a data centre.

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.

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.

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#79

Post by duxup »

w00kie wrote: post #61
duxup wrote: post #28

How much boosting do you get? So you get construction ... But staffing after that, most big data-centers really focus on having as little staffing as possible. They're big, but I don't think they are big employers. I used to visit some BIG data centers that were largely unmanned.

Taxes

Does a data center bring in a lot of taxes?

Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy

#80

Post by nerdralph »

nsoonhui wrote: post #36

I'm a Chinese Malaysian, and I feel the need to highlight the other side of the coin—the risks multinational corporations (MNCs) face when setting up data centers in Malaysia. Despite being elected on the promise of reform, the government's actual performance has been anything but. The press is still frequently suppressed; social media platforms are required to obtain a yearly license or risk being fined or shut down…

When I traveled to KL in 2019 I was impressed with how open and tolerant it was. My wife and I were asked no questions upon entry. Our passports were stamped and we were told "Welcome to Malaysia". We went during Eid, and were very comfortable despite being western atheists.
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