Worked with Malaysian counterparts for a number of years. You have decent talent there but one of the key constraints I've heard from higherups is that the market doesn't have enough workers and a large multinational can saturate the skilled workers you need. So some companies are skipping to go to India instead.
Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
101–110 of 113 posts
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
At least there’s a fairly direct route from those countries to Singapore. Australia is pretty far, and there are some countries in between that could be a menace at any point in the future.
Pretty big challenge for Singapore to figure out a way to guarantee security long term.
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#103I listened to the SemiAnalysis folks on the Lex Fridman podcast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_1f-o0nqpEI They claimed that the fact that Singapore imports so many GPUs despite a moratorium on data centers was evidence of China smuggling GPUs. Of course it’s impossible to prove a negative, but it seems a bit disingenuous to omit the fact that Malaysia, on the other side of a river, has a growing data center industry…
> despite a moratorium on data centers
Singapore placed a moratorium on new data center construction from 2019 to early 2022. It was not a "15-year moratorium" as Patel claimed, so he was pulling numbers out of his behind. Since 2022 Singapore has been expanding DC capacity quite aggressively as well: https://www.edb.gov.sg/en/business-insights/insights/singapo...
The fact that Patel didn't bother to verify something so easily Googleable speaks volumes about his credibility.
And here's a statement by NVIDIA:
"The revenue associated with Singapore does not indicate diversion to China," a statement by Nvidia reads. "Our public filings report 'bill to' not 'ship to' locations of our customers. Many of our customers have business entities in Singapore and use those entities for products destined for the U.S. and the West. We insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws, and if we receive any information to the contrary, act accordingly." (Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...)
Honestly many of the things Patel said in that podcast (not just about Singapore, but in general) belonged on r/ConfidentlyIncorrect.
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it isn't. That's just the journalist unprofessionally injecting their political ideology into what is supposed to be a factual article. Malaysia has an opportunity simply because Singapore can't keep up. It doesn't have the land to waste on data centers, nor does it have the spare power generation capacity.
> Malaysia has an opportunity simply because Singapore can't keep up. It doesn't have the land to waste on data centers, nor does it have the spare power generation capacity. Malasia doesn’t have the spare power either and neither does it have the capacity to keep the power clean, that’s what is being argued in the article. Poor countries will always take up a business opportunity to make money because they are poor.…
Do you have anything better to offer them? Because Malaysia can definitely not build these data centers without foreign investment..
As someone from a certain poor country, I can attest that your tone sounds very condescending. It makes it look like such countries lack the agency to choose for themselves and need a savior to swoop in and rescue them from their predicament.
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#105I listened to the SemiAnalysis folks on the Lex Fridman podcast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_1f-o0nqpEI They claimed that the fact that Singapore imports so many GPUs despite a moratorium on data centers was evidence of China smuggling GPUs. Of course it’s impossible to prove a negative, but it seems a bit disingenuous to omit the fact that Malaysia, on the other side of a river, has a growing data center industry…
There's definitely something fishy going on. Singapore only has about 2% of global data center capacity. It's floor space, power and transit costs are at least twice that of the US and EU making it an unattractive place to do model training. Nonethless, it accounted for 28% of NVIDIAs datacenter GPU sales.
Here's a statement by NVIDIA:
"The revenue associated with Singapore does not indicate diversion to China," a statement by Nvidia reads. "Our public filings report 'bill to' not 'ship to' locations of our customers. Many of our customers have business entities in Singapore and use those entities for products destined for the U.S. and the West. We insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws, and if we receive any information to the contrary, act accordingly." (Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...)
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2% of global data center capacity Let’s call the dollars per square foot the “cost density”. The claim you are repeating from the interview I mentioned is that SG data centers have an unusually high cost density. What could account for that? It might be that there is a very expensive item (a state of the art GPU for example) taking up that space. Another option, as I mentioned above, is that these GPUs are running…
Perhaps, but SEA is a very expensive place to run GPUs. High power costs, no free cooling. Why wouldn't DeepSeek (or whoever) just export these to Northern China where power is cheap and the air is cold?
There are plenty of data centers in hot places all over the world.
Also, if you have been to Singapore, these are not people who are at all afraid of using air conditioning.
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#107I'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.
It is not a full on dictatorship. Religions other than Islam are definitely allowed. I am Malaysian and literally grew up in a Christian missionary school.
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#108Cheap labor and an existing base of semiconductor industries with lots of engineers definitely makes Malaysia attractive. Though from what I've heard, lots of factories moving in from China are having huge issues with infrastructure and construction quality. Also, the fact that so many companies have chosen Kulim rather than Penang makes transport extremely inconvenient.
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a pretty unfounded claim. Singapore holds the headquarters of a lot of SEA megacorporations, as well as regional HQs of big tech in both USA/China. These chips are bought from these HQs and redistributed to the rest of the world (Singapore is a major shipping hub). India imports chips through their HQs in Singapore, so does Australia, Saudi Arabia, Europe, America, etc. Maybe you could make the case that shady…
America imports GPUs from Singapore? I don't think Singapore is more than a drop in the bucket of America's GPU imports. America imports them from Taiwan. This makes me skeptical of your other claims. Do you have evidence that most of the rest of the world for some reason routes their GPU imports through Singapore? That seems quite pointless.
There are plenty of other comments citing Nvidia statements, so I don't think I need to address this.
Certainly the tendency for people here to reach for the most conspiratorial theories is bizarre to me.
Re: Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Open & tolerant? As a gay man you just made me laugh & cry. Hell, even fairly recently: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rkx271xe6o a kiss between 2 men on stage got the band banned from the country. Now, before you completely disregard the point I'm making; yes, they did ignore the laws/warnings they were given but your point is that Malaysia is tolerant and my point is that Malaysia is not tolerant at all. We…
Ignoring an explicit law and then getting punished (and not even all that badly) is not at all germane to the subject, which is insecurity about rules that may start existing soon or are undocumented.
If you go to a muslim country and make out with another dude you're making a statement, which is fine. You know what the consequences will be before you do it. Your described scenario is no different from saying using white phosphorus on civilians is bad on stage in the US, which will also land you in incredible trouble.