Singtel has announced that it is developing a new generation of 'AI data centres (AI DCs)', that will be fit for purpose in an AI-driven world. Besides its existing DC Tuas project, Singtel is developing two other state-of-the-art data centre projects in Thailand and Indonesia which will increase its total pipeline capacity beyond 200MW from its current operational capacity of 62MW in Singapore. Singtel has just secured a S$535 million five-year green loan for this operational capacity.
Singtel’s new generation of AI DCs will incorporate more efficient cooling solutions like direct-to-chip liquid or immersive cooling to avert over-heating and prevent expensive GPUs from damage or malfunction. They will also incorporate advanced real-time server monitoring platforms to ensure smooth management of expensive GPU clusters while running multiple connected networks.
These AI DCs will be connected to Singtel's various fixed and 5G mobile networks that will be orchestrated by Singtel’s patented Paragon platform to serve enterprises' AI needs. This will enable smart devices like robotics and autonomous systems to be connected to the AI clusters within these data centres, allowing AI to be brought to the edge at high bandwidth and low latencies so as to enable various industry use cases.
Bill Chang, CEO, Singtel Digital InfraCo Unit
With the fast-growing adoption of AI across various industries, we see an inflection point in the data centre industry for high power density, yet sustainable and hyper-connected AI DCs that are optimised to manage GPU clusters for AI workloads. This is why we are building our fourth generation data centre platform specifically tailored for such intense compute environments. Within these AI DCs, we will offer a host of core services including cloud co-location services, managed hosting services and value-added GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS). We see growing demand from both enterprises and cloud companies to leverage our GPU cluster to complement their environments with greater agility in these AI DCs as well. Our latest DC Tuas under construction, is the largest at 58MW capacity, and will be the first of such fourth generation, high power density, sustainable AI DCs. DC Tuas is also designed to mitigate carbon impact through the use of lower carbon embedded materials in construction while driving greater energy efficiency by incorporating liquid cooling capabilities. DC Tuas will be one of the industry’s most efficient with its Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of around 1.23 at full load. We are also working to transition the energy for our data centres with green and renewable sources to reduce the overall carbon footprint.
