Google completes its fourth data centre in Singapore

Google today announced the completion of its fourth data centre in Singapore.

The announcement was made at its “Sustainable Data Centers” event held at Google’s headquarters in Mapletree Business City.

And yes, the guest of honour was Senior Minister of State Dr Janil Puthucheary, who gave an address - more on what he said later.

Google in Singapore

Google launched its first data centre in Singapore in 2013, its second data centre in 2017 (adjacent to its first facility), and third (down the road) in 2021.

Some quick details about Google’s fourth data centre:

• Completed in May.
• USD$5B spent on technical infrastructure.
• 500 people work in its SG data centre.

My observations:

• First, there has been a dramatic increase in investments since the completion of its first three data centres in 2021. At that time, its technical investment was USD$850M.
• Barely 3 years later, it is now USD$5B. This is an astounding 5.8x growth from what could only be a dramatically larger data centre or massive upgrading of its 3 older facilities.
• Second, Meta’s says it hires ~100 to run its mammoth 150MW data centre here. Just how large is Google’s data centre in Singapore to require a data centre workforce of >500?

AI in data centres

Regardless of its footprint, I like Google the most among the public cloud giants. For one, it is one of the forerunners in implementing AI (machine learning) in its data centres.

I remember speaking with Google VP of Data Centre Joe Kava in 2014 about its use of ML.

In a nutshell, Google:

• Used ML to refine DC-wide config.
• Some settings didn’t appear to make sense.
• But outcome consistently exceeded its best operators.

Google also invests heavily in renewable energy - way before the rest.

Singapore's 300MW

In his address, Dr Janil elaborated on Singapore’s current stance regarding data centres.

“This challenge [of sustainability] is not unique to Singapore; eventually, all of us, wherever we are in the world, are going to be faced with these constraints.”

“Because of who we are, we are determined to turn these constraints into an opportunity to innovate and capture value from the growth of sustainable data centres.”

“We are committed to growing the data centre sector in Singapore by being more sustainable.”

Conclusion

I penned my initial thoughts on Singapore’s 300MW allotment yesterday.

Later in the week, I plan to dive into the Roadmap with additional thoughts about how Singapore could successfully redraw the boundaries of what's possible with data centres.