DATA centre operator Equinix is building a sixth data centre in Singapore with an initial investment of US$260 million, the Nasdaq-listed firm said on Tuesday (Nov 19).
The new data centre, a nine-storey facility named SG6, is expected to open in the first quarter of 2027 and will provide 20 megawatts (MW) of capacity when fully built.
Equinix was awarded the 20 MW of capacity under the pilot “Data Centre – Call for Application” exercise that aimed to support sustainable data centre growth and awarded a total of 80 MW to four data centre operators whose proposals best met holistic outcomes.
The four operators were Equinix, GDS, Microsoft, and an AirTrunk-ByteDance consortium, the Economic Development Board and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) announced in July 2023.
SG6 will be added to Equinix’s global network of interconnected data centres that provide low-latency, high-bandwidth connections that allow workflows to be efficient across different geographic locations.
Aileen Chia, deputy chief executive of connectivity development and regulation at the IMDA, said: “As we sustain the momentum of Singapore’s digital economy, which today contributes almost 18 per cent to Singapore’s gross domestic product, data centres are a foundational digital infrastructure supporting our Smart Nation 2.0 efforts.”
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Singapore aims to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to drive innovation and economic growth, and to be a global pioneer in launching an AI governance framework.
In line with its aims to be a regional tech leader, the country has made significant investments in technologies that require substantial computing power and data-processing resources – such as quantum technology, blockchain, and edge computing – and is boosting its data centre capacity to meet these demands.
However, this must be balanced against its climate goals as data centres are energy-intensive facilities requiring vast amounts of energy to cool.
As a regional data centre hub, Singapore has one of the world’s densest data centre capacities – which it plans to increase by 300 MW over the next few years, on top of an additional 200 MW that could potentially be allocated for operators who use green energy options.
The new data centre will be fitted with sustainable features such as liquid-cooling capabilities. These can effectively cool high-power applications by transferring heat more efficiently than air-cooling systems and can support compute-intensive work, including AI needs.
Chia added that SG6 is a “welcome” investment that aligns with IMDA’s Green Data Centre Roadmap – which was launched earlier in May to guide the sustainable growth of data centres and to improve their energy efficiency.
Equinix’s Singapore managing director Yee May Leong said: “As compute-intensive workloads continue to grow, the demand for capacity will also rise.”
