The Marvex / Engineer conference in KLCC, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

Today the team is at the Marvex conference to see first hand what Malaysia has to offer in the Data Center space. Our expectations are not that high for the following reasons.

1. There is a huge difference between an AI Data Center and a Data Center. They are not the same.
   • There are enough Data Centers in the world including Hyper Scalers and the market is saturated and limited.
   • AI Data Centers are “dark” and require no staff, once setup. It adds no value to the local economy and there will be a number of ways to reduce tax receipts so revenue to the local economy will be limited.
   • The Data Center hype is all about AI Data Centers and is evolving much faster than officials can act and understand.
2. AI Data Centers require HUGE amounts of energy and water and Malaysia is simply not capable of supplying the power required and there are no plans afoot to increase the capacity.
3. Energy calculations are based on typical data centers where power usage varies as demand varies. AI Data Centers pull a full load immediately and constantly.
4. A typical Data center requires around 1MW and a hyperscaler around 30MW. An AI Datacenter starts at 1GW and will go much much higher.
5. The “usual” vendors such as Vertiv is simply not ready for AI Data Centers.
6. Politicians talk the talk but do not walk the walk. They are more interested in soundbites.

This conference is over four days so it will be interesting to see who will be here after today. Today seems quite busy so it will be very interesting to see the vendors and see what is on offer.

Prime Minister YAB Dato’ Seri Anwar Bin Ibrahim has arrived at the KLCC convention centre and that is a major win for Malaysia as the Prime Minister is taking an active approach to technology.

As we were writing this article Prime Minister Anwar has left the conference.