Equinix today announced its sixth data center in Singapore, which will be built with an initial investment of USD260 million. This new facility, set to open in Q1 2027, will offer 20MW of power upon completion. Equinix says SG6 will be covered by renewable energy and feature liquid cooling capabilities to support compute-intensive workloads, including AI.
The 9-story SG6 will be located at Jalan Tukang, just across the Ayer Rajah Expressway (AYE) from SG5 at Tanjong Kling – formerly known as the Singapore Data Centre Park. Alongside the nearby brownfield SG2 data center further down the expressway, Equinix will have a cluster of three data centers in close proximity.
Designed for sustainability
SG6 was awarded as part of Singapore’s pilot Data Centre -Call for Application (DC-CFA), created to promote the development of sustainable data centers. The DC-CFA marked the end of Singapore’s three-year moratorium, which quietly began in 2019. It was watched with great interest, as the industry sought to understand its criteria around efficiency, decarbonisation, and sustainability innovations. Four winners were announced in July 2023, including Equinix.
What does a sustainable data center look like? During a briefing call yesterday, Yee May Leong, Managing Director of Equinix Singapore, shared that SG6 will be constructed with lower-carbon intensity concrete and materials. It will use energy-efficient water-cooled chillers and cooling towers, and incorporate rainwater harvesting.
SG6 will also feature a green facade, a roof garden, and naturally ventilated corridors. Notably, it will have both horizontal and vertical solar panels rated at 800kW peak, making it only the second data center in Singapore to use vertical solar panels, an emerging technology.
“Where we could, we really stretched the boundaries. Instead of just a concrete block [for servers], we made sure that it was a building that represented, in all its genuine makeup, a sustainable-looking building as well,” explained Leong.
Gavin O’Reilly, senior director of IBX Operations, Singapore, emphasised the meticulous planning to ensure smooth day-to-day operations, such as ensuring rainwater won’t seep into the naturally ventilated corridors during tropical thunderstorms. He attributed this to the close collaboration between design and construction teams, which includes ensuring that the completed data center will deliver the envisioned energy efficiency.
O’Reilly elaborated on the energy-efficient chillers that SG6 will use. “The majority of the data centers around the world are using centrifugal chillers. In SG6, we’re moving from centrifugal to magnetic bearing chillers, so they will be 10 to 20% more efficient than traditional ones.”
AI-ready data center
SG6 is designed to offer liquid cooling to support high-density workloads. For increased energy efficiency, it will use condenser water for liquid cooling instead of chiller water supply, says O’Reilly. Floor loading is designed with higher densities and heavier racks in mind, and the facility will support racks of up to 100kW – which makes it capable of supporting Nvidia’s latest B200 family of GPUs.
“I think now more important than ever, we also need to quickly understand what it would take for us to take some of the emerging, new opportunities around [AI training] and make sure that we capture that, understand the experimentation of that, establishing the POCs and really understand what scaling that in Singapore from [AI training] to inference means,” said Leong.
“All floors within the building will be able to sustain heavy loads associated with large AI footprints. We will be using our Cool Array technology within the data center facility to deal with the 30% of the heat load that is not managed by direct-to-chip cooling. The entire data center will be liquid cooled-enabled, and able to deal with mixed IT loads, be it direct-to-chip or traditional air cooling,” said O’Reilly.
He confirmed that only direct-to-chip liquid cooling will be offered at SG6, though there are no requirements around the minimum number of racks to use liquid cooling. It is understood that SG6 will use lithium-ion batteries for its UPS and that its battery rooms will be located on the ground floor as stipulated by the latest SCDF safety standards.
Setting a new benchmark
O’Reilly says the backup power generators in SG6 are capable of using biodiesel fuel, though Equinix is currently still evaluating suppliers to ensure that it will have a sustainable supply. Finally, Equinix is taking significant steps towards sustainability, including the adoption of a renewable energy power purchase agreement (PPA) in Singapore with Sembcorp Industries.
Other plans are afoot. In its press release, Equinix says it has collaborated with the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) to assess various types of alternative power supplies for data centers. W.Media understands that a separate announcement will be made soon.
In addition, Equinix also collaborated with IMDA and Dell Technologies to provide guidance and recommendations to optimize the integration and utilisation between hardware and software interfaces.
“SG6 sets a new benchmark in our approach to driving digital and AI transformation. As compute-intensive workloads continue to grow, the demand for capacity will also rise, and Equinix is equipped to support these next-generation workloads,” said Leong.
“By integrating the latest sustainability innovations, our new AI-ready data center enables businesses to establish their digital infrastructure both responsibly and sustainably. We have always been a strong proponent of Singapore’s Green Plan 2030 and Smart Nation journeys, and grateful for the support from the government and our industry partners.”