Amazon Web Services (AWS) is planning to invest billions of dollars over the next 15 years to build data centers in Taiwan and create an infrastructure region in the country by early next year, the Amazon.com Inc cloud computing subsidiary said yesterday.
The new “AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region” aims to help customers and AWS partners in Taiwan store their content securely and run cloud-enabled workloads with lower latency from data centers in Taiwan, the company said.
The project reflects AWS’ long-term commitment to Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific region amid growing demand for cloud services, it said.
Photo: Reuters
The move comes as Taiwan has become a major data center market for global cloud service providers amid rising demand for digital transformation, artificial intelligence and clean energy. In 2013, Google opened a data center in Changhua County, while Microsoft Corp is building a data center in Taoyuan that is scheduled to open later this year.
AWS provides customers computing, data storage, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence services from its data centers around the world.
In Taiwan, companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), Acer Inc (宏碁), Trend Micro Inc (趨勢科技) and Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子), are using AWS’ services to deal with workloads.
AWS said it has steadily increased its investment in Taiwan since 2014, with the launch of “Local Zones” in Taipei in 2022, its most recent major infrastructure deployment in the country.
Compared with Local Zones, the AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region’s data center would be larger in scale, and can provide customers with low latency, high-speed transmission services because it stores data domestically, it said.
The new AWS region in Taiwan would consist of three “Availability Zones” at launch, the company said.
Currently, AWS operates 105 Availability Zones in 33 geographic regions globally, it said.
Availability Zones feature infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations, with the zones far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, while being close enough to provide low-latency access for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones, AWS said.
Each zone has independent power, cooling and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks, it said, adding that customers could design their applications to run in multiple zones to achieve a greater fault tolerance.
“With today’s announcement, AWS has plans to launch 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud,” it said.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
RSS