> To see why it is so difficult to restrict access to AI chips, consider Johor, a part of southern Malaysia once better known for its palm-oil plantations. Located just across the border from Singapore, the region has become a hub for data centres. Land and electricity are cheap, and permits easier to obtain than in the city-state. All the big American cloud providers—Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle—have set up shop. According to Knight Frank, a property consultancy, Johor’s total data-centre capacity (built, under construction or planned) grew from 10 megawatts in early 2021 to more than 1,500 megawatts by 2024.
> Johor also provides a convenient back door into China. Big Chinese firms such as ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, have rented capacity there. Leasing cloud capacity in Malaysia allows companies like it to gain access to chips that cannot be imported into China.
Reminds me of how I used to rent Alibaba servers in HK to make our service available in PRC without an ICP license. That was almost a decade ago though.
lysace•8mo ago
> To see why it is so difficult to restrict access to AI chips, consider Johor, a part of southern Malaysia once better known for its palm-oil plantations. Located just across the border from Singapore, the region has become a hub for data centres. Land and electricity are cheap, and permits easier to obtain than in the city-state. All the big American cloud providers—Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle—have set up shop. According to Knight Frank, a property consultancy, Johor’s total data-centre capacity (built, under construction or planned) grew from 10 megawatts in early 2021 to more than 1,500 megawatts by 2024.
> Johor also provides a convenient back door into China. Big Chinese firms such as ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, have rented capacity there. Leasing cloud capacity in Malaysia allows companies like it to gain access to chips that cannot be imported into China.
Reminds me of how I used to rent Alibaba servers in HK to make our service available in PRC without an ICP license. That was almost a decade ago though.