International. Facebook announced its decision on the location of the company's first data center, which will be in the Asian city of Singapore.
A number of factors helped Facebook decide, including Singapore's recent World Bank designation as the "number one country in Asia to do business." But what really caught the attention of social media was the combination of strong infrastructure, existing lines of communication, the local workforce and the help of both the Singapore Economic Development Board and Jurong Town Corporation to get the project done.
The end result is a 170,000-square-meter (1.8 million-square-foot) facility spread over 11 floors and built by Fortis Construction Inc. The investment required amounts to just over $1 billion and in the process will create hundreds of new jobs, not just during construction, but once the facility is up and running.
As is the norm now with all new data centers, minimizing environmental impact and ongoing energy costs is key. Facebook is interested in creating what it refers to as a "hyper-efficient facility." That means limiting water, energy, and land use whenever possible, and partly explains why it will be a tall building rather than the typical lower, wider data centers we see elsewhere like the U.S.
Facebook says the Singapore Data Centre will run on 100 percent renewable energy with solar energy playing a big role in that. It will also be the first data center to use a StatePoint liquid cooling system (SPLC), which was developed in partnership with Nortek Air Solutions.
According to Facebook, StatePoint Liquid Cooling (SPLC) can reduce data center water use by more than 20% in hot and humid climates, and by nearly 90% in colder climates, compared to alternative indirect cooling solutions.
Developed since 2015, this technology, which has been patented by Nortek, uses a liquid-to-air heat exchanger, which cools water as it evaporates through a membrane separation layer.
This cold water is used to cool the air inside the facility, with the membrane layer preventing cross-contamination between water and air streams.
The SPLC unit features integrated supply water temperature control and distribution pumping, which Facebook says simplifies piping requirements for the data center. It can be connected to various cooling supply systems, such as fan-coil walls, air handlers, in-row chillers, tailgate heat exchangers, and direct-to-chip cooling.
With information from DCD.
