In November 2023, the Minister of International Trade and Industry Tengku Zafrul Aziz went to the United States to visit NVIDIA facilities and discuss the possibility of developing an artificial intelligence center in Malaysia.
Not long after, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang himself went to Malaysia to meet with the Prime Minister and several local technology companies to discuss investment in artificial intelligence technology in the country. NVIDIA and YTL Power International are currently planning to invest RM20 billion to develop the national cloud computing infrastructure, including an investment of RM4.3 billion in the first phase by June 2024.
What is interesting here is the statement of Tengku Zafrul who said in his speech that this investment will also bring the fastest "supercomputer" to Malaysia. We have reported recently that NVIDIA has introduced Eos, their most powerful artificial intelligence supercomputer to date. It is also the ninth most powerful supercomputer in the world according to the TOP500 list.
Fully developed using NVIDIA components, including 576 NVIDIA DGX H100 computing units and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand network components, this adicomputer has an FP8 artificial intelligence processing performance as high as 18.4 exaflops in addition to a fast data transmission rate of 400Gb/s.
According to NVIDIA, Eos was developed as a heart for an artificial intelligence factory, where each of these supercomputers will be used as an accelerator for the development of artificial intelligence technology. If Malaysia is really serious about making the country a regional AI technology hub, it wouldn't be surprising if huge investments were actually made for technology infrastructure like this.
He also said that NVIDIA and YTL Power International will plan collaboration with ministries and agencies in Malaysia to strengthen the ecosystem and AI research and development capabilities, including compiling syllabuses and programs through the establishment of a Center of Excellence (COE).
As reported, the first phase of this investment which will cost RM4.3 billion is expected to operate from June 2024 at the YTL Green Data Center Park located in Kulai, Johor.