The competition around large AI models is moving beyond models and chips and increasingly into data center infrastructure.
Over the past few years, tech giants around the world have continued to ramp up AI computing capacity, with GPU purchases and server expansions becoming almost standard practice. But as demand for computing power continues to surge, a new challenge is emerging: chips can be purchased and servers can be assembled, but data centers are much harder to build.
On Monday, Alibaba Cloud disclosed that it has reduced the delivery time for large-scale AIDC (AI data center) facilities to 100 days through a fully modular design architecture. By comparison, traditional data centers in China typically take six to 12 months to complete, while similar projects in the US can take 12 to 18 months.
created by Yuanbao AI
In other words, a large data center that once could take nearly a year to build could now be delivered in roughly three months under Alibaba Cloud’s approach.
