Google is investing €1 billion in expanding its Finnish data centre capacity. This additional capacity will be used for AI workloads.
The additional data centre capacity will benefit the current data centre in the Finnish city of Hamina. A Google data centre has been here since 2011, and the tech giant has already invested about €2 billion.
Where the data centre capacity expansion will consist of is not yet known, writes The Verge. The upcoming €1 billion investment in Finland is expected to generate a 25% increase in staff over the next 18 months, which amounts to about 500 employees.
It is possible that Google will expand data centre capacity with more machine learning hardware, such as the recently announced Trillium processor. According to Google, this processor is currently the fastest AI processor in the world.
Residual heat to environment
Google plans to release the residual heat generated by the expansion available to the environment, specifically for heating homes, schools and public buildings. The residual heat will be generated by the additional cooling required by the AI-focused hardware. The tech giant is collaborating with the local energy company in Hamina in this project.
According to Google, this is the first project in which it makes residual heat available for heating purposes near its data centres. The residual heat construction ensures that the Hamina energy company will soon cover 80% of its heating needs. Unfortunately, the remaining 20% must still be obtained from fossil energy generation.
Google is investing heavily in its European data centres, not only in Finland. Capacity expansions were recently announced in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Belgium.