Serving as one of four team leads in a 20-person operations unit, Keith Fong maintains the cooling and power across six floors spanning the size of two football pitches at STTGDC’s Tai Seng facility. The team coordinates maintenance, executes continuous physical checks, and provides remote hands troubleshooting to safeguard equipment handling power-intensive artificial intelligence workloads. Facilities also deploy rigorous security tools like mantrap controls alongside automated backup systems to guarantee non-stop uptime.
Key points
Uninterruptible power supplies and backup generators switch on instantly during power dis…: Uninterruptible power supplies and backup generators switch on instantly during power disruptions to prevent servers from shutting down.
Data centre engineers serve as trained emergency responders who can be recalled after hou…: Data centre engineers serve as trained emergency responders who can be recalled after hours to contain fires and handle crises.
Robust facility infrastructure is essential to support power-heavy hardware used for arti…: Robust facility infrastructure is essential to support power-heavy hardware used for artificial intelligence, banking operations, and digital commerce.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
In this series, people from all walks of life offer an inside – often unfiltered – take on their livelihoods and what keeps them going in their jobs. In this instalment, hear from data centre engineer Keith Fong, as he shares what it takes to ensure a constant supply of power and cooling to support AI workloads around the clock, as told to The Straits Times.
I am 29 and a trained mechanical engineer working in a data centre’s site operations team.
No, I’m not a software service engineer or someone providing IT support. I am one of four team leads in our 20-strong department at the STTGDC data centre in Tai Seng, taking care of the building’s day-to-day operations around the clock. We are responsible for the monitoring and maintenance of the data centre’s physical infrastructure and critical systems.
STTGDC has six data centres in Singapore and over 100 globally, including in Malaysia, India, South Korea, Japan, Britain and Germany.
A data centre houses computer servers, storage systems and networking equipment that store and process data to enable many…
Federal authorities have launched a national security probe into claims that businesswoman Alice Huang passed sensitive data to Beijing while collaborating with Nvidia on Asian infrastructure projects. The scrutiny intensified after company chief executive Jensen Huang acknowledged a personal affair with her, though he denied knowing of any espionage links. Nvidia's board is currently reviewing whether its leadership was intentionally targeted by foreign operatives, even as Beijing rejects the allegations.
The cloud computing firm has drawn intense international scrutiny following American inquiries into whether it helped divert restricted artificial intelligence semiconductors to Beijing. Suspicions expanded amid a U.S. probe into Nvidia chief Jensen Huang's personal ties with former managing director Alice Huang, an alleged Chinese intelligence operative. The regulatory crosshairs threaten the company as domestic and foreign authorities examine potential export control and legal breaches.
Fresh scrutiny over illicit supply chains has emerged after Jensen Huang acknowledged an affair with an executive tied to a suspected chip-smuggling firm. Chinese businesses continue to tap into banned computing power through regulatory loopholes in Southeast Asian cloud networks as well as unauthorized physical deliveries. The ongoing pressure accelerates Beijing's push to finance domestic semiconductor alternatives that could eventually challenge American technological dominance.