TOKYO -- Japanese electronics group Sharp and telecom partner KDDI will convert a factory site in Japan into a data center for artificial intelligence powered by advanced Nvidia chips, Nikkei has learned.
Sharp and KDDI agreed Sunday to begin talks on establishing a data center joint venture with other partners including Japanese systems developer Datasection. The size of the investment and the ownership breakdown have yet to be decided.
The joint venture is expected to procure around 1,000 servers equipped with next-generation Nvidia graphics processing units, such as the Blackwell series.
The servers will be procured through Datasection, which has a partnership with U.S. server builder Super Micro Computer.
KDDI will build and operate a data center network using these servers on the site of Sharp's LCD television panel factory in Sakai, near Osaka, which will close later this year.
The data center will be offered to developers of large-scale language models, which form the basis of generative AI programs like ChatGPT.
Nvidia will begin full-scale shipments of Blackwell GPUs later this year. They represent an significant improvement in computing performance and energy efficiency over earlier models, the company has said.
The Blackwell procurement for the new data center will be among the biggest of its kind in Asia, according to Datasection.
Nvidia had a 77% share of the global market for AI data center chips last year, Omdia reports.
Sharp invested about 430 billion yen ($2.7 billion at current rates) to build the Sakai plant in 2009, but it struggled to the keep factory running at a consistent rate, and it became a weight on the group's earnings. The company said at a news conference in May that the factory would close by this September.
Sharp had already revealed that it was considering converting the site into a data center.