[kristianc]

I'd imagine that a large part of the demand for data centres in the South is driven by the need for extreme low latency with the City of London and other financial centres like Frankfurt.

It's all well to say there should be more incentive to build data centres in the North, but physics is physics.

[jillesvangurp]

Low latency is desirable for stock traders. Most of the data center growth isn't driven by that but by non latency critical workloads such as AI.

The reason, data centers choose to be near London is because there is no pricing advantage to go up north. Even though energy is plentiful, readily accessible, and often curtailed when there's too much of it there. If there was a pricing difference, you'd see a lot more economic activity up north.

Basically the physical advantage is there but the lack of economics cover it up and wipe out the advantage.

[flowerthoughts]

It seems fine that financial centers subsidise other regions. GP wasn't asking to ban building the data centers there, just make it more expensive. Because the delivery is more expensive.

[novok]

maybe time to move the city of london's data centers too? meta doesn't have a huge data center in their corporate offices either.

[afavour]

It could be that. Or it could just be that it’s logistically easier to keep your data centre close to your London office.

[chii]

which is why the price in electricity isn't truly being reflected properly by the cost of distribution.

If it costs less up north, then there would be incentive to move demand there (for data centers, which is more location agnostic). But if the price is the same up north, then the locality becomes a deciding factor.

[vasco]

I have a much better proposal, we move the City of London (not London itself), to the North.

The bankers would learn about scotland and everyone else would be better off.

[jjgreen]

Please do this, please

[colechristensen]

the amount of DC space that is actually interested in those extremely low latencies is very small

[sysguest]

well is the demand about inference or training?

[kristianc]

The existing cluster of data centres in West London pre-dates the current AI boom, and the UK's "IT corridor" is generally based between London and Reading and Oxford and Cambridge. There's an emerging tech hub in the North West, but generally it's not there yet.