Transition from old to new! Japan's last LCD TV panel factory ceases production, transforming into "Asia's largest AI data center"
Sharp and Japanese telecommunications giant KDDI plan to build the "largest AI data center in Asia," which will be equipped with NVIDIA's GPU servers. This center will be established on the site of Sharp's old liquid crystal display panel factory, as the factory ceases production, the number of production bases for Japanese television liquid crystal display panels will be reduced to zero
With the arrival of the AI era, Japan's Sharp will cease production at its last factory in Japan that produces large LCD panels for televisions, and embark on the path of AI transformation. The company plans to collaborate with telecommunications giant KDDI to create the "largest AI data center in Asia".
On August 21, Sharp's Osaka factory that produces LCD panels for televisions, Sakai Display Products Corporation (SDP), ceased operations entirely. Sharp is the only manufacturer in Japan that produces large LCD panels for televisions. With the cessation of operations at SDP, the number of production bases for LCD panels for televisions in Japan has been reduced to zero.
At the same time, Sharp is transitioning towards the AI era. Recently, Sharp announced a collaboration with the Japanese telecommunications giant KDDI to build the "largest AI data center in Asia" on the site of the former Osaka SDP factory. The project's partners also include two IT suppliers, the American company Super Micro Computer and the Japanese company Datasection.
In a statement, KDDI mentioned that the data center will be equipped with NVIDIA's latest GB200 NVL72 server racks, which contain 72 GPUs based on NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture released earlier this year, specifically designed for training and running AI models.
Although specific technical details about the data center have not been disclosed, reports from Nikkei Asia indicate that the center will be equipped with at least 1000 servers. KDDI briefly stated that this will be the largest AI data center in Asia.
Furthermore, it has been rumored that the AI data center of Sakura Internet, a strategic partner of NVIDIA and a major cloud service provider in Japan, will also be established at Sharp's SDP factory.
KDDI expects the former Sharp SDP factory to provide sufficient power and space to meet the power requirements of the AI data center.
It is reported that Sharp's parent company Foxconn plans to close the SDP factory and transform it into a data center due to increasing losses in its LCD division. The factory is expected to officially close in September. Sharp's CFO, Yoshio Kosaka, stated that they plan to reduce the inventory of television panels to zero by the end of March 2025 by ceasing processing for LCD displays
