Apple Building Secret Massive Data Centre

Apple is building a new data centre facility in North Carolina. Nobody knows why, but according to Data centre Knowledge editor Rich Miller, it will be one of the largest in the world.

Apple is planning about 500,000 square feet of data centre space in a single building. That would place it among the largest data centres in the world.

Let’s put things in perspective: Apple’s current data centre in Newark is a little over 100,000 square feet (9000 square metres), while most data centres around the world don’t pass the 200,000 square feet (19,000 square metre) mark. The new one, located near one of Google’s large facilities in Maiden, NC, will be a colossal 500,000 square feet (46,000 square metres). That’s a lot of computing nodes, and massive storage space.

The big question here is: Why? Is this designed to accommodate the iPhone family growth? Or is there a secret product and service plan that will require this gargantuan power and storage? New expanded content for new devices? Books? It can’t be only that.

Your guess is as good as anyone else’s, like with everything about Apple. Tell us your ideas in the comments. [Cult of Mac]