Vietnam's AI era will extend beyond the data center – Gadgets News

As Vietnam demonstrates strong ambitions to become a key player in the global artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, there has been a wave of investment in data centers across the country. However, while data centers are an indispensable backbone for training complex AI models, Vietnam still needs a more comprehensive AI infrastructure strategy, adopting a distributed computing model to avoid creating a centralized and vulnerable AI ecosystem.

This approach balances the power of the cloud with the on-device processing capabilities of AI-integrated Personal Computers (PCs), equipped with Neural Processing Units (NPUs) and specialized edge devices—a necessary step toward democratizing AI and enhancing national resilience.

However, behind the promising figures achieved, such as a value of approximately $750 million in 2024 and a ranking of 59th out of 193 countries in the 'AI Adoption Readiness Index', Vietnam is facing a shortage of world-class human resources and inadequate data infrastructure, both crucial for training powerful models. This also creates a paradox: while Vietnam has vision and enthusiasm, its human resources and data foundations are still insufficient for a long-term race.

For data centers, Vietnam is considered an attractive destination due to its low construction costs and some of the highest returns on investment in the region, reaching a total capacity of 51 MW by 2024. However, because the quality of connectivity in many rural and mountainous areas remains unstable, the effectiveness of cloud-based AI applications has been limited for a large segment of the population, creating latency due to physical distance, increased transmission energy consumption, and enhanced cybersecurity risks.

The solution is to supplement data centers with a distributed computing model, creating a harmonious three-pillar AI ecosystem: training and analysis of the large model are performed in the data center (cloud), processing user tasks on AI personal computers (workstations), and real-time task processing directly at the data source on edge devices.

Through this solution, NPU becomes a driving force for the 'democratization' and 'popularization' of AI, breaking the dependence on costly central infrastructure and empowering individuals and small businesses in disadvantaged areas.

From this, it can be seen that Vietnam's sustainable competitive advantage lies not in hardware, but in a software ecosystem built upon that hardware. Vietnam's choice is not between 'data centers or AI personal computers,' but rather in building a complete, intelligent, and distributed digital neural network for the entire economy, developing applications optimized for NPUs, balancing the power of the cloud with the intelligence of AI personal computers and edge devices.