The National Science Council said it will help firms in the Tainan Science-based Industrial Park (台南科學園區) deal with vibrations that will come from the planned high speed railway, National Science Council Chairman Wei Che-ho (魏哲和) said yesterday.
Wei said at the Legislative Yuan that the council would help firms to enhance their ability to resist the vibrations.
"The priority now is to communicate with high-tech firms and help them understand the government's plan for the railroad," Wei said yesterday.
Wei repeated more than once on the vibration issue that problems would eventually be solved through technology.
Parts of the industrial park are only 200m from the planned rail line. Many firms believe that vibrations created by the railroad (about 68 decibels) is far beyond acceptable limits.
Since February, worries over the vibrations have resulted in a chain reaction of high-tech firms aborting projects at the park.
Most of the firms that have decided to look elsewhere are DRAM chipmakers, including Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), Silicon Integrated Systems Co (矽統科技) and Chi Mei Electronics Corp (奇美電子).
Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has initiated a project to figure out how to reduce the railroad's vibration down to about 50 decibels.
In an effort to offer a solution to the problem, officials at the Council's National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering will soon carry out a field investigation in Japan to study the structure of the Shinkansen (
Wei said that the earthquake project would do its best to help companies to lower vibrations down to about 48 decibels, which most high-tech firms say they can accept.
Tainan County residents established a self-help group to call for a solution to the vibration problem.
Hou Shui-sheng (
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat