DVD disks that can have data and video recorded onto them will replace floppy disks, an official at Philips Semiconductors (Taiwan) said last week. And Taiwan will play a leading role in providing the hardware that will be needed to play and record the disks.
"DVD+RW [plus re-writeable] will replace floppy disks over time," said Bas Fransen, general manager of the Asia-Pacific computing market at Philips Semiconductors. "This will have a massive impact not only on the global industry, but also on Taiwan."
Philips Semiconductors makes the chips that are used in the construction of computer drives and consumer DVD players that can write to DVD+RW DVD disks.
Philips will launch a new chip today that will enable recording at twice the speed of its existing products, and 32-times faster than existing recordable CD computer drives.
"Now you can burn a video or data disk in less than 15 minutes. With our new eight-speed product, you can burn a disk in less than seven minutes," Fransen said.
DVD+RW will also replace videotape. A drawback of current DVD players is that they can't record. DVD+RW will change that. A DVD+RW disk is able to store two hours of high-quality video.
To make DVD disks as user-friendly as floppy disks and videotape, Philips has included design features that allow users to handle the disks more frequently. The new DVD+RW chip incorporates fingerprint correction technology, which is able to read the data on a disk no matter how many times it has been handled. Previously, disks with fingerprints on them can skip or even fail.
Philips' chips also have the ability to read data even when there are scratches on the disk's surface.
"We can eliminate scratches of up to 3mm and we will increase this size over time," Fransen said.
However, confusion surrounds the recording technology for DVD disks. There are three competing standards: DVD+RW, DVD-RW (minus re-writeable), and DVD-RAM. DVD+RW has the widest support in the industry.
Other supporters of DVD+RW are Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Computer Corp, Sony Corp, Yamaha Corp, Ricoh Co, Mitsubishi Corp and Thomson Multimedia, which makes the RCA brand. DVD-RW is supported by Pioneer Corp and Apple Computer Inc.
DVD-RW is a evolution of the DVD standard, in the same way CD-RW evolved from CD. The other two recordable DVD formats use new technologies.
Some have compared the position of DVD-RW and DVD+RW to that of Betamax which competed with VHS for videotape supremacy in the 1980s.
DVD-RAM disks are less widely accepted, but can be rewritten up to 100 times more often than DVD+RW. DVD-RAM disks can only be read by the very latest computer drives and can not be read by most DVD players, unlike DVD+RW disks.
DVD-RAM is supported by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Sanyo Electric Co and Toshiba Corp.
It is unlikely that one dominant standard will emerge soon.
Global research company International Data Corp (IDC) predicts that the annual shipments of DVD recorders will grow from less than 5 million this year to over 50 million units in 2006.
"DVD recorders are set to ramp up even faster than players," IDC's report says.
Few local manufacturers have started producing recordable DVD drives. AOpen Inc and CMC Magnetics Corp (
Taiwan already dominates world markets in producing recordable CD technology. Local manufacturers sold 9.3 million CD-RW drives last year, according to the government-funded Market Intelligence Center (
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San