nNanya replaces Elpida as No. 5
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) replaced Japan's Elpida Memory Inc last year as the world's fifth-largest supplier of computer-memory chips, market researcher International Data Corp said.
Nanya, Taiwan's biggest memory-chip maker, boosted sales last year by producing new high-speed semiconductors ahead of its rivals, IDC analyst S.K. Kim said. It was one of the first companies to produce chips that speed the operation of personal computers using Intel Corp's newest processors, he said.
Elpida, a venture between NEC Corp and Hitachi Ltd, was struggling to increase capacity, he said.
"Elpida didn't have enough money to upgrade its production equipment," Kim said. "The company's capacity suffered."
IDC said a new semiconductor plant Nanya agreed to invest in last year with Germany's Infineon Technologies AG, the world's fourth-largest memory-chip maker, will probably help it keep the No. 5 position this year.
The plant may help increase Infineon's share of the global market to 20 percent and Nanya's to 10 percent by the end of this year, according to the companies.
Nanya and Elpida will have similar market shares, IDC said.
Kimo, Yam reach agreement
Yahoo-Kimo (雅虎奇摩), Taiwan's biggest Internet portal, and Yam.com (蕃薯藤), the third largest, yesterday reached an agreement to settle a plagiarism dispute between the two, with Yahoo-Kimo formally apologizing for the mistake it made two years ago.
The clash between the two local Web giants first occurred in April, with Yam accusing Yahoo-Kimo of copying articles in its "What's new today" online section.
According to the charges, the majority of articles published by Yam between March 29 and April 17 of that year were almost identical in content, wording and phrasing to those used by Yahoo-Kimo.
Details of the settlement are not disclosed, the two companies said in a statement. But Yahoo-Kimo said it will strengthen its effort to educate employees' knowledge with regards to the protection of intellectual property right, as well as its managerial control over the portal content production, in an effort to prevent the inappropriate practices from happening again.
PC Home Online (網路家庭), the nation's second largest Internet portal, also filed a lawsuit in the Taipei District Court in March 2002, accusing Yahoo-Kimo of plagiarizing its online content.
Taiwan to cooperate on Internet
Taiwan is willing to cooperate with other Asia-Pacific nations to develop Internet technology and services, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said Wednesday at the 2003 Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) presently being held in Taipei.
Noting that Taiwan is the world's fourth largest information technology hardware producer in terms of output, Yu stressed that it has a solid foundation for developing Internet technology and services.
To boost Internet development, the government established an ad hoc task force in April 2001 to pushing ahead with a"digital Taiwan" program that has been listed in the "Challenge 2008" six-year national development plan, Yu said.
Taiwan hopes to improve the compatibility of Internet technology products of the nations in the region through a joint effort among them, he continued.
NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, dropping NT$0.044 to close at NT$34.784 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$330 million, compared with the previous day's US$470 million.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to