■ Delegation investigates RFID
A Taiwanese delegation departed for the US over the weekend, aiming to gain insight about the development of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology there, the National Science Council said in a statement yesterday. The 36-member delegation, which consists of government officials, industry associations and private companies, is scheduled to visit various US government agencies and companies such as IBM Corp and Oracle Corp between July 31 and Aug. 9. "The application of RFID has become a global trend since the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart earlier this year required its major [top 100] suppliers to adopt the technology [by January 2005]," Minister without Portfolio Lin Ferng-ching (林逢慶), who is also head of the delegation, said in the statement. RFID, an identifying and tracking technology, allows tiny chips (tags) to communicate with detectors wirelessly and transmit information from a unique serial number to complex product details. The technology is now applied to many fields, including national defense, logistics management, retail inventory management, and is expected to affect industrial supply chains, medical treatment and biotech in the future, Lin said
■ CSMC halves IPO plan
CSMC Technologies Corp (華潤上華科技), a China-based supplier of chips for consumer electronics, toys and watches, is reviving its initial public offer by slashing the amount it raises by half after investors shunned the sale. CSMC plans to sell 621 million shares at between HK$0.50 and HK$0.54 each in the revived sale, raising as much as HK$335.3 million (US$43 million), chief financial officer Frank Lai (黎汝雄) said. That's as much as half the maximum amount it planned to raise in June. The company last month failed to complete its initial public offer after investors bid at a price lower than the range marketed to them. The reduced price range represents between 1 to 1.05 times its 2004 forecast book value, Lai said. The company plans to re-open the public offer today and investors have until Friday to place their orders, Lai said. It plans to start trading in Hong Kong on Aug. 13. The revived sale comes after shares of its peer Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯國際集成電路) rose 6.4 percent since last week. The first Chinese chipmaker to sell shares overseas posted its third straight quarterly profit by tripling sales last week.
■ Uni-President may exit JVs
Uni-President Group (統一集團) is planning to dispose of its stakes in property and life insurance joint ventures with Allianz Holding AG, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday. Uni-President may want to sell its stake in both the Allianz President Insurance Co and Allianz President General Insurance, the paper said, citing Kao Ching-yuan (高清愿), head of Uni-President. Currently two insurers -- Tokyo Marine & Fire Insurance Co and Taiwan Fire & Marine Insurance Co -- are interested in buying Allianz President General Insurance, the paper added.
■ NT rises in line with yen, euro
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded higher against its US counterpart in line with the strength in Japanese yen and euro, dealers said. The US dollar eased against the yen and euro in Asian trade yesterday after the US economy grew at a weaker-than-expected rate in the second quarter this year, they added. The NT dollar rose NT$0.033 against the greenback to close at NT$33.103 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$260 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