■ Trade
Japan won't budge on beef
Japan yesterday refused to budge on its ban against imports of US beef, despite assurances from visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that US beef is "safe." During a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura yesterday afternoon, Rice urged Japan to lift its ban on US beef imports, adding that the time had come to solve the problem. "There is a global standard on the science involved," Rice told Machimura. Her Japanese counterpart told her that Japan will respond "appropriately" to the ongoing dispute without hurting overall Japan-US relations. "I understand US side's feeling but we cannot say when to lift the ban," he told Rice.
■ Cuban Economy
Peso revaluation begins
Increasingly optimistic about his communist nation's economy, Cuban President Fidel Castro has put in motion a gradual revaluation of the national currency and promised to later consider raising the country's low government salaries. The 7 percent revaluation of the Cuban peso went into effect Friday, the first change in the exchange rate since it was frozen in December 2001. Castro told the nation's top leadership late Thursday it was the first step in the revaluation of the currency used for state salaries and government subsidized goods and services. Improved trade relationships with Venezuela and China "have created conditions for a progressive, gradual and prudent revaluation of the national currency," Castro said.
■ Software
Opera to use SVG technology
Opera Software announced Wednesday that its new browser will be the first to include scalable vector graphics, which automatically scales any Web page to the size of a user's screen, be it a cell phone or a flat-panel monitor. The Oslo-based company said the new technology, also called SVG, would become part of the Internet mainstream as Web pages continue to become complex and sophisticated. Opera is the third-largest browser used by consumers to navigate the World Wide Web, although its share is tiny to Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape. Opera co-founder and Chief Executive Jon S. von Tetzchner said the new beta-version of Opera offers the SVG software as standard, rather than something users would have to download as a plug-in. SVG is an XML-based language for Web graphics developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.
■ Oil
Court rules against Yukos
Withered Russian oil company Yukos lost another round Friday in its ongoing effort to seek protection in US courts from further Russian government-ordered selloffs of its assets. US District Judge Nancy Atlas rejected the company's request that she protect Yukos' remaining assets while it appeals a bankruptcy judge's dismissal of the company's case filed in Houston in mid-December. Yukos turned to Atlas after US Bankruptcy Judge Letitia Clark last month threw out its bankruptcy and related lawsuits and refused to change her mind a week later. The company lost 60 percent of its oil production capacity with the Russian government-ordered December sale of a key subsidiary in Moscow. Without protection, Yukos claimed the company could disappear before an appeal ran its course if the Russian government orders more asset sales to further pay a disputed US$27.5 billion back-tax levy.
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