■ELECTRONICS
Samsung to make changes
Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee said the corruption scandal shaking the conglomerate could lead to a major change in leadership, and possibly his own resignation. “I will deeply think about reshuffling the corporate management structure and the management lineup, including myself,” Lee told reporters. Samsung said afterward that Lee’s statements were provisional and depended on whether the investigation uncovers any wrongdoing. “His comment does not mean that the chairman himself or top management will step down,” the group said in a statement. “Rather it means that if the special prosecution concludes that there are problems, we will make necessary improvements.”
■ECONOMY
Nations call for food aid
An important group of developing countries urged advanced nations on Friday to step up financial aid to help them deal with the severe impact of higher food and energy prices and the turmoil in global financial markets. The Group of 24 Developing Countries also wants the US and other major industrialized nations to take decisive action to deal with the present economic and financial crises, specifically by more closely monitoring and supervising the markets. The G24 said Friday in a communique that coordinated international action is needed to prevent the emergence of a larger crisis and agreed the International Monetary Fund has an important role in responding to the current crisis.
■TECHNOLOGY
Yahoo discusses offer
The board of Yahoo met on Friday to discuss a long-simmering takeover offer from Microsoft and alternative strategies like a merger with AOL and a search advertising deal with Google. There was no immediate word on decisions taken at the meeting, but analysts said that the scope of the Microsoft offer still made it the most attractive to Yahoo shareholders. Yahoo is holding out for a higher price than Microsoft’s offer, which values the company at between US$41 billion and US$45 billion.
■ECONOMICS
Activity report released
A total of 1.18 million for-profit businesses were operating in Taiwan at the end of last year, down 0.2 percent from a year earlier, a report by the country’s statistics bureau profiling Taiwan’s economic activity showed. As of the end of February 2008, there were 596,000 “existing companies” officially registered with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, down 3.6 percent from a year earlier. But to get a more accurate look at overall economic activity in Taiwan, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics (DGBAS) relied on tax bureau figures to assess the number of businesses and in the country and the size of their turnover.
■TECHNOLOGY
IBM unveils new memory
IBM announced a new kind of computer memory on Friday that could increase storage capacity 100-fold. Called “racetrack memory” the new storage devices would replace flash memory and hard disk drives in computers. The devices are based on a new branch of physics called “spintronics” that uses nanotechnology to manipulate the spin of electrons to create magnetic fields in which data can be stored. Using racetrack memory an MP3 player would be able to store about half a million songs, or 3,500 films.
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