Taiwan will have helped establish 41 digital opportunity centers in seven developing nations by the end of this year under an APEC initiative to bridge the digital divide, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
From August 2004 until the middle of last month, 34 such centers had been set up in Chile, Indonesia, Peru, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and Thailand, with more than 51,000 information and communications technology professionals in these countries trained through the program, the ministry’s Bureau of Foreign Trade said.
The APEC Digital Opportunity Center (ADOC) initiative was put forth by Taiwan in 2003 during an annual informal APEC leadership summit held in Bangkok, Thailand.
The goal was to use Taiwan’s edge in information technology and digital experience to assist developing APEC member states in upgrading their information technology capabilities.
Through the project, Taiwan also hopes to enhance its global visibility, strengthen its friendship with other APEC member states and expand business opportunities, the bureau said.
In preparation for the conclusion of the first phase of the ADOC initiative at the end of this year, senior officials and business leaders from Taiwan will meet with their counterparts from other APEC member states during ADOC Week 2008, set for Sept. 29 to Oct. 4 in Taipei to discuss issues concerning the promotion of the second phase of the initiative.
The proposal to launch a second phase to the ADOC initiative was raised during last year’s informal APEC leadership summit in Sydney, Australia by Stan Shih (施振榮), founder of computer vendor Acer Inc (宏碁), who attended the meeting as a special envoy of then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
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