Taiwan’s power grids and telecommunications systems have not been severely affected by intense solar activities in the past, but they have often suffered damage as a result of weather conditions, operators in the two fields said yesterday.
However, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said it was aware of news reports on the possibility of a massive solar flare sometime in the next two to three years and would keep an eye on any developments in that regard.
“Major solar activities occur in a cycle, but there has been no serious impact on Taiwan’s power facilities,” Taipower spokeswoman Tu Yueh-yuan (杜悅元) said.
Taipower is more concerned about weather conditions than solar activity, she said, pointing to news reports that a once-in-a-century solar flare could occur in 2012 to 2013, crippling global communication systems and power grids.
“We actually worry more about typhoons and thunderstorms because they are much more likely to occur than a huge solar flare,” Tu said. “Typhoons often cause blackouts because they bring down utility poles and electric wires, while thunderstorms also affect power lines.”
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) said yesterday it was not aware of any major telecoms problems in the past that may have been caused by solar activities.
However, an intense solar flare could affect shortwave communications, such as cellphone services, company spokeswoman Alison Kao (高治華) said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts