Companies at the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) will face stricter water restrictions in the next two months because of reduced rainfall and increased water consumption, a government official said yesterday.
The water supply problem has worsened because companies at the park ramped up output -following a rush in orders from their Japanese peers after the devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
At the beginning of the month, Taiwan Water Corp (TWC, 台灣自來水公司) started cutting water supplies in Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County, where the science park is located, at night because low precipitation this month has affected supplies to -households and companies in the area. That was the first-phase water restriction measure implemented by TWC.
To prevent water supplies from worsening, TWC has requested that heavy users in the science park reduce water consumption by 3 percent month-on-month from now through May, Chien Chao-chun (簡昭群), a spokesman for the Water Resources Agency, said by telephone.
“The new measure aims to keep water supplies stable and to minimize the impact on corporate revenues,” Chien said.
Chien made the remarks after attending the fifth meeting on resolving water shortages since late last month with representatives from the Hsinchu Science Park Administration and TWC.
“Companies received more orders after the earthquake in Japan, which drove water usage to a higher level compared with the average amount consumed in the same period over the past year,” Chien said.
Cumulative rainfall this month is less than 30 percent of the average over the past year, leaving water levels at the three reservoirs that provide water to the households and companies in the region low, Chien said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the nation’s No. 2 LCD panel maker, are among the 449 companies operating in the park, generating a total of NT$1.19 trillion (US$40.2 billion) in revenue last year. Last year’s revenue was up 34.3 percent from NT$883.5 billion a year earlier.
The science park administration said on Tuesday in a statement on its Web site that there was no imminent risk of a water shortage as supplies would increase after the planting season ends and that there would be more supplies transported from reservoirs in neighboring areas.
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
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
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],”
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