COMPUTERS
Elpida Memory shares fall
Shares in Elpida Memory Inc, the Japanese computer chipmaker being reorganized with government support, fell in Tokyo trading after the Asahi Shimbun said the firm could seek a delay in repaying public funds. Elpida, the nation’s largest maker of DRAM chips, dropped 5.1 percent to close at ¥351, the biggest fall since Dec. 19. The company, whose shares have tumbled 63 percent this year, declined to comment in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg News. Elpida received ¥30 billion (US$386 million) of public funds through the state-run Development Bank of Japan to restructure its business, in addition to ¥100 billion in loans from private banks.
AVIATION
Lion plans private service
The Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air, which announced the world’s biggest-ever commercial aircraft order last month, plans to launch a private jet service by the middle of next year, the company said yesterday. Lion Air is negotiating a deal for four, nine-seater jets with US-based Hawker Beechcraft, which builds special-mission, business and trainer aircraft, Lion Air spokesman Edward Sirait said.
VIETNAM
GDP growth slows
The nation’s GDP grew at a slower pace this year than a year ago amid doubling inflation and a trade deficit. The General Statistics Office said yesterday that the country’s economy had maintained “reasonable” growth of 5.9 percent, despite global and domestic economic turbulence. Economic growth was 6.8 percent last year. Inflation doubled to 18.6 percent this year from 9.2 percent a year earlier and the trade deficit stood at US$9.5 billion, down from US$12.6 billion from a year ago.
ITALY
Business confidence falls
The business confidence index fell this month after rising last month, Rome-based national statistics institute Istat said in a statement yesterday, after a tough Christmas season for the retail sector. The index was at 92.5 points, the lowest since December 2009, from a revised 94. The mood among executives mirrors consumer pessimism as Prime Minister Mario Monti implements a 30 billion euro (US$39 billion) package of spending cuts and tax increases. Consumer confidence this month fell to the lowest in 16 years and the economy shrank in the third quarter.
ENTERTAINMENT
Disney may buy out UTV
Walt Disney Co offered to buy the shares of India’s UTV Software Communications Ltd it does not own starting on Jan. 16. Disney offered to buy the stock from retail shareholders for between 835.03 rupees and 1,000 rupees, according to an advertisement in the Economic Times newspaper on Wednesday. The offer will close on Jan. 20. Disney already owns 50.44 percent of UTV.
COMPUTERS
Apple archives at Stanford
Historians who want to understand the rise of Apple Inc will find a treasure trove of clues in Stanford University’s Silicon Valley Archives. Stanford is home to the world’s largest collection of Apple-related historical artifacts, most of which the consumer electronics company donated to the university in 1997. Stanford’s Apple Collection takes up more than 183m of shelf space and includes photos, computer blueprints, user manuals, software, hardware, magazine ads, TV commercials, company T-shirts and pins, and handwritten financial records.
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