ECONOMY
Lower inflation forecast
Inflation is expected to have been driven down slightly last month by lower domestic food prices and global oil prices, according to Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ). “We expect Taiwan’s consumer price index to ease marginally to 1.24 percent year-on-year in April from 1.39 percent in March,” ANZ said in a recent research note. The official statistics are due to be released on Monday. However, the risk of inflation picking up will gradually increase toward the second half of the year as the output gap closes, ANZ said.
CHIPMAKERS
Nova expects sales to jump
Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd, the Israeli maker of process control systems, expects sales to jump in the second half as Asian chipmakers increase spending to meet demand for smartphones in the region, the firm’s chief executive officer said. Orders for Nova’s products for smartphone chips measuring 20 nanometers or less from Apple Inc supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) will rise this year, Nova chief executive Gabi Seligsohn said in a telephone interview on Thursday from Tel Aviv. “What has a direct influence on us is that some time during the second half of this year, TSMC will start to place more massive orders for 20-nanometers, while most of the orders will take place in 2014,” Seligsohn said.
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