SOLAR CELLS
Big Sun terminates contract
Local solar cell maker Big Sun Energy Technology Corp (太陽光電) yesterday said it had terminated a NT$2.3 billion (US$96.8 million) supply contract with its silicon wafer supplier Swiss Wafers AG after the company filed for bankruptcy, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. After deducting the payment for the silicon wafers from an unspecified amount of money Big Sun Energy paid in advance, Wafers AG has to pay back NT$133 million to the Taiwanese solar cell maker. Big Sun Energy said it would book the loss in last month’s financial statement, then register as a creditor and make a claim for the money owed by Swiss Wafers AG.
COMPUTERS
Surface tablets to hit shelves
Microsoft Corp’s Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets are scheduled to be launched in Taiwan on Aug. 4. The two 10.6-inch tablets will be available at 100 stores of local electronics chains Tsann Kuen Enterprise Co (燦坤) and Fayaque Co (法雅客), Microsoft Taiwan said in a press release yesterday, without giving any pricing details. The US company has reduced the price of its Windows RT-based Surface tablet by as much as 30 percent to US$349, foreign media have reported. The Windows 8-based Surface Pro tablet with 64 gigabytes of internal memory now retails at US$899, according to the US company’s Web site.
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
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
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)