ENTERTAINMENT
Local firms shine in Cologne
Taiwan-designed video games have proven a hit at the world’s biggest computer games fair in Cologne, Germany, encouraging local companies to seek international markets for their products. Seven Taiwanese game companies joined forces with the Taipei Computer Association to set up a Taiwan Pavilion at Gamescom 2013, showing off the nation’s achievements in video gaming to a global audience. Wayi International Digital Entertainment Co (華義國際), one of the firms attending the show, expressed optimism over its chances of expanding internationally. The company said on Friday that the three games it displayed at the fair have drawn enthusiastic inquiries since the event started on Wednesday last week, attracting potential business partners from around the world. Organizers expected the fair to attract about 275,000 visitors before it ended yesterday.
SOCIETY
TEDxTaipei seeks ‘flippers’
The annual TEDxTaipei event set for next month will feature speakers from Taiwan and abroad. The program of talks will be held on Sept. 28 and Sept. 29 at the Huashan 1914 Creative Park in Taipei. Now in its fifth year, the conference will be held under a central theme of “flip” this year and will cover topics such as technology, nature, education, business, youth and traditional crafts, organizers said. “This generation calls for a collective momentum to ‘flip’ and jumpstart Taiwan,” TEDxTaipei said on its Web site, inviting attendees to “flip,” or break away from their old ways of thinking to move the nation forward. TEDxTaipei is a version of the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference, which invites “thinkers and doers” from around the world to give talks of less than 18 minutes to spread inspirational ideas.
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