COMMUNICATIONS
Forum discusses standards
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) will take part in a forum in New Taipei City (新北市) with industry representatives from Taiwan and China today to discuss communications industry standards. A 70-member Chinese delegation led by Chinese Deputy Minister of Industry and Information Technology Yang Xueshan (楊學山) will also participate in the 10th Cross-Strait Communications Industry and Technical Standards Forum, organizers have said. Yang is expected to announce the results of the two sides’ cooperation on China’s homegrown 4G TD-LTE wireless broadband standard, the organizers said. Gou said earlier this month at the APEC CEO Summit held in Indonesia that his group intends to develop products with smart content and smart medical systems and contribute to the building of smart cities.
LABOR
Jobless likely unchanged
Taiwan’s nominal unemployment rate usually dips in September because of seasonal factors, but Hsin Ping-lung (辛炳隆), an associate professor at National Taiwan University, predicted that this year’s figure, to be released tomorrow, will be generally unchanged given the stagnant nature of the labor market. Last month’s jobless rate might fall slightly and any significant decline in the nominal jobless rate is unlikely to take place until this month when businesses begin hiring to gear up for the Lunar New Year period, Hsin said. July and August often have the highest nominal unemployment rates of the year because of the many new university graduates who join the job-seeking population. The unemployment rate in August was 4.33 percent, up 0.08 percentage points from July and up 0.19 percentage points from June.
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