EMPLOYMENT
Kaoliang job plan shelved
A subsidiary of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor Inc (金門酒廠) has shelved plans to hire new employees from Taiwan for its operations in Xiamen Province, China, citing worse-than-expected business. Lin Tsui-yun (林翠雲), general manager of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor (Xiamen) Trading Co (金酒廈門), said the company’s revenues were 130 million yuan (US$21.21 million) as of last month, about half its target of 250 million yuan for the year.
TECHNOLOGY
DRAM chip revenue growth
Revenues from the sale of DRAM chips are not only likely to rebound this year, but also continue their growth next year on the back of rising smartphone and tablet sales, market researcher TrendForce said. The value of DRAM chip production is expected to increase 32.5 percent to US$35.2 billion this year from last year, after contracting 9.8 percent last year and 24.6 percent in 2011, TrendForce said in a research note. The DRAM industry is expected to continue its revitalization next year growing 12 percent growth in the global DRAM market to US$39.5 billion, TrendForce said.
REAL ESTATE
Evertrust looking to hire
Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), one of the nation’s leading real-estate agencies, held a job fair in Taipei on Saturday seeking 3,600 new recruits to support the company’s future expansion. The company said employees recruited at the job fair will be offered a guaranteed monthly salary of NT$50,000 (US$1,689) for the first nine months they are employed. After that, the newcomers will earn an undisclosed base salary plus bonuses based on their performance, the company 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