SEMICONDUCTORS
TSMC revenue rises 11%
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated revenue of NT$98.26 billion (US$3.2 billion) for the first two months of the year, an increase of 10.9 percent from the same period last year. The scale of revenue covers 71 percent of the company’s operational prospects of NT$138 billion for the first quarter of the year, with a small gap of NT$39.8 billion to fill this month to reach the goal, the company said. TSMC added that it anticipates first-quarter sales to be higher than expected. Sales for last month were NT$46.83 billion, down 9 percent from the month before, but up 13.7 percent from a year earlier, TSMC said.
SERVICES
High rank for data centers
Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan are the top three locations in the Asia-Pacific region when it comes to suitability for setting up new and outsourced data centers, according to technology research firm IDC. The firm’s Asia-Pacific Data Center Index evaluates 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, for suitability regarding setting up new data center locations and also outsourcing work to centers that already exist in those countries. The factors that put these countries at the top of the rankings are energy costs and bandwidth availability, IDC said on Wednesday last week, citing the results of its recently published Asia-Pacific Data Center Index.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts