Quanta Research Institute (QRI, 廣達研究院), Quanta Computer Inc’s (廣達) research and development unit for futuristic technologies, ended its partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last year after 10 years of collaboration, the Taiwanese company confirmed recently.
“QRI and MIT completed their collaboration last year,” a Quanta official said by telephone.
QRI was established in 2004 with a vision to identify and accelerate “next-generation” technologies that could make a significant difference to human life, such as cloud computing and healthcare technologies, Quanta said.
QRI had been the sole strategic partner of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) between 2004 and last year, with nearly 10 percent of all CSAIL members involved in the collaboration. Quanta provided about US$45 million in finance over the past decade.
A number of QRI and CSAIL- developed technologies have resulted in research prototypes in secure and fast hardware for data centers, natural interactions using speech for health-related applications and motion magnification for medical applications, the laboratory said.
A Quanta official said QRI has continued to work with other academic and medical institutes on various research projects since finalizing its collaboration with CSAIL.
One of QRI’s current focuses is on the QOCA healthcare platform it codeveloped with CSAIL, the official said.
The platform includes home tele-health solutions that offer remote access to care, and bedside solutions to provide real-time voice and video communication, information and entertainment to patients and medical staff, Quanta said.
QRI is in talks with domestic and international healthcare institutions, hospitals and clinics to trial its products, the official said.
QRI’s remote access healthcare technologies could assist during the “golden hour” during a medical emergency, the official said.
However, it would take time and “tens of thousands” of trials to ensure products exceed a 95 percent rating, and then time to commercialize the products, the official said.
It is expected to take years before the healthcare segment contributes even 1 percent to Quanta’s total revenues, given the firm’s annual revenue base is about NT$1 trillion (US$31.79 billion), the official added.
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
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],”
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
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