Taiwan Land Development Corp (TLDC, 台灣土地開發) yesterday inked a cooperation pact with Japanese information science professor Ken Sakamura to turn Hualien into a “smart” city that is more friendly to foreign visitors.
The two sides agreed to join forces to transform the city in three stages by 2020, TLDC chairman Chiu Fu-sheng (邱復生) told a news conference in Taipei.
“The project requires talent and cooperation from the local government,” Chiu said, adding that money is only a secondary concern.
Taoyuan and Taichung officials have also expressed interest in developing smart cities, but Hualien officials appear to need more persuasion, the former media tycoon said.
The Taipei-based firm is also developing massive mixed-use complexes in Hsinchu, Nantou and Kinmen counties, but is to first introduce related technologies to its complexes in Hualien, he said.
Sakamura is known for pioneering in 1984 The Real-time Operating System Nucleus, a project that aims to build an open architecture for embedded systems — in other words: creating an ideal computer architecture and network that can provide for all of society’s needs.
INTEGRATED SYSTEM
In the first stage of the project, Hualien is to be included in Japan’s Kokosil application system, which contains a variety of information regarding sightseeing spots, towns, museums and art galleries throughout Japan.
The system would offer information in four languages about Hualien, along with other international cities such as Tokyo, which Sakamura is working on developing ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games, Chiu said.
The second stage would create a cashless environment for TLDC members when they embark on recreational activities such as paragliding, waterskiing, shopping and dining, he said.
The third stage aims to build a safe living environment in which the ubiquitous system would, among other functions, be able to locate users to ensure their physical safety and well-being, Chiu said.
To groom the necessary talent, TLDC is to offer scholarships for Hualien locals to study cloud computing and Internet of Things technologies at Toyo University’s Faculty of Information Networking for Innovation and Design, where Sakamura teaches, he said.
Hopefully, the recipients of the scholarships could contribute to the development of smart cities in Taiwan after completing their studies, he said.
KINMEN GROWTH
Separately, TLDC said Wind Lion Plaza (風獅城) in Kinmen, a build-operate-transfer project with the county government, saw a 20 percent increase in revenue in the first 11 months of this year to NT$340 million (US$11.34 million).
An increase in visitors from Xiamen, China, accounted for the strong showing, even though the number of Chinese visitors to Taiwan continued to decline this year, TLDC said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
RSS