Zeiss plans to unveil a new investment project next month at the Computex Taipei trade show, aiming to elevate Taiwan’s position as a global center for artificial intelligence (AI) technology, company executives said yesterday.
The investment would be the second leg of the German company’s 10-year plan to invest NT$10 billion (US$310.3 million) in Taiwan. Zeiss initiated the plan last year by launching a NT$300 million innovation center at the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區).
The new project would “significantly increase Taiwan’s research-and-development [R&D] capabilities,” Zeiss Taiwan head Cheong Peng Tat (章平達) said at a news briefing in Taipei.
Photo courtesy of Zeiss Taiwan
Zeiss aims to bring the world’s most advanced process technologies, AI solutions and resources to Taiwan, making the country an optimal location for international companies to undertake research and developments projects and establish new product introduction centers for AI products, said Clive Yen (嚴子登), head of Zeiss Taiwan’s industrial quality solutions unit.
Taiwan would evolve into a key AI technology hub, with failure analysis, process validation and all sorts of quality control measures to be carried out, he said.
The major technological challenges faced by AI supply chains lie in printed circuit boards, liquid-cooling systems and server rack assembly, due to increasing technological complexity and thermal management issues, he added.
Zeiss is set to showcase its new “Zeiss Metrotom,” an industrial computed tomography system for measuring and inspecting complete components made of plastic or light metal, at Computex, with a focus on AI server products, it said.
Aside from computed tomography solutions, Zeiss also saw increasing demand for its research microscopy solutions such as high-resolution 3D X-ray microscopy solutions to help customers conduct fault isolation, failure analysis and yield enhancement. The company’s microscopy solutions are used a variety of areas such as advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology, which is adopted to package AI chips.
Due to strong customer demand, Zeiss’s research microscopy solutions (RMS) business group has enjoyed more than 50 percent annual growth over the past three years, RMS head Henry Cai (蔡慧) said yesterday. He expects the growth momentum to carry into the next few years.
To cope with business expansion and rising demand for its equipment and services, the company plans to increase its local headcount by about 12 percent, or 50 new employees, this year, Cheong said.
Zeiss Taiwan’s workforce has grown rapidly, reaching 400 employees today, up from 40 in 2018, the company said.
Over the past five years, Zeiss Taiwan has expanded across five business units: consumer markets, medical technology, semiconductor manufacturing, microscope solutions and industrial quality solutions, it added.
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