Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) is to set up a research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan with research teams targeting several advanced technologies, including silicon photonics, artificial intelligence (AI) and heterogeneous integration, a Ministry of Economic Affairs official said on Saturday.
An AMD application for the ministry’s A+ global R&D and innovation partnership program was approved this month, granting a more than 30 percent subsidy, or NT$3.31 billion (US$100.82 million), of the company’s total NT$8.64 billion investment, the ministry’s Web site showed.
AMD, a US-based central processing unit (CPU) producer and AI chip giant, would invest NT$5.33 billion, while 50 percent of its R&D workforce would be foreign talent, the ministry said.
Photo: Annabelle Chih, Bloomberg
Department of Industrial Technology Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) wrote about the details of negotiations with the tech giant over the past year on social media.
The department team visited AMD headquarters in Santa Clara, California, while attending an APEC meeting in Seattle last year, Chiou said.
“Just a month before our visit, AMD had a market value of US$170 billion, surpassing Intel Corp and becoming the world’s most valuable CPU company and second in terms of AI chips,” he wrote.
After nearly a year of discussions and reviews, the investment plan was confirmed following a meeting on June 5 during Computex Taipei between AMD CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) and Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), Chiou said.
AMD has promised to set up research teams focusing on silicon photonics, AI and heterogeneous integration in Taiwan, he said.
Silicon photonics and heterogenous integration are promising technologies for advancing IC efficiency, as traditional silicon chip technology has reached its physical limits.
Because the software AMD uses for its graphics processing units is open source, meaning it is freely available and can be modified, “we also negotiated for more local companies to have cooperation opportunities with AMD,” Chiou said.
As a result, 33 domestic companies would be included in the research program, “pushing the value of the investment up to NT$15 billion and cultivating more than 1,000 AI specialists in Taiwan every year” during the three-year program, he said.
Separately, the ministry last month approved four Taiwanese teams to receive free access to “Taipei-1,” a supercomputer built by US-based Nvidia Corp, to boost their R&D capabilities.
Taipei-1 was launched in Kaohsiung late last year and partly funded by the government to develop AI technologies and products.
The computer would help the teams — the first batch of applicants for the government campaign — with R&D on a wide range of topics from large language model training and chip design to smart healthcare and autonomous driving, the ministry said on June 25.
The teams, selected from nearly 30 companies, universities and research institutions in Taiwan, would each be able to use 25 percent of Taipei-1’s computing power for six weeks from July 1 to Sept. 30, it said.
This is the first time the government has secured AI computing power from a foreign company for Taiwan, Chiou said.
Such access is expected to last for two and a half years and is valued at approximately NT$400 million, he said.
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS