Artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia Corp yesterday said it is working on a number of new investments in Taiwan, including a second supercomputer center and possibly a corporate headquarters, given the company’s strong ties to the local semiconductor ecosystem.
Nvidia plans to build a supercomputer center like the “Taipei-1” project in Kaohsiung, CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said at a news conference in Taipei.
No final decision about the location has been made yet, he said.
Photo: Annabelle Chih, Bloomberg
Nvidia is also considering setting up headquarters in Taiwan, he said.
“If you can find me a nice plot of land, I can build a headquarters here in Taipei,” Huang said, adding that Nvidia employs hundreds of workers in Taipei and nearby areas.
The strong local ecosystem is one of the major factors behind Nvidia’s decision to invest more in Taiwan, Huang said.
For instance, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is a significant partner of Nvidia, given the chipmaker’s advanced manufacturing technology and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology, as well as its good work ethic and flexibility, he said.
Taiwan also has “incredible” chip testing house and hardware system makers from Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) to Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) and Wiwynn Corp (緯穎科技) and a lot more, he said.
Huang on Monday night said that Nvidia planned to recruit about 1,000 engineers in Taiwan over a five-year period for chip design, system design and software engineering.
The company has already built a significant AI team in Taiwan and plans to build a data center here as the nation’s expertise in AI research is very good, he said.
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