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.
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