The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday said it would lead the development of Taiwan’s sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) by boosting the combined computing speed of the nation’s supercomputers to 480 petaflops by 2029.
AI sovereignty refers to a country’s full autonomy over AI technologies and infrastructure, including the development of models, control and protection of data, and ensuring computing efficiency, NSTC Deputy Minister Lin Faa-jeng (林法正) said.
The NSTC’s goal is to reduce Taiwan’s dependence on external technologies and services, he said.
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
Last year, 80 percent of corporate chief executive officers recognized AI’s influence, while 57 percent included AI in their development strategies, Lin said, citing data from Gartner, a US technological research and consulting firm.
Taiwan’s domestic demand for AI is increasing every year, including large-scale language model training, climate change research, healthcare innovations, smart manufacturing and integrated circuit layout, he said, adding that the council has commissioned the National Center for High-Performance Computing to procure supercomputers to reach the necessary computing speed for AI, he added.
One type of supercomputer is driven by regular CPUs, including Taiwania 3 and Forerunner 1, which can reach 2.7 petaflops and 3.5 petaflops respectively, he said.
Another type is GPU-powered supercomputers such as Taiwania 2 and the Trustworthy AI Dialog Engine (TAIDE) language model, capable of 5.9 petaflops and 3.8 petaflops respectively, Lin said.
Cloud services and technology platforms would also be built to promote Taiwan’s academic research development, industrial applications and international competitiveness in the AI field, he added.
Additionally, the council plans to launch a scheme to construct next-generation high-speed host computers under the Taiwan Chip-based Industrial Innovation Program, Lin said.
The scheme aims for supercomputers’ combined computing speed to reach 280 petaflops by 2028, he added.
More AI supercomputers would be installed under the “Southern Silicon Valley” project to add another 200 petaflops from next year to 2029, Lin said.
The combined computing speed of supercomputers would thus reach 480 petaflops within the next five years, he added.
ChatGPT has shown the power of generative AI and the importance of sovereignty over the technology since its launch in 2022, he said.
Sixty to 70 percent of mainstream AI models are trained in English, and most of the ones in Mandarin use simplified Chinese, Lin said.
The construction of TAIDE would ensure the nation’s competitiveness by developing a model in Traditional Chinese, he said.
The center would not only create high-efficiency supercomputers based on GPUs, but also build a reliable cloud data environment, ensuring the safety of sensitive medical data, such as people’s genomes or health records, Lin added.
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing
RSS