To maintain Taiwan’s competitiveness in the global semiconductor industry, the nation needs to compete in the entire value chain, instead of just chip manufacturing, economic historian Chris Miller, author of the book Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, said on Thursday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Robert N. Noyce Award ceremony hosted by the Semiconductor Industry Association in San Jose, California, Miller said Taiwan already plays a critical role in chip production, making an artificial intelligence (AI) era possible.
“But there’s so much more value that we created across the value chain by artificial intelligence,” he said. “So, I think the challenge for Taiwan is to make sure it’s competing in a whole variety of value chain steps, not only the chips, where Taiwan is already very, very capable, but also in the software and application layers as well.”
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA
AI has changed the landscape of the global semiconductor industry, and software is expected to become a very important part of the industry, although the focus right now is on chips and infrastructure, Miller said.
“AI will accelerate those changes,” he said. “I think it’s important for countries to think about... the AI technology stack as well.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) and former TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) on Thursday received the Robert N. Noyce Award — the highest honor in the semiconductor industry.
TSMC leaders were given the award, as the chipmaker has become a central player in the global semiconductor ecosystem that has benefited Taiwan and the US, Miller said, adding that the award was evidence that such cooperation would continue for a long time.
“I think the US ecosystem is always going to exist in collaboration with the Japanese and the European and the [South] Korean and the Taiwanese chip ecosystem,” he said. “No country is going to be self-sufficient.”
Still, the sentiment in the global semiconductor industry appeared mixed, as worries over geopolitical tensions continue growing and an extraordinary surge in AI investments has pushed up demand for chips, Miller said.
Amid growing geopolitical unease, the global supply chain has been restructuring, posing more challenges to the global semiconductor industry, he said, adding that Taiwan is not the only one that needs to navigate the turbulences.
“The reality is, if you got a technology everyone else requires, then geopolitics is just gonna be less impactful, because everyone needs your technology,” Miller said.
Miller praised TSMC, which manufactures about 90 percent of the world’s high-end chips, for its importance, saying everyone in the world needs the chips that the company produces.
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