The National Science Council said it will help firms in the Tainan Science-based Industrial Park (台南科學園區) deal with vibrations that will come from the planned high speed railway, National Science Council Chairman Wei Che-ho (魏哲和) said yesterday.
Wei said at the Legislative Yuan that the council would help firms to enhance their ability to resist the vibrations.
"The priority now is to communicate with high-tech firms and help them understand the government's plan for the railroad," Wei said yesterday.
Wei repeated more than once on the vibration issue that problems would eventually be solved through technology.
Parts of the industrial park are only 200m from the planned rail line. Many firms believe that vibrations created by the railroad (about 68 decibels) is far beyond acceptable limits.
Since February, worries over the vibrations have resulted in a chain reaction of high-tech firms aborting projects at the park.
Most of the firms that have decided to look elsewhere are DRAM chipmakers, including Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), Silicon Integrated Systems Co (矽統科技) and Chi Mei Electronics Corp (奇美電子).
Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has initiated a project to figure out how to reduce the railroad's vibration down to about 50 decibels.
In an effort to offer a solution to the problem, officials at the Council's National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering will soon carry out a field investigation in Japan to study the structure of the Shinkansen (
Wei said that the earthquake project would do its best to help companies to lower vibrations down to about 48 decibels, which most high-tech firms say they can accept.
Tainan County residents established a self-help group to call for a solution to the vibration problem.
Hou Shui-sheng (
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing