Chang Chieh-wen (張潔文), a commissioner at the National Civil Service Institute's Mid-Island Campus, yesterday became the 10 millionth passenger to use the high speed rail, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) said.
Chang, 50, who makes her home in Chung Hsing New Village, Nantou County, said she only learned the news after boarding a high speed train at Taichung bound for Taipei at 7:38am.
She said she had asked others to book three tickets for herself and two colleagues on Sept. 18, adding that she was surprised to hear that she was the 10 millionth passenger.
Chang said that when she arrived at the Taichung station, she saw a lot of vehicles from TV stations around and thought that she was going to travel with some important figures.
She said she never expected to be the star attraction herself.
"I'm so happy. I feel like I've won the lottery," Chang said.
THSRC vice president Ted Chia (
The other passengers traveling in Chang's carriage received a 10 millionth passenger memorial key ring, Chia said.
He said that after selling the 10 millionth ticket on Sept. 18, the THSRC had set up life-size human figures at both the Taichung and Taipei stations with information to notify the holder of the ticket that they were the 10 millionth passenger, adding that the company did not find out who the 10 millionth passenger was until yesterday morning.
The high speed railway was formally inaugurated on Jan. 5. It reached the 5-million-passenger mark on May 28. The company had originally estimated that the 10 million mark would not be reached until the latter half of next month.
Chia said that the high speed railway currently carried around 1.5 million people per month, adding that in order to enhance its services, the THSRC has increased the number of trains from 38 per day to 91 per day.
The company is considering further increasing the number of trains from November, he said.
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
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
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.
RSS