Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s third-largest PC maker, will comply with a Chinese government order for all computers sold in the country to include anti-pornography software, spokesman Henry Wang (汪島雄) said.
“The company has noted the regulations and we will meet them,” Wang said by phone yesterday.
He declined to say if the Taipei-based company had already installed the “Green Dam-Youth Escort” software on its products in China.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
All personal computers sold in China from today were to have to include the software as part of government efforts to curb access to pornographic content on the Internet, a May 19 statement by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.
However, later yesterday China’s Xinhua new agency reported that the implementation of the controversial policy would be delayed.
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP), the world’s largest PC maker, is seeking additional information and watching developments on the requirements, spokeswoman Pamela Bonney said on Monday.
Dell Inc, the second largest, will “continue to monitor” the situation, spokesman Jess Blackburn said.
Both declined to say whether their companies would adopt the software.
Meanwhile, a California company that says its software was illegally used in Beijing’s new Internet filter threatened unspecified legal action.
Solid Oak Software Inc of Santa Barbara said it had written to Dell, HP and other producers advising them not to install the software on the grounds that it contained illegally obtained intellectual property.
Solid Oak said it was appointing lawyers to represent it in China and would be “moving forward legally” today, company spokeswoman Jenna DiPasquale said in an e-mail.
“I cannot say at this time what specific legal action we plan to take,” DiPasquale said.
US trade officials, industry and free-speech groups have appealed to Beijing to revoke its order, which requires suppliers to pre-install the software or include it on a disk with each PC made for sale in China.
Washington said the order, issued abruptly in May, might violate Beijing’s WTO free-trade pledges. American officials have cited warnings by computer experts that the software could cause security problems for users.
The US embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to requests for information on the status of talks with Chinese officials.
Industry groups have received no response to a letter sent last week by 22 US, European and Japanese groups to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), appealing to him to scrap the order, said one of the signers, Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.
“We hope we receive feedback,” Wuttke said. “We also hope this decision can be postponed, because there are so many uncertainties in connection with the software.”
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
RSS