Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed the company's partnerships with Arm, High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) manufacturers, Cloud Service Providers (CSP), and Taiwan's high-tech supply chains, which are led by TSMC, during a press Q&A session at Computex 2024 in Taipei. He also shared his vision for AI and commented on the competition. The following is a summary of the Q&A session.Q: Currently, Nvidia's HBM partner is SK Hynix. When will Samsung join as a partner? Rumor has it that Samsung's HBM does not quite meet Nvidia's requirements.A: For Nvidia, HBM memory is extremely essential. Right now, we're expanding rapidly. We provide the Hopper H200 and H100. Blackwell B100 and B200 are available. Grace Blackwell GB200 is here. The amount of HBM memories that we are ramping up is quite significant. The speed that we need is also very significant. We work with three partners. All three are excellent. SK Hynix, of course, Micron, and Samsung. All three will give us HBM memories. We are working diligently to qualify and integrate them into our manufacturing processes as quickly as possible.Q: Could you please elaborate on the delay in Samsung and Micron memory becoming HBM-certified? There was a rumor that Samsung's memory failed your energy consumption and heat verification tests. Can you finally disclose whether you've certified any Samsung memory or HBM?A: No, it did not fail for any of these reasons. Furthermore, there is no relationship between the material you have read and our business. Our relationship with Samsung and Micron is proceeding smoothly. The engineering is the only task that remains. It is yet to be completed. Yes, I wanted to finish it by yesterday, but it has not been completed. Knowing this requires patience. Yes, but there is no story present.Q: Can you provide an update on your collaboration with Arm?A: Of course. Our collaboration with Arm is outstanding. We are working on Grace, our CPU designed specifically for AI and high-performance computing as you are aware. We are rather thrilled about the Arm architecture since it lays the foundation of Grace. It's going to be fantastic for our data centers, and it's going to be an incredible product for the industry. Our relationship with Arm is very strong. We're working closely together to bring new technologies to market, and we're very excited about the future of Arm-based CPUs in our product lineup.Q: CSPs like Google and Microsoft are developing their own AI chips, which could have an impact on Nvidia. The second question is whether Nvidia will conduct business, which you may consider doing, ASIC chip development?A: Nvidia is quite different. As you know, Nvidia is not an accelerator. Nvidia accelerates computing. Do you know the difference? I explain it every year, but no one understands. The Deep Learning Accelerator cannot handle SQL data. We can. The deep learning accelerator cannot handle photos.The accelerator cannot be used for fluid dynamic simulations. We can't make sense. Nvidia promotes faster computing. It's quite versatile. It is also quite effective for deep learning. Does that make sense?Thus, Nvidia offers more versatile accelerated computing. Consequently, more use correlates with greater utility. It has a low effective cost. Allow me to explain with an example. Many believe that a smartphone is far more expensive than a phone. In the past, a smartphone was once more expensive than a phone; at US$100, it was the replacement for the music player. It took the place of the camera. It took the place of your laptop. On occasion. That is correct, isn't it? Therefore, the smartphone was relatively affordable due to its adaptability. It is, in actuality, our most valuable instrument.Same thing with Nvidia accelerated computing. Second, Nvidia's architecture is incredibly versatile and practical. It is a component of every cloud. It is located in GCP, OCI, Azure, and not AWS. It's located in local clouds. In sovereign clouds, that is. It exists everywhere—on-premises, in private clouds, and everywhere else. Because we have such a large audience, developers come to us first. It makes sense. Because it operates everywhere if you program for or target CUDA. It only operates at the accelerators if you program for one of them. This gets us to the second reason for which our value to the client is quite high: in addition to reducing the CSPs' workload, Nvidia provides them with clients because they are CUDA customers.Our objective is to migrate consumers to the cloud. As cloud companies expand their Nvidia capability, their revenue increases. When they enhance the capability of their proprietary ASICs, their expenses rise. It is possible that the revenue will not rise.We attract consumers to our cloud services, and we are really satisfied with this achievement. Nvidia is positioned in a distinct manner. Firstly, our versatility stems from the abundance of exceptional software we possess. Secondly, we exist in every cloud and are present in all locations. We are an attractive prospect for developers and highly valuable to CSPs. We attract and generate clients for them.Q: Could you tell us more about your thoughts on the future of AI and how Nvidia is positioned in this space?A: AI is the most potent technological force of our era. Nvidia is at the forefront of this transformation, which will revolutionize every industry. We are offering the platforms, systems, and tools necessary to stimulate AI innovation. We are facilitating the next surge of AI advancements by utilizing a variety of software libraries, including CUDA and TensorRT, as well as our AI platforms, including Clara for healthcare, Isaac for robotics, and Drive for autonomous vehicles. Our collaboration with partners from various sectors guarantees that AI can be implemented efficiently and that we will persist in expanding the limits of what is feasible. Nvidia will be playing a critical role in the journey of AI's impact on every aspect of our lives.Q: Question about building technology. Last week, Intel and AMD unveiled the UA Link Consortium. They say that your Nvidia is proprietary. Therefore, being open is much better. So what are your thoughts on that? I believe we have used proprietary technology throughout the history of this industry. Intel is x86. ARM is ARM architecture. Now, Nvidia has NVLink. So, what do you think about open vs. proprietary?A: For end users, performance and cost performance are favorable. End users also tolerate proprietary technology as long as it offers acceptable performance and cost-effectiveness.Proprietary and open standards have always existed, is that correct? The market has always been both open and proprietary. Intel is x86, AMD is x86, ARM is ARM architecture, Nvidia is NVLink, and so on. The best way to look at it, in my opinion, is in terms of a platform's transparency, its capacity for innovation, and the value it adds to the ecosystem.The most crucial factors are whether it stimulates innovation, adds value to the ecosystem, and opens up chances for everyone, regardless of whether it is proprietary or open. I believe Nvidia has accomplished that. Not only is NVLink an amazing piece of technology, but our industry partnership is even better. Our networking devices, NVSwitch and Quantum-2, are compatible with PCI Express.We collaborate with industry to develop a great deal of open technology, but we also innovate and produce proprietary technologies. Actually, it's not either/or. It's all about advancing innovation and adding value to the ecosystem.Q: How does Nvidia deal with increased competition in the specialized AI chip market?A: Nvidia is a market maker, not a sharetaker. Does this make sense? We are always inventing the future.Remember, GeForce was the first graphics card designed for gaming. We played a significant role in the early development of PC gaming. All of our work with accelerated computing was pioneering; we began working on self-driving cars, autonomous vehicles, and robotics over a decade ago and are still working on it, and of course, generative AI.Nobody could argue that we were there on the first day, inventing the entire category. As a result, some people claim it is their top priority right now. But it's been our top priority for 15 years. As a result, the company's culture, as well as its personality, revolve around inventing the future.We're dreamers. We are inventors. We are pioneers. We do not mind failing. We do not mind wasting time. We simply want to develop something new. So, that is our company's personality. So I believe our approaches are really different.As you are aware, we are not simply building GPUs; the systems shown on stage are only half of the total. All of these mechanisms were designed by us, and we then opened them up to the ecosystem so that everyone could build on them. But someone had to build the first one. We completed all of these. We built all of the initial ones and someone needs to write all of the software that makes this all function. We made everything work. So Nvidia is more than simply a chip company. We are actually an AI supercomputer, AI infrastructure, and AI factory company. We're also quite good at developing AI.How do you determine what computer to create if you don't comprehend AI? Nobody is going to teach it to you. So, 15 years ago, we had to start learning how to design AI so that we could build these computers to operate it. As a result, there are numerous unique aspects to our business. It's difficult to compare us to someone else.Some argue that the CSPs are competitors because they manufacture chips. Remember, all of our CSPs are Nvidia customers. Nvidia is the only business that provides an accelerated computing platform that is available in every cloud. That is versatile enough to handle everything from deep learning and generative AI to database processing and weather simulation. We're rather a unique company, extremely different.Q: Regarding Hopper and Blackwell, it appears that there has been a shift in messaging since GTC, with a greater emphasis on value, cost per token, and cost performance. The word value appears to be a frequently mentioned topic. I'm just wondering whether that's a response to customers. Have they, are they concerned about pricing, and how do you approach pricing for these sorts of novel chips?A: Pricing is always value-based. If a product is priced correctly, demand is phenomenal. There is no such thing as great demand at the incorrect price; it does not exist. If you have the appropriate price and provide the correct value, demand will be incredible. Our demand is great. You could reduce your pricing to nothing if there is no demand. It's not about the price, right? It did not. You did not get low enough. So pricing is definitely determined by market demand. So I believe our price is appropriate.The way we set it is not an easy exercise, but we have to build the entire system, develop all the software, and then break it up into a whole bunch of parts, and we sell it to you as a chip. But in the end, we're really selling the AI infrastructure. All the software that goes along with it is integrated into your software. So Nvidia, what we build is AI factories.What we're building are AI factories. We deliver it as a chip. It looks a little like this. Microsoft used to deliver the operating system and Excel office. They wrote the software, but they provided it to you via floppy disk. So the question is: Does Microsoft sell floppy disks? No, that is only a delivery vehicle. So, in many ways, our chips serve as delivery vehicles for the software notion of the AI factory infrastructure. That's the simplest way to think about it.But, in the end, we deliver AI factories successfully. In terms of cost, we have reduced energy use by 45,000 times during the past eight years. Moore's Law could not have come close to that. Over the last ten years, we have reduced training costs by 350 times. You know, probably around 350 times. Call it 1000 or 1200 times. We're only eight years into the decade. So there are two years remaining at the current rate of growth. There are still many X factors left. Moore's Law, therefore, cannot accomplish this. Not even close, even on his finest days. So we're lowering our energy consumption.We're driving down the cost of training. Why are we doing that? So that we can enable the next level of breakthroughs. So the reason why the world has trained us is training such giant large language models without ever thinking about it. It's because the marginal cost of training has dropped by 1000 times in ten years. Assume that something you accomplished decreased a thousandfold over the course of a decade. Assume the cost of going from Australia to here is $3 rather than $3,000 or more. Okay. Instead of 24 hours, it takes 20 minutes. I believe that you could go from Australia to Taiwan in 24 minutes or 2 minutes. Yeah, it takes two minutes and costs three dollars. I bet you visit Taiwan frequently. You come here merely to visit the night market and then return home. Do you understand what I am saying? Isn't that correct?So, by driving down the marginal cost, by driving down the energy consumed, by driving down the cost, the time we are enabling generative AI, if we didn't do that, generative AI would still be a decade away. That's why we're doing it to enable the next breakthrough in AI because we believe in it.Q: Are you concerned about the geopolitical risks associated with your investments in Taiwan?A: We invest in Taiwan because TSMC is fantastic. I mean, not typical. TSMC has incredible advanced technology, an exceptional work atmosphere, and excellent flexibility. Our two businesses have been working together for about a quarter of a century. We genuinely get each other's beat. We seem to be working with friends, so it's almost as if we have nothing to say. You say nothing at all. We simply understand each other.As a result, we can construct extremely complex things in large quantities and at great speeds. This is not common for TSMC. You can't just leave it up to someone else to do it.The industry ecosystem here is incredible. The ecosystem surrounding TSMC, both upstream and downstream, is quite rich. We've been dealing with them for a quarter-century.Thus, TSMC and the ecosystem around it, which include Wistron, Quanta, Foxconn, and Wiwynn. Inventec and Pegatron—how many of them? Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte are all fantastic firms that are sometimes overlooked and undervalued. This is actually the case. So, if you're from Taiwan, I think you should be really proud of the ecosystem here. If you are a Taiwanese company, you should be very proud of your accomplishments. This is a fantastic place. I am very proud of all of my partners here. I am incredibly grateful for everything they have done for us and the assistance they have provided over the years. And I'm delighted that this is a new beginning, building on all of the experience that these companies have gained over time. All of these wonderful companies have gathered incredible expertise over the last two and a half to three decades.

As the world grapples with mounting environmental challenges and income disparity, startups are seeking to address niche markets and deliver innovative, sustainable solutions that generate real value for end users. Takachar is focused on harnessing the power of pyrolysis to transform agricultural and forestry residues into valuable resources. With a mission to relieve the pressing waste disposal needs of rural communities, Takachar offers a valuable solution to both local farmers and the global ecosystem, thereby advancing climate justice on behalf of rural, underserved communities. By converting waste biomass into biofuels, charcoal, and other valuable organic products, Takachar not only reduces environmental pollution but also unlocks economic opportunities and promotes sustainable practices.DIGITIMES Asia spoke with Kevin Kung, co-founder, president, and CTO of Takachar, about his company's product and sense of purpose, as well as some of the challenges in bringing new technologies to markets where few have sought to tread before.Residual matter: an old problem redeveloped as a new opportunityWaste biomass, also known as agricultural or forest residues, comprise matter from farms or woodlands that are generally regarded as having no market value. Examples can include nut shells, corn husks, wheat chaff, and tree bark. Lacking better methods of waste biomass disposal, rural communities around the world turn to open burning for their agricultural and forestry residues, resulting in pollution and wasted economic opportunities. Takachar estimates that the real value of those waste products – from coconut shells to rice husks and tree branches – represents around US$120 billion dollars per year.Takachar envisions this vast mass of organic waste as a lucrative opportunity rather than a problem. With a novel thermochemical process at the core, they have designed and patented small-scale, low-cost, portable equipment capable of transforming waste biomass into fuel, fertilizer, and specialty chemicals. This process is not only economically viable but also helps in reducing pollution.Takachar's machine, a self-contained moving bed reactor called the MiniTorr, is designed to be towed by a tractor or hauled by a pickup truck, able to be operated and maintained simply and safely with some basic training and common tools. The MiniTorr empowers small, rural communities to convert their agricultural and forestry waste into useful and commercially viable organic products such as fuel and soil additives."The machine itself was designed to be pretty simple," said Kung. That simplicity, however, was its own engineering challenge. "It's difficult to design something that works in rural areas often without electricity or running water. It's meant to be maintained and repaired locally with off-the-shelf parts." Operating a unit is similarly uncomplicated, with only some basic training required thanks to the MiniTorr's control system and safety features. "If you have different inputs today, or because it rained today and the input material is wet, or you want a different output today, then our control system knows how to handle that so the farmer or local end user doesn't have to become a chemical engineering expert to make that work."Takachar prioritizes safety in operating the MiniTorr. Kung emphasized that "the equipment training is more so on the operation and safety side." They equip users with the necessary skills to handle heavy loads safely and minimize exposure to high temperatures within the thermochemical reactor. By providing a safe and user-friendly system, Takachar empowers farmers and local communities to utilize their technology effectively.At the time of the interview, Takachar currently deploys five MiniTorrs: one in British Columbia, one in California, and three in India. In the South Indian coconut-growing belt to which several MiniTorrs are deployed, Takachar's technology finds relevance as it converts discarded coconut shells into activated carbon precursors. Local growers benefit from cleaner and more environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional production methods, allowing them to participate in the activated carbon supply chain and improve their material conditions.You can do good and do well: a plan for sustainable growthMiniTorrs that have already been deployed have demonstrated their value in turning waste into saleable goods. When asked about the next steps in growing the business, Kung is quick to lay out Takachar's strategy. "We'd be targeting the same supply chain, the hardware OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), who can produce and sell this as a complementary product to their clientele through the existing dealership network." By collaborating with OEMs, Takachar aims to scale their operations without the limitations of individual ownership and operation.While there already exist some processes for disposing of or converting waste biomass, those solutions are out of reach of most rural agricultural communities. "A lot of the current conversion process is such that you find a long term offtake with a mill or a centralized place where you can get a 20 year contract for the conversion, and you would then invest or do a project development around that, which often will cost at least a few million dollars in terms of capital, equipment, and so forth. That is one viable business model, especially if you have a point source on biomass. But those technologies tend to exclude a lot of the rural biomass because they are fundamentally incompatible," explains Kung. "So where we play is really at those more remote and hard to access regions where it does not make sense for a lot of those large scale technologies to deploy. That's how we think of ourselves."Trash to treasure"A lot of the value is derived from upgrading the residue into something that's higher value," explains Kevin Kung. Takachar's model creates value through upgrading residues into higher-value products like soil amendments. These outputs not only offer economic benefits, attracting investors and buyers but also contribute to a cleaner and greener environment, making their technology more sustainable and impactful. "There's also the carbon credit piece, because a lot of our outputs are carbon negative or carbon mitigating, which means that you can take it out to the carbon market and fetch additional revenue from prospective carbon credit buyers. So that is another value being created."Takachar's journey goes beyond their current deployments. "We have growing interest in North America, especially in the forestry side of things," says Kung. Takachar is exploring opportunities in Kenya and East Asia, including Taiwan, where Kevin was raised during his early childhood. Kung remembers the smell of rice stalk stubble being burnt after the harvest. "That stays with me as a nostalgic memory," he says, "but when I visit Taiwan now and take the high speed train through central or southern Taiwan, I still see that today." He highlights the significance of community-centric design, ensuring Takachar's technology resonates with users and fosters lasting impacts within communities."I think when it comes to biomass," continues Kung, "one big challenge is that it's highly context dependent. The coconut value chain is different from the rice value chain, which is different from forestry. So traditionally, it has made things very difficult to scale. And I think for us, especially as a decentralized fleet, to scale, we need to master our operations with regard to these different contexts. And not only respect, but also design and co-design with those local communities with respect to local needs, which are often very different."Takachar's journey is a testament to the power of sustainable technology in combatting climate change and driving positive change in rural communities. With their MiniTorr machine, the startup is blazing a trail for a greener, cleaner future, transforming waste biomass into valuable resources while creating economic opportunities and reducing pollution. Through a combination of innovation, partnerships, and human-centric design, Takachar is a bright example of how environmental technology can pave the path towards a more sustainable and prosperous world.

Germany-based Beckhoff Automation, an automation solution specialist founded in 1980 and headquartered in Verl, has been operating in the field of industrial automation for over 40 years. Its experience built and technologies developed during these years have earned the company partnerships and trust from the industrial big names such as Canadian machinery supplier Husky, Switzerland-based Georg Fischer and German robot manufacturer Kuka Robotics.Beckhoff Automation's engineering team and experience also enabled the company to invent technologies such as EtherCAT and innovations based on the communication fieldbus that are being broadly used among machine builders and IPC companies.Hans Beckhoff, owner and managing director of Beckhoff Automation, pointed out during an interview that Beckhoff Automation is an automation company that delivers the intelligence, power and anything that is needed to control a machine, a building, a windmill or others.He founded Beckhoff Automation in 1980 and started the business with microprocessor-based controlled systems in the early period of the company's operation, but in 1986, the company turned specifically to PC-based control technologies - implementing real-time software onto hardware of an industrial PC to enable typical automation functionalities like PLC and motion.With the PC-based control technologies, Beckhoff Automation managed to gain the ability to control machines via PCs in very early days and this allowed the company to bring a lot of unique features of machine control to its customers.Today, with all the communication, data handling and analytics features, and modern control needs, Beckhoff Automation's technologies over PC-based control have further advanced. Beckhoff Automation's clients can now simply download programs from the company website and install onto their PCs to transform their PCs into a high-end machine control while maintaining all the features of a standard PC.The software TwinCAT is the heart of Beckhoff Automation's business philosophy - to become a software-oriented company, but the software still needs a lot of supporting hardware to be able to perform its control ability on clients' high-quality machinery hardware. Therefore Beckhoff Automation has started expanding the development and production of its own-brand industrial PCs, I/O and fieldbus components, drive technology as well as control cabinet-free automation.Beckhoff Automation is a company with deep technologies. What that means is that Beckhoff Automation is fully capable of developing motherboards for its industrial PCs by itself. It is producing the motherboards at its plants in Germany and has its own BIOS software and a team of operating system experts and engineers that are able to cut down the reaction times of its IPCs to only 100 microseconds. Beckhoff also has specialists for automation software as well as specialists for applications such as packaging, milling and assembly.However, Beckhoff Automation does not only want to sell hardware and software to its customers; the company also wants to sell trust to them. Automation is a high-end technology, making it rather complicated and requiring close collaboration between its supplier and user.The supplier and user have to work together and develop a close relationship in order to make most advanced projects to work. In Taiwan, Beckhoff Automation also has high-end supporting engineers that are ready to provide any assistance to its customers.Beckhoff Automation's business strategy and structure helps it go through the difficult time during COVIDDespite the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on different industries over the past months, Beckhoff Automation still managed to achieve revenue growth in 2020 and further growth in 2021.Commenting on Beckhoff Automation's excellent performance in 2021, the founder Beckhoff said that the company currently has around 5,000 employees worldwide and more than 2,000 of them are engineers. It also has 24 sales offices spreading around Germany, as the company hopes to be as near to its customers as possible, and many subsidiaries in 40 other markets outside Germany, including Taiwan.Beckhoff Automation also has distributors and channel partners in more than 75 countries around the world to handle its product distribution and marketing. The company's sales increased to EUR1.182 billion (US$1.18 billion) in 2021, a record high with an on-year growth rate of 28% thanks to its employees' and partners' hard work.Over the more than 40 years of operation, Beckhoff Automation enjoyed annual revenue growth for most of the years, but there are still some years when "we experienced a drop from or stay on par with the previous year's numbers because of a major financial crisis around the world," said Beckhoff. On average, the company still saw a revenue growth of 15% a year since 2000.Beckhoff Automation has also been pushing to keep all its existing customers, and continue to win over new ones. Over the past 20-30 years, Beckhoff Automation has seen an increasing number of customers choose to stay with the company as they have great confident over the quality and pricing provided by Beckhoff Automation's solutions.In Germany, Beckhoff Automation has stable teams of engineers and workers, which allow the company to develop and build innovative technologies and products. The company's structure as a family-owned business also provides many benefits in its operation. Beckhoff Automation is completely self-financed and does not need to face pressure from investors or banks.With complete control of the company's business direction, the company can follow through its inventory strategy of maintaining four to six months of raw materials at its warehouses during the worst moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, while most other enterprises are instead trying to lose as much inventory as possible. In the end, the decision paid off and helped Beckhoff Automation through the crisis.Another advantage the company has as a privately-owned company is that the management team does not treat the results as the ultimate goal as it is also looking for long-term developments to maintain its technological leadership.The company's target each year is to launch new products with evolutionary features and to create something revolutionary every 5-7 years. Beckhoff Automation has already been doing so for many years and the strategy helped the company to create the principle of the PC-based control, the invention of bus terminals, linear motor and magnetic levitate movement technologies.Another revolution is the new MX-System, which was introduced in November 2021. The system offers a flexible, space-optimized and intelligent system solution and sets a new level in industrial automation by completely replacing the conventional control cabinet.This is also a duty for Beckhoff Automation: to bring new ideas to customers and to fulfill their needs and expectations. The development also helped the company to attract more new clients.The warehouse policy helped Beckhoff Automation during the crisis, but the company is now also gradually seeing longer lead times for its shipments due to insufficient production capacity. For that, Beckhoff Automation already started an expansion project with the new capacity set to be online by the first quarter of 2022 and volumes doubled compared to the beginning of 2020, to allow the company to delivery more products.With the increase in capacity, the lead time for orders is expected to return to normal in the second half of 2022. Clients' orders placed with Beckhoff Automation increased more than 60% on year in 2021, while its capacity only picked up 25%, but the gap will be narrowed in 2022.Since automation is a technology that can be applied in a lot of industries such as healthcare, water treatment and entertainment, automation companies are expected to enjoy a bright future because of enormous demand from all over the places.Beckhoff Automation offers one-of-a-kind solutions to satisfy increasing demandTaking the COP26 event for an example, the discussion in Glasgow was about how "engineers have to save the world," says Beckhoff. "We need to invent new technologies that can make machines and manufacturing processes more effective and use less energy and raw material, and all the companies have to do this on a steady basis."With the goal, more electric vehicles (EV) are expected to appear, which will require more semiconductors for production and relatively benefit the semiconductor and automation industries. Beckhoff Automation is delivering a lot of control systems to the semiconductor industry and also the assembly industry, because of the new manufacturing architecture coming to the market.With Beckhoff Automation's powerful IPCs, the customers are able to correlate over 100 axes together, build complicated machinery and run the axes in very short cycle time of 100 microseconds.This means that the machine can react faster and has higher production efficiency. The system also features IoT functionality that can collect data and store them to backend platforms for analysis.Beckhoff Automation also has a lot of built-in measurement technology that the company believes should be integrated into the control and not as an extra machine. The company is offering packages with variety of choices customer can choose that suit them better.Beckhoff Taiwan sees many business opportunities in the marketFor the business in Taiwan, managing director of Beckhoff Automation Taiwan Phylex Ong talked about the branch office's status, successful cases, as well as the key factors hindering Taiwanese enterprises from adopting smart manufacturing applications and the company's solutions to help resolve the problem.Ong noted that Beckhoff Taiwan was founded in 2018. The office is located in central Taiwan as he believes the place is the best to help cover all its clients in the market.At the moment, Beckhoff Taiwan has around 19 employees with six of them being engineers and five salespeople. Apart from their own sales team, the company is mainly working with one distributor, which had partnership with Beckhoff Automation long before the branch office was established in Taiwan. The distributor has a total of five sales offices throughout the major cities of Taiwan.Beckhoff Taiwan has also achieved many successful cases during its operation since 2018. It has partnered with Shieh Yih Machinery Industry (Seyi), one of the major servo press machine builders in Taiwan. In one of its machines, the company used Beckhoff's CX5140 embedded PC with a 15-inch Control Panel CP6902, supporting EtherCAT with TwinSAFE terminals within the same fieldbus. It has also acquired Beckhoff Automation's TwinCAT licenses that cover the HMI and TwinSAFE for the machine.Since Seyi's machine requires huge servo model and drive that run up to 165KW, which is beyond Beckhoff's current portfolio, the company has sought a third-party servo machine that is running on EtherCAT to fulfill client's demand.EtherCAT is one of the major inventions Beckhoff introduced to the market in 2003 and is the abbreviation for Ethernet for Control Automation Technology. It is based on standard Ethernet technology, but with intelligence, which makes it perfect for performing machine I/O. It is also widely recognized by worldwide IPC and machinery communities.Beckhoff Taiwan also assisted Seyi in conquering many technical challenges such as deploying more sensors on its production lines to collect data for analysis, improving performance of its machines to meet safety standards and making its platform compatible with worldwide standard to satisfy clients in Europe, the US and Japan.However, Beckhoff Taiwan itself still faces many challenges in the market. When the company first started in the market in 2018, the brand awareness of Beckhoff Automation was not very high in Taiwan's automation machine market, which has been dominated by Japanese and local brands.To break through, the company decided to invest primarily in marketing in order to create differentiation from its competitors. Another key factor that slows down the company's expansion in Taiwan is that most automation users in Taiwan are more familiar with the PLC platform and it will require some time for them to learn more about Beckhoff Automation's PC-based control systems.Therefore, Beckhoff Taiwan has been hosting bi-weekly TwinCAT workshops for local engineers and customers and is now seeing more of them turning to embrace TwinCAT thanks to the technology's advantages and benefits.Pricing is another key challenge Beckhoff Taiwan is facing at the moment. Many Taiwanese and Japanese IPC players in Taiwan are usually offering rather competitive pricing for their products as compared to European players in the industry.The machine building clients that procure cheap IPC solutions are often those who wish to compete against competitors in China who offer extremely cheap products, but these clients' cost cutting would usually turn out to erode their own profitability instead in the long term with their prices still being outmatched by the Chinese competitors.For Beckhoff Taiwan, helping these clients to advance from competing in the low-end sector to the midrange and high-end ones is one of the key tasks. Since the proportion of Taiwanese machine builders who primarily focus on the high-end sector is still rather low, this means that the company still has a lot of room for growth.The method is also how Beckhoff Automation was able to gradually grow its share in Germany's automation IPC industry. With Beckhoff Automation's technology breakthrough, the company believes its clients will choose to stay and continue to grow along with Beckhoff Automation.Beckhoff Automation's technologies and innovationsBeckhoff Automation's various technologies can assist Taiwanese machine builders to accomplish their automation demand. Many companies have already joined EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) to use EtherCAT, which has released up to 1Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s, up from the standard 100Mbit/s, for their machines.Meanwhile, Beckhoff Automation is also offering many types of motors such as rotary and linear ones. A few of the innovations Beckhoff Automation has introduced are the XTS transport system (2012) and the XPlanar (2018) planar motion system with stationary coils and moving magnets. The XPlanar is a new way to perform intellectual conveyor functionality inside a machine as the system can control each mover individually by controlling the magnetic fields, which are generated by the stationary coils.Users can perform interesting moving patterns with the technology that can be applied to food and drug packaging. Beckhoff Automation will also demonstrate the system at an upcoming show to present its leadership in automation innovations.For Taiwan's semiconductor industry, EtherCAT has already become the standard communication terminal for the industry and the XPlanar will also be a perfect solution for semiconductor manufacturing because of dust-free requirement.Beckhoff MX-System for control cabinet-free automationPhylex Ong, managing director of Beckhoff Automation Taiwan

DIGITIMES Research report shows that Taiwan's ICT industry development has shifted from focusing on hardware to hardware/software integration models. The industry is combining big data analysis and AI applications in public IoT to facilitate the development of smart city management. Tools such as IoT, AI, cloud computing, and communications technologies are efficiently integrated with urban infrastructure to ultimately produce economic benefits and improve quality of life.It is estimated that the business opportunities of smart cities will reach US$2.6 trillion in 2025, mainly in the Asia Pacific region. This includes sectors such as smart poles, building, parking, monitor, government, transportation, fire protection, water conservancy and WITMED. Smart cities, with a massive business potential, will become the future momentum!DIGITIMES will have Ayesha Khanna, co-founder and CEO of Addo, to share her observation of new smart city applications as well as how technologies can improve people's life and government efficiency on July 21 smart city webinar.In a pre-event interview that asked about Taiwan's role in the smart city market, Khanna pointed out that Taiwan's expertise in semiconductor and hardware is important to smart cities' development as more data is being used to improve AI systems, resulting in rising demand for stronger infrastructure and hardware with next-generation AI semiconductors.Khanna believes that whether it is AI, robots, 3D printing, Internet of Things (IoT) or 5G, smart city's development should not start purely with technologies but the idea of assisting people to solve their problems or become the aspirational goal for citizens.When people want to have better energy and waste management in their city, designers can create an AI solution for monitoring energy usage that can turn streetlights on and off with a built-in smart lighting system. They can also build a centralized trash collection mechanism with sensors and have robots powered by AI to collect waste all around the neighborhoods to reduce traffic and road congestions.It is also important to collect and integrate publicly available data and data from the ecosystem's private firms to form a system. By combining data of taxi companies and traffic light operation, it reduces people's waiting time for taxies, while traffic congestion can also be significantly lowered with the system's assistance in rerouting or changing the traffic lights.Nowadays, because of the pandemic, the number of hospital visits via online meeting software or telemedicine services has increased dramatically as people find it more convenient and efficient. The technologies used by medical care system are also making improvements with some designers beginning to adopt biometric sensors onto the terminals for the machines to collect more patients' data, giving doctors more information to make intelligent diagnosis, such as handheld ultrasound products that can be connected via smartphones for patients to check on themselves via AI or by medical staff nearby and then send results to their doctors.Technologies for remote medical care are a key area that many IT companies have devoted their R&D effort to. Ambulances built with remote medical care system can connect doctors with ambulances care assistants for them to do checkups while transporting patents to the hospital. The doctors can also make an examination over patients' injuries via a head-mounted display (HMD) to save time.However, all these innovations still rely on 5G to form connections. The technology allows devices to communicate with each other with its fast transmission speed and has brought a revolution to the manufacturing industry and factories. In Singapore, a lot of investments are being made for deploying 5G infrastructure throughout the city. This is also the case for many other countries including the US.As smart systems are adopting more sensors to enhance their data collection ability, 5G's commercialization has become the key to unlock the potential of IoT. With telecom carriers worldwide keenly expanding their 5G infrastructure, Khanna is optimistic about the birth of more new smart systems and the rapid development of smart cities worldwide soon.In the end, the future of smart city will not be operated by one large central AI, but multiple small ones. Issues within smart cities' key sectors such as healthcare, energy and education will continue to be handled by government departments or public sector companies with them using AIs to optimize and create innovations for their services, Khanna said.Join DIGITIMES Asia smart city webinar in discovering the digital transformation of smart cities, find out how to build a smart city, and about the applications and connected solutions that drive city extensive improvements, creating better quality of life for residents and business opportunities for enterprises.For more webinar information, please visit https://reurl.cc/zZdEM0DIGITIMES Asia smart city webinar will start on 7/21

OwlTing, a Taiwan-based startup engaged in blockchain applications, aims to increase business by 50-100 times from the current level in 5-7 years, with new FinTech services to be the major driving force, according to company founder and CEO Darren Wang.OwlTing has developed solutions for own business operation: OwlNest, a hotel management platform; OwlTing Blochchain Services that helps enterprises optimize operations; OwlTing Market, an e-commerce platform for promoting Taiwanese fruits and organic foods in the international market; OwlTing Experience, a search engine for exploring various tourism itineraries around the world; OwlJourney, a one-stop travel service platform for tourists to book hotels; OwlStay that provides tourists with story-like in-depth information about hotels and consulting services for hospitality operators; and OwlNews, a news hub featuring transparency and trust in news.Wang told Digitimes in a recent interview that OwlNest capitalizes on bloackchain-based immutability of data to avoid duplication of data entries, preventing overbooking of hotel rooms, and such a system can also be used in airline operators' management for flight ticket.He said that OwlTing's business planning is comprehensive, building up brand reputation by virtue of ecosystems."I like to make deep insight into different industries to mine for potential demand, find trends of development for figuring out new business models. For example, OwlTing fuses many aspects of tourism industry into its business operation, including homestay facilities, hotels, in-depth tourism itineraries, hotel booking and management," said Wang.In the future, OwlTing aims to provide a blockchain-based architecture for using IoT sensing in FinTech services, he said.Many companies or individuals engaged in blockchain are motivated by the opportunity of making quick money via trading virtual currencies, and this has no real contribution to the world, said Wang. OwlTing has been developing a global payment platform across e-commerce platforms for e-commerce transactions, and will launch the platform later in 2021, he said, adding the platform is expected to become a major source of business growth for OwlTing.Wang has also invested in others' blockchain startup businesses."The success of startup businesses hinges on personal characteristics of their founders. Many venture capital firms, banks and high-tech enterprises in Taiwan are unwilling to invest in blockchain startups because they think that blockchain businesses are difficult to make money," Wang said. "But I have invested in several blockchain startup businesses and some of them are going well such as MaiCoin and CoolBitX."OwlTing founder and CEO Darren WangPhoto: Sammi Huang, Digitimes, May 2021

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 has increased the demands for robots and edge computing, and the tasks are becoming more and more complex. Force sensors are critical to preventing the machines from breaking. Toronto-based startup ForceN has developed customizable force sensors that are thin and flexible, and do not require design change on machines to accommodate them.Robert Brooks, CEO of ForceN, told Digitimes in a recent interview that his team aims to revolutionize the third wave of robotics by making the best sensors and the easiest sensors to integrate in the world. The Canadian startup company's vice president of engineering Albert Chen was also at the interview.Q: Could you introduce ForceN, the core team and why you decided to create this company?Brooks: My background is in mechanical engineering. I did my PhD at the University of Toronto. I did my thesis on what the next generation of robots would look like from a sensing and actuation standpoint. Before I did my PhD in sensors and actuators, I had extensive experiences working across the robotic automation industry. My first job was in a particle-physics facility, designing sensors. After that, I had worked in steel and manufacturing industry implementing the early forms of mobile robotics. Finally, I worked in manufacturing robotics for pharmaceuticals before specializing in surgical robotics.I have a broad knowledge of the industry, and with my background as a PhD, I noticed one of the things we are missing out on robotics: Right now, robot arms typically operate in cells or in cages. These systems are designed to do the exact same movements repeatedly.We are rapidly manufacturing different types of products; we are manipulating and moving these products faster than ever. We can design products in a much shorter period of time, so we need robots that can work much more flexibly and outside of cages.Enter the first generation cobots (collaborative robots). The cobots need to get a lot more intelligent and a lot more sensing capability. So ForceN was created as a way of creating robust, multi-point, multi-dimensional touch-sensing for this third wave of robotics. That's where the "n" in ForceN comes from. It means n dimensions of force, or n points of forces.Our VP of engineering, Albert Chen, is our expert of sensors.Chen: I was born in Taiwan but I spent the latter half of my education in Canada. My PhD was in MEM sensors: I specialize in designing MEM transducers. To manufacture them, I worked in a cleanroom for three years. The latter part of my PhD was figuring out how to integrate sensors in a smart way. You can design a very accurate and sensitive sensor, but if you don't design it to interact with the system in an elegant way, you would not maximize its capability. At ForceN, one of the things we place a significant amount of effort into is packaging these ForceN sensors into a compact form-factor and optimize its sensitivity and robustness.We design it in such a way that our customers find simple to integrate into their systems. So, we work with the customers very intimately, to make sure our sensors would not break, and are incredibly easy to install, and easy to use.So it's not just the sensor design; we put a lot of efforts into edge computing, as well as user experience.Brooks: (Showing a sensor) This is the sensor we talked about. It is incredibly thin and flexible. It is glued to the surface, and it has multiple sensing points in it. That is why it gives you multi-point, multi-dimensional touch. Albert has been putting a huge amount of effort into making this film mass-manufacturable and easy to install. And then we have a very high-density electronic module. This module does all the edge computing.You can actually plug a cable and connect it to a computer, and you can get an incredibly clean, high sensitivity force data. Our goal is to bring human-level sensitivity, dexterity, and robustness to the next generation of robotics.We were founded in December 2015. In the first year and a half, it was only R&D. With three more people coming in this year, our team will consist of 12 people, pretty much all working on engineering at this point. We are scaling up for production now. In house, we are able to manufacture up to 50 robotic sensors a month. Then we have manufacturing partners who are able to manufacturer up to 1,000 units a month.We work with new customers on proof of concept, which would be between 1-10 units. And once they are satisfied, we usually make a pre-production prototype, that being between 10-50 units. And from there, we move into production through our manufacturer partners. We are at the early production stage now, working with 18 major customers.So we build quite a bit of a system at this point, including surgery robotics, logistics, industrial robotics, and robots solving Covid-19 issues.Chen: I would also like to emphasize that more than half of those customers are leading companies in their field, definitely a few Fortune 500 companies.Q: Besides those verticals that you are working with your customers, are there other verticals that also have potential for your technology to apply?Brooks: A couple of areas we think would be interesting. We do manufacturing and surgical robotics. Pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical device manufacturing, and even food production are the areas that our technology could be applied to. Because they care about biocompatible and safety to the point you could use share a lot of similarity with surgical instrument. There are robotic surgical instruments with our technology installed on it but we also make robots that handle anything from optics and boxes. So it makes sense that we will go after those markets, especially those which rely on automation. That is becoming very popular. The other one area we are working on is the human-machine interface (HMI). Most of the time when we use our robots to interact with the outside world, we usually use it as a control device. Albert is now developing a technology that can turn a solid plate of stainless steel into a HMI. It is multi-point, multi-dimensional; you can create something that acts like a joystick or dial, or treadpad. But that is a solid piece of metal, so you can put it in a very harsh environment such as under water, you can even operate it wearing gloves. Or you can put it in a very clean environment, for use of, say, nuclear or semiconductor wafers, or medical device manufacturing. They are the same size as the business card, you can take it to a conference and show it to the people. They make wonderful development kits.Chen: The important thing to know is that engineers in the automation field require force sensors, but the machines are already built. They don't want a force sensor that is chunky or require design change on their machine just to accommodate the force sensor.Whereas we come in and say, our module is incredibly small, and our force sensor is a film. We can put it on your robotic finger, or robotic arm. Sometimes it doesn't even need to look like a robot, such as a surgical tool. Your form doesn't need to change. We can put on the film for you, so you can retrofit and take a technological leap from what you currently have. Just the fact that it is so small and so thin, our customers love it, because it doesn't have any footprint on what they have.Q: What you just showed me is a strip, so you can actually make it into a film or a plane?Brooks: Yes we can laser cut it into any kind of shape, size, profile, or cut-out. We can put in any number of sensing points and any number of sensing dimensions into a single film.Q: What are the possible areas you can collaborate with Taiwanese companies?Brooks: We pride ourselves by making the best sensors in the world. We typically don't make the end product. So we look forward to working with companies which will benefit from integrating force and torque sensing. We are looking for the innovators in end equipment, or OEMs. And we are looking for applications which will benefit from this force-sensing technology.Chen: In Taiwan there are many great contract manufacturers. We work with many of their customers, especially many high-tech medical equipment companies: they do a lot of R&D, and then send it to Taiwan. If Taiwan is already using tons of force sensors, and they try to integrate, we can definitely try to be part of that supply chain.We can do anything the other force-sensor companies can do, but we only takes up 1/10 of the space.There are also a lot of robots in Taiwan. Typically, companies which use a lot of robots would use a lot of sensors. And they constantly need to detect force, because if the robot experience too much force, it will break. So you really want to be there to stop things like that from happening.The trend is, those robots are pushed to work harder and harder. There will be conditions where those robotic arms need different types of force equipment. We would be a good fit, being capable of being customized to any shape.Brooks: Besides equipment manufacturers, we are also looking for system integrators and specialty manufacturers. You can get one from us customized for just your application, and don't need to buy the ones off from shelve. That will get the sensor much lighter, and much smaller. Which means your robot can move faster, so you will be able to get much more working volume for the robots.Lastly, our film allows us to separate the sensing element from the protection element. For typical sensors, your protection element is your sensing element. So if your robot clashes for some reason, that affects the life of your sensor. Typically, your overload is based on your sensing range. So if you sense 10kg, and your overload 100%, your device will break at 20kg. By separating them, we build a very strong overload element for very sensitive sensor, such as 1 kg range but 50 kg overload with our technology.This would be really useful if you have fine tasks. But if you still work with people it is easy to break the sensor. We've done this a lot with surgical robotic series, but that can be applied across the industries.The flexibility of the film, the size, and weight savings are our strength. We can also make the integration of the system incredibly robust.Chen: We are getting to make small volumes really quick at really high quality. But at larger quantities, everywhere we looked, it seems to point to Taiwan. We would be looking for contract manufacturing partners in Taiwan to help scale up our production. I will be doing factory tours when I go back to Taiwan.We need to manufacture the film, it is the more difficult one. The sensors are not made on silicon wafer, but flexible substrates. This is really difficult to make the film into a sub-1% accuracy sensor that will last decades. That's where we need some Taiwanese manufacturing partners to help build giant industrial rolls of this film.Q: So you would need companies with specialty in special materials, precision manufacturing, and semiconductor companies to work out a solution?Chen: Yes. The size of our electronic module is the same as my fingernail. The competitor module is the size of a wallet. That little chip makes a huge difference. It means saving a robotic control engineer maybe six months of development work. Robert spent blood, sweat and tears on that board, to make all this possible.Q: Are there any plans for expansion or fund-raising? What is your status as a startup?Brooks: We are considered pre-A. We finished our seed round with a total of CAD2.25 million. Canada also has quite a few grant programs, so we are well-funded. Our goal is to work with, hopefully, every major robotic manufacturer in the world, using our technology. We want to create a robotic sensing revolution, especially with the advent of AI coming along. Edge-computing is the muscle memory to artificial intelligence. For example, once you learned to ride a bicycle, you remember that for the rest of your life, and that's muscle memory. That's what we do, enabling the organic edge computing.We have already sold our system to many manufacturers in the US and in Europe. But two thirds of the world's robots are operating in Asia. We already have one customer in Taiwan and two customers in Japan. And we will continue to expand our business in Asia. Early next year, we will raise our series A. We will continue to grow our technical team to make the best sensors in the world, and the easiest sensors to integrate in the world.Robert Brooks, CEO of ForceNAlbert Chen, VP of engineering at ForceNA ForceN sensor on a flexible stripPhotos: Company

AppWorks, the largest venture capital (VC) firm in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, manages three VC funds with a total asset of US$212 million after 10 years of efforts. Not only has the firm reached profitability, but it has also incubated an accumulated total of 56 startups, including four successful IPOs, one centicorn (worth over US$100 billion), one decacorn (worth over US$10 billion), one unicorn and six centaurs (worth over US$100 million). The entire ecosystem is made up of 400 active startups reaching an estimated total worth exceeding US$10 billion, employing 17,000 professionals and generating annual revenue of US$8 billion.During a recent the interview by Digitimes, AppWorks founder, chairman and partner Jamie Lin shed light on the firm's goal for the next decade and shared his view on future trends.Q: Will AppWorks engage in more collaborations with corporate venture capital (CVC)?A: When starting Fund 1, we received investments from four leading corporations. Fund 2 had investments from nine corporations. The number went up to about 12 or 13 for Fund 3. We have been working with CVC every step of the way. It's just that every CVC may have different objectives when they fund our projects. Some are purely after financial returns while the others have strategic considerations. AppWorks has always made it clear to our CVC partners that we bring double values. First and foremost, we create financial returns. Our net annualized rate of return has maintained around 26% since Fund 2, which is in the upper 10% among global VC firms. Fund 3, of which the fundraising concluded at the end of March, received overwhelming response, reaching a final close of US$150 million, far exceeding the target of US$100 million.Fund 3 has exceeded Fund 2 by a wide margin while standing a good chance of being among the world's largest 10% VC funds. We benefit our shareholders with ROI that outperforms funds with a similar focus. More than that, we operate a large ecosystem with a wealth of promising startups. Our shareholders can choose to invest in our startups that align with their strategic goals. I would like to emphasize that we run a two-way platform, serving both CVC and startups. Our startups need to build partnerships with corporations. AppWorks creates a win-win situation through our VC operations and looks to broaden and strengthen the business model going forward.Q: You have mentioned that your next 10-year goal is to create more AppWorks and grow the VC ecosystem. How do you expect to achieve the goal?A: For the upcoming decade, first of all, we expect to ramp up the number of active startups in our ecosystem to 1,000. Then, we look forward to growing their total estimated worth to US$100 billion and their total employees to 50,000. That is, we will be creating that many jobs. Furthermore, we hope to foster 5,000 graduates from AppWorks School (the number now stands at 300). Another goal is to grow Taiwan's VC ecosystem and expediate its growth.AppWorks has completed fundraising for Fund 3. Fund 2 and Fund 3 have performed brilliantly, generating handsome returns for investors while enabling startup teams to enjoy good income. We also provide our employees with big bonuses. The entire ecosystem has created plenty of job opportunities and shots at success for young people and entrepreneurs in Taiwan. We even started a free school with our surplus funds, which has helped many people learn new skills and successfully transition to new jobs. We have accomplished so much and brought tremendous values to society without any use of social capital. All the stakeholders in the ecosystem are able to reap the benefits of the multi-win-win situation. If there's not just one AppWorks in Taiwan but 10, the energy they'll be able to create will considerably fuel Taiwan's growth.AppWorks focuses on "ABS": AI, blockchain and Southeast Asia. Going into the next decade, we hope to build more firms like AppWorks targeting other fields. Of course, we need to speed up our own growth as well. When we are able to successfully grow more new ecosystems, we will be able to multiply the positive result, so we need to also expand horizontally.Q: What fields do you think are worth investing in?A: For example, Foodland Ventures is one of our incubators in the food technology VC category. It was founded by Agnes Wang, an AppWorks alumnus, and a partner in the food sector. We invest in some VC firms in Southeast Asia. Foodland Ventures is our first project in Taiwan. We look forward to making more VC investments in Taiwan.We are also helping Cornerstone Ventures without making financial investment. The VC was jointly established by Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) and PCHome. Hung-Tze Jan, PCHome founder and chairman, asked us to recommend fund managers, so we gave Cornerstone two of AppWorks' seasoned managers - Tzu-pu Lin and Min-Jun Jiang. The two high-caliber professionals have made great success operating Cornerstone. AppWorks was considering making investment into Cornerstone but decided against it because some Cornerstone shareholders had concerns over my role as Taiwan Mobile's president.We hope to see 10 or even 20 premium-quality VC funds in Taiwan over the next 10 years. This will help reinvigorate the VC sector and expediate growth.Q: AppWorks focuses on ABS with plenty of success stories. Could you share your views on the future trends of blockchain?A: I started to watch blockchain development in 2013 and examine the potential effect of cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance platforms on the human society. Cryptocurrencies at that time were fungible tokens, meaning the coins were identical and worth the same. The concept of non-fungible tokens (NFT) began to emerge in the world of blockchain in 2017 with an aim to reflect the fact that not every token is of the same value in the society.For example, limited edition collectible coins of unique serial numbers may have special value and meaning to collectors. In fact, there are many types of assets that may take the same shape or form but still have slight differences. If we are to digitize these NFTs or their ownership, existing fungible tokens like Bitcoin and Ether will not serve the purpose. CryptoKitties is the pioneering NFT application in gaming. We think the NFT concept captures a large portion of how the human society operates so we are very optimistic about its development.Dapper Labs, the developer of CryptoKitties, wanted to focus on NFT but later found the Ethereum blockchain could not handle massive NFT transactions occurring instantly, so it began to develop its own Flowchain. We came into contact with Dapper Labs in 2017, when Bitcoin experienced a surge followed by a crash by the end of the year. No one really wanted to invest in blockchain at the time. We, on the contrary, have always had high hopes for blockchain and saw the potential of Dapper Labs, whose CTO was the one that published the NFT white paper on Ethereum. In view of CryptoKitties being the first killer NFT application and the development of Flowchain, we made two rounds of investment into Dapper Labs, totaling US$2.5 million.I experienced the dot-com bubble first-hand. Soon after I started my own business in 1999, the first bubble burst. Then in 2007-2008, I saw the second market crash. A lot of companies didn't survive the two bubble bursts. In contrast, those providing fundamental applications and services that get to the root of people's problems enjoy growing adoption. This has never changed and will never change. The same is true for blockchain. Even though asset prices fluctuate, applications and use scenarios have been expanding since 2008. Blockchain is increasingly used to solve more and more problems. This trend will continue going forward.Q: Looking ahead, what emerging opportunities do you envision? What efforts does Taiwan need to make and what partnerships should Taiwan engage in to capture such opportunities?A: Established five years ago, AppWorks School may seem like a side project but we put our heart into it because it offers development opportunities for young people. Changes in school education lag behind rapid advances in today's world. Traditional school systems can no longer keep up with current needs. AppWorks School is aimed at bringing the gap closer by allowing young people to learn practical skills for free and enabling them to make positive contributions and realize their dreams.Looking ahead, I see Taiwan's aging and shrinking population being a major concern. Despite the nationwide effort to encourage childbearing, it is not a real solution but a slow remedy. Children born today will not be able to work until they are about 20 years old. Immigration is the answer. The US is strong because it takes in first-rate talent from all over the world. At least before Donald Trump was elected president, the US did not turn away foreign talent.Taiwan may not be able to compete with the US for global talent but if we narrow the scope to Greater Southeast Asia, whch includes Taiwan, then Taiwan is in a good position to attract talent in this region. Taiwan is a leader of the pack in this region, and it offers good education. Many people would prefer living in Taiwan.If we are willing to recruit students from countries in Southeast Asia to attend college or graduate school, we can attract outstanding talent. Some of them may stay after completing their study. A top priority for Taiwan now is to turn our cost-effective higher education system into an attraction that wins over premium talent in ASEAN countries and an engine that drives future economic growth.ASEAN countries face a rising China together. If Taiwan can form an alliance with them and build up connections, Taiwan can have more leverage. By establishing closer ties with Southeast Asia, Taiwan has a way to mitigate the impact of population aging and decline on productivity and the threat to regional peace. This should be a goal that Taiwan needs to make effort toward for the upcoming decade. The next 10 years will be a window of opportunity that Taiwan must seize. There will be no second chance if we let it pass.This is also the reason why I set up the NTU-Jamie Lin-Southeast Asia Bursary. I hope more people will join this effort and build up the energy. From AppWorks' experience, we have learned that if we do the right thing and work toward the goal one step at a time, over time we'll start a positive cycle. What we have accomplished through our years of efforts is a perfect example.AppWorks founder, chairman and partner Jamie LinPhoto: Liu Kuo-tung, special to Digitimes, April 2021

Massive demand for rapid, secure, and stable transmission of data and information in the age of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 is attracting solution providers to seek opportunities in the manufacturing space. Solace, a middleware solution provider founded in 2001 in Ottawa, Canada, also has its eyes set on the manufacturing sector in Taiwan, and is expanding its business in the market.Solace is well established as a leader in event-streaming technology, with partners in a wide variety of industries including the London Stock Exchange, SAP, Airtel, NASA and more. Its services can also help power the smart manufacturing processes of "event-driven" enterprises, according to the company, which is seeking to expand its presence in Taiwan with assistance from the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei (CTOC).Mathew Tam, Solace's VP of Taiwan and China region, explained to Digitimes that an "event" can be anything that happens within and to an enterprise, be it customer requests, inventory updates or sensor readings. An event broker, such as Solace's PubSub+ platform, facilitates the flow of real-time data between applications, microservices, and connected devices by pushing information to where it needs to go.But the company's approach differs from competitors'. "Cisco built the hardware of transmission to disrupt the way that engineers build routers on software and how they send information from one system to another," Tam explained. "We want to raise the standard in event streaming, with the aim of enabling people to connect more easily and to exchange information over the application level."Solace's PubSub+ platform can help modernize the manufacturing sector by integrating IT and OT across plants, data centers, clouds and geographies. This sets the foundation for real-time data flow between devices, buildings, assembly lines, fleets, containers and more. PubSub+ can also help transportation and logistics service providers monitor and manage assets on the move, weathering through the unpredictability of traffic and weather.PubSub+ enables event-driven architectures, which is a way of building enterprise IT systems that lets loosely coupled applications and microservices produce and consume events.Solace's solution can also be used to create an "event mesh," which is an architecture layer composed of a network of event brokers that allows events from one application to be dynamically routed and received by another application, no matter where the applications are deployed. It helps to liberate data trapped in legacy applications and enable IT teams to innovate using best-of-breed technology."Solace can connect with almost any kind of device, be it a computer, a machine deployed in the public or private cloud in any part of the world, even in extra-terrestrial space. Situational awareness, real-time responsiveness, and informed decision-making are the key benefits that companies will stand to gain by partnering with Solace. They can also look to integrate suppliers, business partners, and customers in real-time," Tam said.He stressed that, regardless of the industry, Solace's PubSub+ platform enables real-time data flow between connected devices, IoT gateways and applications running in various clouds and data centers. "It can maintain continuous connections with millions of devices, intelligently filtering and routing information so that it is only sent to the applications and devices that need it to enable instant communication and interoperability," Tam said. "The scalability and flexibility of Solace's solution makes it the ideal messaging backbone for any IoT implementation use cases."Despite the fact there are various IoT standards, Tam emphasized that Solace supports almost all standards available in the market for the convenience of their customers.Data from the company's website claims it has a reliability of 99.999% for PubSub+ appliance pair services. It also says it serves 450 million connected citizens in India and delivers 28.4 million point-to-point messages per second with fan-out.Although Solace has been working with several banks and government agencies in Taiwan for years, it is eager to add customers from the semiconductor and electric vehicle (EV) industries to their portfolio. "We are well placed to work with Taiwanese partners to offer best-in-breed solutions for businesses in smart manufacturing, supply chain and logistics."As 5G facilitates high-speed data transmission in real time, cyber security would be essential for companies. "Solace helps customers send their data from one point to another. Think of us as a highway of sorts. The security side of things, relating to how information is encrypted, is decided by customers. We are happy to support our customers in their messaging goals regardless of which solution they use to comply with regulatory requirements," Tam said.Mathew Tam, Solace's VP of Taiwan and China regionPhoto: Company

Singapore is well-known for its services and finance sectors, but there is much more to the economy of the Southeast Asian country, which is keen on expanding its manufacturing and can be a gateway for Taiwanese firms looking to establish a foothold in the region.Yip Wei Kiat, Singapore's trade representative in Taipei, told Digitimes in a recent interview that his country is seeking to maintain its manufacturing at over 20% as a proportion of the country's GDP.In line with that goal, Singapore is looking to grow its manufacturing output by 50% over the next 10 years. Singapore is looking at manufacturing sectors, such as bioteh pharmaceuticals, that are capital intensive with highly automated production lines.Singapore is not only seeking to expand its own manfacturing sector, but also to play a bigger role in manufacturing in ASEAN, which, for its member states, is "one community" as far as economic develpment is concerned, according to Yip.Earlier this year, the country announced the formation of the Southeast Asia Manufacturing Alliance (SMA), a tripartite agreement between its Economic Development Board (EDB), Enterprise Singapore (ESG) and private sector partners to help manufacturers set up their operations in industrial parks in both Singapore and the region.Many Taiwanese companies have been keen on the setting up manufacturing plants in Southeast Asia - a move that has been accelerated by the US-China trade tensions.It may be too costly for manufacturers to set up plants in Singapore, but Ip thinks his country is in a good position to help."We can help Taiwanese companies to expand their presence in ASEAN," said Yip.He noted that Taiwanese companies looking to invest in ASEAN can leverage the network and experience that SMA offers, as a lot of Singaporean companies have a presence in other ASEAN countries and they know well the local cultures and ways of doing business - which would be a great help for Taiwanese investors.Singapore has maintained tight trade relationships with Taiwan over the years. Singapore is one of the few countries that have signed free trade agreements (FTA) with Taiwan, and bilateral trade has reached about US$50 billion, with electronics accounting for most of the exports from Singapore to Taiwan, many of whose IT firms have set up R&D and distribution hubs in the Southeast Asian country.Singapore may not be as strong as Taiwan in terms manufacturing in the IT manufacturing sector, but it does have a sizeable semiconductor industry. Taiwan-based pure-play foundry UMC has a fab in Singapore, and VIS not long ago took over a wafer fab from Globalfoundries there. And SSMC, a joint venture between TSMC and NXP, is just across the road from the UMC fab.Singapore will continue to develop its semiconductor industry though it has no intention to challenge Taiwan's leadership, according to Joshua Lim, EDB's regional director, Taiwan, who accompanied Yip during the interview.Lim said Singapore will focus on mature and special-purpose semiconductors, where shortages are most acute. Such semiconductor applications are focused on 5G high-frequency communications and power electronics required for electric vehicles (EV).Special chemicals such as plasticizers, UV absorbers, polypropylene for masks and isopropyl alcohol for disinfectants, and biotech pharmaceuticals are also industries that Singapore is promoting investment in because they are highly automated and capital intensive.At the end of 2020, the Singapore government announced a SGD25 billion (US$18.81 billion) research and innovation fund over the next five years - the Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2025 program, - which has focuses on various areas, such as heterogeneous integration of semiconductor packaging technologies, power electronics and specialty materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride.Yip said that Singapore hopes to have closer cooperation with Taiwan enterprises in innovation, R&D and technology upgrade, and is communicating with Taiwan to explore ways to cooperate in innovation and digital transformation in the post-epidemic era. Singapore's research institutions and universities have invested many resources in advanced manufacturing R&D and production innovation, and can be a strong partner for Taiwanese companies, he said.Lim added that the Singaporean government will do a lot of communication with the industry when making investments to collect feedback and proposals to ensure that the government's investments are in line with the industry's R&D and commercialization roadmap for the next five or 10 years.Taiwanese companies can also use Singapore as a test market for their products and services, as consumers in many Southeast Asian countries have a very positive and high opinion of Singapore's products and services, so if products sell well in Singapore, they often follow suit in other Southeast Asian markets, Lim said.Yip Wei Kiat, Singapore's trade representative in TaipeiJoshua Lim, regional director, Taiwan, for Singapore's Economic Development BoardPhotos: Liu Kuo-tai, special to Digitimes, March 2021

Fractus Antennas, formed by engineers who invented the technology allowing smartphone antennas to automatically switch between different bandwidth networks and launched mini-antennas for the Internet of Things (IoT) era, has recently rebranded itself as Ignion.Digitimes recently spoke with Ignion VP of innovation Carles Puente to learn about the new company's innovative product - Virutal Antenna - and growth potential in the IoT era.Q: Please give us a brief introduction to Ignion. When was it founded and how big is the team now?A: This company is actually a spin-off from a company called Fractus which we founded in 1999. Why have we decided to split the company into two independent entities? Because we had a new revolutionary technology, which will be applied on the Internet of Things in general, and that will be competing with that of Fractus once developed.In the former company, Fractus, I am one of the leading inventors of the previous technology, which is fractal-based antennas. This is why the name "Fractus." This company was founded on the grounds of fractal antenna technology. The technology was fast adopted by a vast majority of mobile phone and smartphone makers around the world. In the year 2000-2015 about 99% of mobile phones and smartphones featured our technology based on fractal antenna. For several reasons, Fractus decided to become a licensing company, licensing its technologies and patents to the entire industry, so that everyone could use this technology that we created. Fractus got licensing agreements with most of the cellphone makers worlwide, including for instance Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Blackberry, Sharp, Kyocera, ZTE and many other companies.In that company my team created another new technology called generically antennaless technology (i.e., wireless without antennas) and branded it as Virtual Antenna, which is completely unrelated to fractals and different from the previous generation. And it has many advantages. In order to launch the new technology, we need to have a product, so we decided to spin off this new business into a new independent company in 2015.The new company, originally named Fractus Antennas and now rebranded as Ignion, is the supplier of this new generation of virtual antenna chip components. Ignion owns the patent portfolio of virtual antenna technology and distributes and sells the new product for the IoT markets all around the world.On March 25 2021, the new company will be rebranded with the new name, Ignion. The meaning behind the name? The new name is related to physics of the new generation of the Virtual Antenna chips, which generically are called antenna boosters. Instead of radiating on their own, those tiny antenna boosters "ignite" the radiation from a ground metal layer on the printed circuit board of the wireless device. This way, these tiny chips transfer all the RF energy to the ground which effectively radiates as a much larger antenna, so that a little component ignites a powerful radiation process that enables connectivity for any IoT device and any frequency band and wireless protocol.We are rebranding our company because Virtual Antenna is a radical innovation unrelated to former fractal antennas and we need a new name that speaks for the innovative character and culture of the company as well. Also, we need a new brand that engages our ecosystem of partners and clients in the IoT market in this revolution we are making together. Ignion is here to let IoT solutions develop faster and easier with a technology that makes IoT engineering fast and simple in a traditional space, embedded antenna design, where technology was complex and slow to design.Q: Please tell us more about yourself and your team.A: I am a telecom engineer, I got my bachelors degree at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona. Then I went to the US and got my master's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I was awarded my PhD by doing a research in the field of fractal antennas back in 1999 again from UPC, where I have been teaching since 1994. We were also the ones to file the very first patent in the world on fractal antennas in May 1995, and went on to found our previous company in 1999. In essence, we are leaders of antenna research and have been developing antenna technologies and products for the wireless and mobile communications market over the past 20 years.We have about 35 people in this new company. And we also have offices in the US, China and India.Q: What differentiates your Virtual Antenna from other regular antenna module products?A: Our Virtual Antenna chips are unique and different from competitors in three aspects. First, they are 10 times smaller than conventional SMT antennas or the same multiband cellular performance. People would thought it is impossible to get down to this size, but we have proven that even from such a small size we obtain an efficient radiation performance, as much as needed for a wireless device. And the advantage of being so small is that a Virtual Antenna chip can fit inside almost any device, so no specific antenna design for each product is needed.We keep the component as small and simple as possible. We put all the intelligence on the circuit board by designing a clever electronic circuit, which is a bit like a filter, which will select the frequency bands to connect providing a great flexibility and freedom to designers.Secondly, they are frequency neutral: the frequency bands of operation are not predetermined by the chip antenna component but they are selected by the electronics engineer through a simple matching circuit. This means that a Virtual Atenna chip can be used virtually for everything: from 5G, celluar IoT to LoRa, Sigfox, but also WiFi-6E, GNSS and Bluetooth, to name a few examples. One antenna for all. One antenna for any band and for any device. While competitors need more than 100 references to cover the market, we cover everything with just seven flagship parts. Conventional antennas were fixed on certain frequencies; Virtual Antenna chips can be used for any frequency band.Traditional antennas are frequency-restricted to specific bandwidths. Our technology is completely different. We are frequency-neutral, meaning they are agnostic to frequencies. The circuits in the chip will select the matching band to be connected - that's quite unique.Finally, they are off-the-shelf: no need for any product customization. Antenna performance optimization is done for any band and for any device with a simple matching circuit. This is why antenna design becomes "electronics as usual." Any electronics engineer can learn easily how to embed an antenna without antenna design expertise.Q: In what ways do you shorten clients' time-to-market?A: We help clients save time and cost and increase the predictability of design cycle results. Design cycle becomes shorter and predictable because any iteration in the design is just a change on the matching circuit. This can be done in hours as opposed to weeks.First of all, design cycle becomes much shorter because the product is off-the-shelf: no need for creating a new antenna part every time, even for cellular. No need for prototyping, mechanical design, production tooling specific for a custom antenna.Secondly, design cycle becomes much shorter because there are less steps in the design process. It is just as easy as ABC: A - placing the antenna in the right place (as opposed to antenna design); B - designing the matching circuit; C - testing. Also, you can use the same component for versatile applications. That makes design and logistics much simpler.You don't need to make specific design for each device. It is cost effective and have economic scale in large volumes.Q: Your product portfolio caters to the needs of various applications markets, such as IoT and 5G. In your view, what is the most promising application in the next 5-10 years for your products?A: IoT is certainly a very high-growth area. This technology is booming, and it is difficult to highlight one vertical, because many of them need connectivity within a small device, and through multiple communications standards, such as multiple 5G bands, LTE, or multiple LoRa or Sigfox frequency bands.Applications such as smart home, smart meters, healthcare, or anything that need small antennas are also markets that we enjoy strong growth, but it is the multi-band applications market that we have a leadership position.Asset tracking is one market that our technology has been enjoying exponential growth. When you need to track assets that move around the world, no matter it's on your smart watch that you wear when you ride bikes in the mountain or medical device to track the patients, you need small component to deliver the connectivity for your device in different networks, using different standards and different frequency bands. This is exactly what our technology is doing to address the problem. It provides connectivity through a tiny component, that connects either way of those global communications standards with the same antenna. Also, with our technology we can make products where a single chip antenna uses multiple different radios for: a) connecting through cellular/LPWAN to the cloud; b) connecting to the GNSS satellite to get the position of the IoT device; c) connecting via Bluetooth or Wifi to a local computer or smartphone to easily configure and operate the IoT device. This is an ideal solution for trackers that need to combine cloud connectivity, geopositioning and short range wireless operation in a single device.Market analysts predict that there will be 25 billion IoT devices by 2025 all over the world, five billion of which will be cellular. New applications are developed to connect everything to the networks every day. So we believe the prediction by market analysts are in line with our expectation.Q: About your business model. Licensing IP can also be a very profitable business. Why did you decide to spin off and sell manufactured products instead? Do you have EMS partners to manufacture them for you?A: Yes we do. We are actually a fabless company. We have several partners in Asia to manufacture products as well as partners like Richardson RFPD or Digikey to distribute them all over the world for us. Our manufacturing technology is based on printed circuit board (PCB). So it is not dependent on any specific supplier nor sensitive to volatility of pricing or availability of raw materials.We are expecting a 100%+ growth this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Our technology is rapidly becoming a trend in IoT. Many manufacturers, OEMs, can use the modules which use our antenna to build a whole range of IoT products all over the world. Given the high CAGR in IOT, in the next 5 years some 20 billion new devices will be shipped, we expect to be able to capture a substantial market share in the off-the-shelf (OTS) internal antennas. And as with any dominant technology our Technology Partner Program provides attractive commercial and licensing options to drive market penetration whilst eliminating single source risks. So our go-to market in fact is a dual model. We sell Virtual Antennas to maintain customer relationships and meet their requirements, enabling us to keep driving antenna innovation as we have done for the past 20 years, whilst partners can complete their solution portfolio through our licensing programs.So far we have sold 25 million antenna chips since the founding of the company and we expect in 4-5 years, we would be selling at least 100 million antennas a year. And the actual market is much bigger than that. That is why we are exploring to license IP to partners who will supply Virtual Antenna compliant products to clients all around the world. We are foreseeing this as a dual model: we sell products under our brand name, because we want to be close to the market and maintain customer relationships to make sure that we keep up with innovation, but in terms of global reach, we are also ready to reach licensing agreements with other companies which would like to manufacture and supply similar products for the benefit of accelerating IoT deployment. Our goal is to contribute to a fast deployment of IoT worlwide with this technology.And in order to extend our global reach, and given the importance of the Asia-based OEMS, we very much welcome Taiwanese manufacturers and IoT module makers to establish partnerships with us.Q: Do you see any competitors in the market? And could you name some of your customers?A: Given the uniqueness of Virtual Antennas we see other suppliers more as partners than competitors, because this technology has huge potential to revolutionize the industry. We believe other component manufacturers would also like to get off-the-shelf antennas for multiple frequencies and applications. In that case, we offer attractive Technology Partner licensing options providing access to our technology for other antenna suppliers under reasonable and transparent conditions. So other companies can enter into agreements with us and supply Virtual Antenna-centric solutions to the market and thus help accelerate the deployment of 20 billion IoT edge devices over the next five years. And as this strategy is now starting to become a reality, we see competitors more as partners and it provides benefits for everyone.We already have shipped over 25 million solutions to clients in the tracking, smart metering and wearable markets, whereas more recently we see an uptake in Virtual Antenna use in gateways, medical and smart home segments. Another important aspect is the ever-changing wireless landscape, for example with the introduction of 5G and WiFi 6E, which is why we work closely with module makers such as Nordic Semiconductor, Sierra Wireless, Sequans and Cavli Wireless, or with unlicensed band focused partners such as Semtech and The Things Industry in the LoRa domain. For the first time, the antenna is embedded in many full-wireless IoT reference designs, because our antenna chips are so small that they fit in almost every edge device and more importantly they are compatible with all wireless protocols. The module makers want to provide a complete wireless solution to their customers, our technology allows them to do that as simple and as fast as possible.Q: Any plans for this year? Fund raising or expansion?A: We are not in need of external funding resources so far, despite growing 100% each year.At this point in time our focus indeed is on expansion and growing our topline revenue, which explains why we are growing the team rapidly. In the meantime, we have further technology extensions on our roadmap to make Virtual Antennas more easy to use than any other antenna and penetrate new domains such as energy harvesting, machine learning and AI. Depending on the speed at which we can capture a substantial market share and penetrate new markets new funding might be required, and certainly an IPO is one of the options we do not exclude.Ignion VP of innovation Carles PuentePhoto: Company