High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is a graphic memory with high bandwidth. Its main function is to support High-Performance Computing (HPC) or high-speed parallel computing with CPU/GPU in Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing.
The semiconductor industry is the lifeblood of South Korea, a country that heavily depends on its exports. In 2023, South Korea exported US$131 billion of semiconductors and imported US$106 billion, raking in US$25 billion in trade surplus. For Taiwan, when there is a trade deficit, it only amounts to a fraction of its foreign reserve, but that would be a heavy burden to South Korea, which is already shouldering US$663.6 billion in foreign debt.
Since the turn of the century in the year 2000, the changes brought to the world by digital technology and the Internet can be roughly categorized into four phases. The first phase was the post-dot-com bubble era in the early 2000s, and the leading vendors of this era were Nokia and Cisco, which provided networking equipment.
AI smartphones are defined as smartphones that can run Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) functions offline. Many may be curious, how will the first batch of AI smartphones differentiate themselves from current ones?
Generative AI will inevitably move away from cloud services, which used to rely heavily on data centers and leave some private and real-time information to be processed on "edge" devices.
The internet giants are building comprehensive ecosystems, in which Generative AI (GenAI) plays a pivotal role. "From cloud to the edge" will be an inevitable trend.
To maintain its leading position in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Nvidia has mastered its CUDA software, constantly emphasized its affiliation with Taiwan and TSMC, and has even secured strong connections with the server supply chain in practice.
From Nvidia and Microsft to Taiwan's TSMC, Quanta, Wistron, and Foxconn, companies are constantly exploring the future of their businesses with the theme of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In 2000, Bill Gates visited Taiwan for the World Congress of Information Technology (WCIT), and in 2009, Steve Ballmer, the second president of Microsoft, visited Taiwan only for one day. These were the only two times that the CEOs of Microsoft visited Taiwan.
Electronic devices account for over 40% of Taiwan's exports, but semiconductor products are shipped through air freight. Meanwhile, notebook PC and smartphone production lines have migrated to other regions, but are still highly dependent on chips produced in Taiwan. Thus the destinations of semiconductor exports may gradually shift to different locations.
The shipping industry, passenger or cargo, has slowly recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels. It is worth noting that since air cargo capacities were booked up by e-commerce demand, failing to make appropriate adjustments in shipping components by air for regional production schedules may result in a breaking point in the supply chain.
The winners before the creation of cell phones were Cisco and telecom service companies such as Nokia and Ericsson. However, with the launch of the iPhone in 2007, the cell phone evolved from being a traditional one-way messaging tool to a carrier that could upload and download data, and the world took a giant leap forward with the transmission of large amounts of data.
Looking at the world's total GDP, which has increased 25 times over the past 70 years, we can also look at Taiwan's experience and find a few turning points in time to explore in detail the key factors that drove the growth.
