Following a business re-organization in the second half of 2017, Gigabyte Technology is now looking to unifying all its products under the Aorus gaming brand, seeking to bring a consistent user experience, according to Gigabyte's Sales and Marketing Center vice president, Eddie Lin.To expand Aorus' penetration, Gigabyte also recently entered several new component and product business segments and will release a series of devices for each of them to answer customers' demand. Digitimes recently had a chance to chat with Lin about the company's operation, the company's plans for the gaming businesses, and the cryptocurrency business opportunity.Q: What is the latest status of Gigabyte's Aorus gaming product lineup?A: Although Gigabyte has just gone through a business re-organization, the company actually has not changed much in terms of the basic business structure. Most of the changes are in the business culture.In the past, Gigabyte's product development strategy focused on individual projects: we would complete one project before moving on to the next. We identified features and technologies our gaming customers would want and implemented them into our devices.Now, the new strategy is to think how our products can echo one another all under our Aorus gaming brand. For example, our motherboards, graphics cards, mice and keyboards should all have a unified industrial design to build up the feel they belong to the same series, and the same concept also applies to our software user interfaces and user experience.Most importantly, this feel of a unified series should also echo what our customers are seeking in their gaming products. Simply put, we want to let our customers feel that their positive experiences using Gigabyte's products are consistent, so whatever values they are seeking in any of Gigabyte's devices can also be found in any of our other products.Since Gigabyte has already merged the desktop and all its component businesses into a unified gaming business group, we expect the process of synchronizing our product lines to be much easier than before.For Aorus, in addition to our existing product lines including notebooks, motherboards, graphics cards, keyboards, mice and other peripherals, we have expanded the brand's product portfolio to include new devices such as monitors, solid state drives (SSD) and DRAM.As for the desktop, Gigabyte continues focusing on developing its Brix series mini-PCs.Q: What are the company's goals for Aorus gaming products in 2018?A: The year 2017 was the beginning year of our Aorus gaming brand and for the second year, Gigabyte's main targets are to further refine the series by listening to and understanding the needs of our customers; to work with the customers to enrich the gaming ecosystem; and to expand the series both horizontally and vertically.For the vertical expansion, we have been strengthening our marketing resources and approaches to improve related contents and materials. We also have created a mascot to represent the Aorus spirit.For the horizontal expansion, cultivating deeper into each region is Gigabyte's main focus. For example, the company has opened several Gigabyte flagship stores in China for demonstrating and selling Gigabyte's hardware. We are also partnering with Internet cafes in China, decorating them with Aorus themes as a form of promotion.Meanwhile, Gigabyte continues taking aggressive approaches to supporting e-sport events and is scheduled to host Aorus Open PUBG Tournament 2018 in June and July with gaming competitions to take place in several major regions including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, the US and France.The company is also increasing its resources for sponsoring e-sport activities in 2018. Gigabyte sponsored a total of nine major gaming events in 2017 and the number will rise to 12 this year.In addition to sponsorships for downstream e-sport players, Gigabyte also has new partnerships with Intel and Nvidia. Gigabyte is currently working with Intel to push Core i+ series motherboards that natively support Optane Memory. These motherboards all come with 32GB of Optane Memory for enhanced CPU performance.Customers will also continue seeing Gigabyte's exclusive technologies including RGB Fusion with Digital LEDs, ESS Sabre reference DAC music chip with audiophile Grade capacitors and Ultra Durable components in their favorite Gigabyte motherboards.However, we are not satisfied by simply adopting the best components into our products. Our target is to study customers' usage habits and improve our components to meet the habits.Despite the business re-organization and the management changes, Gigabyte is still the same Gigabyte and our user-oriented business culture and emphasis on product quality remain the same.We have also been forming partnerships with other enterprises for some interesting gaming-related projects. Apart from Arous Open PUBG Tournament 2018, which has helped us established partnerships with several enterprises, we have also collaborated with Electronic Arts (EA) to release an energy drink in Germany with Aorus and EA product images on the can.We also have been in talks over many other projects, but it is not yet time to reveal the details about them.In addition to physical products, we have many cooperation cases with game streamers worldwide for product promotions and are also investing resources to launch marketing campaigns with upstream and downstream partners.In the past, Gigabyte's promotion activities focused mainly on traditional channels, but since 2017, we have started to use more diverse types of marketing in different channels. With Gigabyte having integrated all its gaming-related businesses under the Aorus brand and the fact that we have shown our determination of running the Aorus brand, we have earned many invitations from worldwide businesses and gamers for gaming-related cooperation.Q: What innovations or technologies will be unveiled or showcased at Computex 2018?A: We do not have any new products for Computex 2018 as our upstream platform partners have not prepared any new products for the show.However, we are showcasing our extended peripheral product lines under the Aorus brand including SSDs and memory and are displaying the full series of our existing Aorus brand products at our Computex booth.Q: What is Gigabyte's thought on cryptocurrencies? Will ASICs have some impact on graphics card demand from the cryptocurrency industry?A: Cryptocurrencies are one of the applications of the blockchain technology and the technology is becoming a popular topic in the IT industry. To fairly distribute the cryptocurrencies to users, mining has become one of the main methods for the system to give out the digital currencies.However, mining is not the only way as there are also cryptocurrencies that have adopted other type of distributing methods.In my personal view, blockchain actually has a lot potential and because of the technology's characteristic of creating records in multiple terminals. It is able to significantly limit a trading system's dependence on a center machine and eliminate many of the recording flaws seen on traditional systems. Compared to blockchain business in general, opportunities from cryptocurrencies are not as stable.As for the rise in demand for cryptocurrency ASICs, I believe the growing popularity of ASICs will have some impacts on the cryptocurrency industry's demand for graphics cards, but the problem will not be as serious as many market watchers expect.As I said before, cryptocurrencies are a rather unstable business. Each ASIC is created specifically for the calculation of one particular type of cryptocurrency and cannot be switched to support other cryptocurrency mining. This will give advantages to graphics cards, which can widely support any kind of cryptocurrency mining process. Most miners will be wary of the risks of switching all its machines to ASICs.Eddie Lin, Gigabyte's Sales and Marketing Center vice presidentPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018

Leveraging robust R&D capabilities as well as manufacturing and customization flexibility, APD Group's long-term efforts toward the power supply market are generating results, allowing it to build up a significant presence in the global network, IT, consumer product and healthcare application markets. Many well-known world-class companies engage in long standing collaborations with APD, according to Rax Chuang, general manager, APD Power System Business Group.Implementing the DFSS approach, APD upholds premium qualityAPD's customization design capabilities are already market proven and its impressive achievements are backed by powerful R&D strength. Attaching great importance to research and development, APD employs an engineering team of more than 300 employees, representing 17% of its staff, and also allocates more than 5% of its annual revenue to research and development every year. Furthermore, to bring its critical product and manufacturing technologies to a whole new level, APD has fully engaged in Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) certification so that APD R&D engineers will implement systematic approaches throughout the product development cycle from initial design to volume production, delivering premium quality and guaranteeing high reliability of APD products.It should be noted that although R&D strength, customization design and manufacturing flexibility are no doubt the most important factors leading to APD's recognition by international customers, the fact that APD takes corporate social responsibility (CSR) to heart also helps it win long-term partnerships with American and European companies. As a matter of fact, APD recently received the bronze medal award from Deutsche Telekom in recognition of its CSR achievements in labor issues, health and safety, environmental protection, code of ethics and management system.Stepping up efforts toward the healthcare marketIn terms of market expansion efforts, power supply vendors have been eyeing the healthcare sector as profit margins on power supplies for IT and consumer products continue to narrow. However, the conservative healthcare market imposes stringent requirements on safety and puts up a high barrier barring quick and easy entry. "We have been putting efforts in the healthcare sector for more than a decade. APD has accumulated competitive advantages that other vendors won't be able to match anytime soon," stated Chuang.APD's efforts toward the healthcare sector have allowed it to obtain certifications for compliance with ISO 13485 Medical Devices Quality Management Systems Standards and IEC 60601 Safety Requirement for Medical Equipment, demonstrating APD products' high quality, high reliability and high safety standards fully meet the healthcare sector's demanding requirements.APD now mainly provides premium quality power supplies for medical equipment including resuscitators, nebulizers and blood pressure gauges. Take resuscitators for example. Chuang emphasized that requirements on medical-grade power supplies with respect to protection against noise, electromagnetic interference and water are far more demanding than IT- and consumer-level power supplies. With years of continuing efforts in refining medical-grade power supply quality to keep up with diverse and stringent safety requirements, APD has engaged in collaborations with leading European, Australian and Japanese medical equipment providers. This is certainly a recognition of APD's R&D strength for medical-grade power supplies.Going forward, APD will ramp up efforts toward the China healthcare market. "The China healthcare market is full of potential and multiple vendors are still competing for dominant market shares. APD will strive for early entrance and reap first-mover advantages," remarked Chuang. As part of such efforts, APD participated in China International Medical Equipment Fair (CMEF) 2018 and received positive responses. Its capability to provide flexible custom-designed medical-grade power supplies has caught market attention and APD expects this will lead to multiple partnership deals.State-of-the-art labs help customers shorten time-to-marketFor the purpose of implementing full control on the quality of power supplies for medical equipment and other devices and also helping customers accelerate time-to-market around the world, APD has devoted tremendous resources to building the most advanced safety laboratories in the industry, including a UL lab and an EMC lab. Such establishments allow APD to keep abreast with the latest industry standards including IEC/EN/UL 62368, IEC/EN/UL 60950-1 and IEC/EN/UL 60065 in terms of product safety, EMC, energy efficiency and certification tests. Chuang specifically pointed out, "The significance of these state-of-the-art labs being in place is that APD's system operation and engineering capabilities can be 100% trusted."Commenting on the company's long-term outlook, Chuang affirmed, "APD will continue to focus on R&D of critical technologies, refine customization design capabilities and raise manufacturing efficiency to provide worldwide customers with the most competitive power supply products and services and establish itself as a leader in its target market segment."At Computex 2018, APD will showcase a diverse range of power supplies for network communication devices, consumer electronics and medical equipment as well as custom-made power supply solutions. Visitors are welcome to the APD booth for more information.Rax Chuang, general manger, APD's Power System Business Group Photo: Company

Clientron, a world-leading provider of thin clients and embedded systems, established its industrial PC (IPC) team in 2017, demonstrating its determination to penetrate deep into the IPC market. Clientron has always been able to provide product designs that precisely match customer needs and now riding on burgeoning IoT and Industry 4.0 trends, Clientron is ramping up efforts toward IPC product development and market expansion.Kelly Wu, president & CEO, Clientron, states, "Taiwan-based manufacturers have been active in the IPC market for many years. IPC firms are characterized by being small but exquisite. Clientron, with years of product R&D experiences, is capable of providing high-end industrial-grade products with wide temperature and voltage ranges, waterproof and dustproof as well as ability to maintain long-term operation under extreme circumstances." Clientron has introduced embedded single board computers (SBC), embedded systems and industrial panel PC to accommodate different customer needs.Expanding vertical industrial applicationsIPC has always targeted niche market segments. Clientron's endeavors in this field began with the food processing industry and smart transportation applications. Clientron's Pike-AL-1500SP, crafted specifically for the food processing industry, is an industrial panel PC that can withstand special cleaning or a steaming environment. It offers IP69K protection against high temperature, dust and water and long-term submersion under water. The Pike-AL-1500SP has passed spray test with steam pressure of 100bar (1450 psi) at a temperature of 80°C. It is built with grade 304 stainless steel casing to enable protection against heat and corrosion and prevent hazardous substances from leaching due to heat or acid, thereby guaranteeing safe and sanitary operation in a food processing plant.For smart transportation, Clientron custom-built its IT900 embedded system for intelligent traffic decision making. It co-worked with customers to design applications such as smart intersection and smart parking solutions. With aluminum alloy casing, fanless & ventless design and IP40 dust-proof protection, the IT900 is suitable for murky outdoor environments with a reduced probability of failure or repair. It supports dual display ports and dual LAN ports and is powered by an Intel high-performance energy-efficient quad-core or dual-core platform. Its modular I/O box can quickly and flexibly accommodate customer's I/O design based on actual needs. The innovative drawer-type casing also allows easier hardware installation and expansion by its user friendly designClientron drew naming inspiration from cold weapons for its industrial-use products to represent symbolic meaning of simplicity, user friendly and combat strength. For example, its industrial panel PC is named as "Pike," innovative box type embedded systems as "Mace" and SBC as "Saber." Its Mace-AL-200 embedded system provides "Tsuba Kits" with a flexible modular design for customers to easily add I/O modules and build systems tailored to their specific needs. On top of that, the removable back cover makes maintenance work a breeze.Clientron keeps turning innovative designs into realityFor point-of-sale (POS) terminals, Clientron presents PST650 all-in-one POS suited for the food service industry. PST650 features streamline, compact and lightweight design and built-in integration with a thermal printer supporting multiple well-known brands, so customers do not need to install an additional printer, thereby saving counter footprint and cost.Among Clientron's most renowned thin client product line, the R800 was recently recognized with the 26th Taiwan Excellence Award. It comes with an innovative rotatable port-on-foot design with I/O expansion ports, enabling both space saving and I/O expandability advantages. Its high-durability capacitive-touch power button provides convenient on/off switch and reduces mechanical failure. Featuring support for triple 4K ultra-high-definition (UHD) displays, energy-efficiency design translating to savings on electricity bills and a three-year standard warranty, the R800 is especially suitable for virtual desktop solutions in banking, healthcare, government and education sectors.Clientron is making leaping advances in automotive electronicsLooking forward, Wu speaks about Clientron's achievements in the automotive electronics market: "Clientron has been dedicating its time and efforts in this segment for many years and actually obtained ISO/ TS16949 certification as early as 2004. With a focus on Car Informatic Device (CID), we leveraged nearly 20 years of design and manufacturing experiences in automotive video and audio systems and worked with customers to jointly craft ' Interactive in three displays, one instrument with ADAS' software and hardware integrated solutions. This is a big step forward for us in the factory-installed equipment market." Three displays here refer to the CID system, driver instrument cluster and digital insole cluster. One instrument refers to the car recorder. They work in conjunction with the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) in the vehicle.Furthermore, it should be noted that a major customer of Clientron has engaged in large-scale expansion in the American market, which is expected to fuel Clientron's revenue growth in the region this year. With the inauguration of a new factory in Nangang, Clientron will be able to fully meet growing market demand.Clientron plans to showcase its latest thin client series, POS systems and embedded IPC solutions at Computex 2018. Visitors to Clientron's booth K0427a in Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center will be able to see Clientron products being put to use in different scenarios, including an embedded IPC in food processing industry, thin clients in banking scenario and a POS system in a restaurant setting.Kelly Wu, president & CEO, Clientron, states that the company will keep ramping up efforts toward IPC products in 2018.

Pure Storage has worked with Nvidia and Arista Networks to jointly create AI Ready Infrastructure (AIRI) that is able to assist its clients with demand for AI applications.The company's FlashBlade series servers will be the initial product line to feature the infrastructure.Digitimes recently talked to Robert Lee, Pure Storage's VP and chief architect, about the new product line and the AI business opportunity.Q: Why has the FlashBlade series been chosen for AIRI?A: When the company began preparing and designing the FlashBlade series in 2013, the plan was to create a high performance server product line, targeting HPC clients with data processing demand. After its release, we have discovered that many of our clients have used the products for processing AI applications.Since AI requires good algorithm and a large amount of analyzable data in order to create values, storing, categorizing and computing the enormous data collected are some of the major challenges of the servers and the FlashBlade series' high-end specifications are able to satisfy demand for all different types of data storage, computing need and simplified categorization processes.For example, we previously worked with an autonomous driving vehicle developerusing our FlashBlade server to collect video data from the vehicles' camcorders. For each test, the camcorders could produce up to 5TB of data, which would usually take a long time to conduct back-end processes. But with our system, the developer was able to save a lot of time over video conversion, image capturing and image categorization.When the system captures images from videos, it still requires a person to manually tell it what the images are and the process usually takes a very long time. But with a suitable storage system, the process can be shortened dramatically.Q: Why has the FlashBlade series adopted a blade server form factor instead of the traditional rack server one?A: From the users' perspective, the rack server form factor design usually creates many limitations and the blade server design is able to provide better and simpler usages. The blade server design also has many advantages including better expandability and plug-and-play.The system also has well-designed software, allowing the system to directly communicate with the flash drives in order to conduct more parallel computing at once.When we began designing the FlashBlade series servers 4-5 years ago, we already started trying out NVMe-based SSDs as part of the hardware configurations. By then, NVMe was not yet a mature technology and though our competitors were able to adopt NVMe SSDs into their products, their servers were still incapable of achieving results similar to those of the FlashBlade series due to the limitations in software.Our software is able to resolve the bottleneck of NVMe's data transmission, allowing a smooth flow of data passage.Q: What functions can the FlashBlade series provide over the data categorization?A: We are currently working with our partners to help our clients concerning functionality. With the large amounts of raw data collected, our clients are not able to begin conducting analysis until after it has been labeled, indexed and classified.We have seen enormous amounts of data from clients and are working with our partners to develop technologies to categorize them, but the technologies so far have not yet reached a level that can be revealed.Although the technologies for categorizing and analyzing raw data are still not ready, storing raw data are still necessary as the data stored long time ago may still need to be reviewed after related technologies are available.We have been looking to develop technologies to help merge and store raw data in a format that takes less storage space, so our clients will be able to use the cold data for their future needs.Q: What does Pure Storage think of edge computing?A: Edge computing is a big business opportunity for us as the related devices are the one collecting data via IoT sensors and processing analysis tasks. Since storage will also be one of the edge computing devices' main functions, our solutions are able to assist our clients with needs for edge computing applications over deployment and management.Pure Storage VP and chief architect Robert LeePhoto: Aaron Lee, Digitimes, April 2018

GeoVision is a Taiwan-based surveillance solution developer in business for over 20 years. Although not as big as some of the international firms, the company is still one of the top-50 players worldwide. But growing competition in the traditional legacy surveillance sector prompted GeoVision to shift its development to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies several years ago, and has since attained high levels of competitiveness in the AI sector. The company's new edge computing type of AI surveillance products are giving GeoVision a good position in the AI surveillance market.Digitimes recently had an opportunity to talk to GeoVision's Max Yang, director of Sales of New Product Division. He talked about the surveillance market's current status and GeoVision's plans for the market.Q: What kind of company is GeoVision? What business segments does GeoVision mainly focus on?A: GeoVision has been operating in Taiwan for over 20 years, focusing primarily on developing image analysis technologies and the integration of surveillance software and hardware that cover segments ranging from back-end server systems to front-end cameras.Among the surveillance applications, our expertise is on the security field and facial recognition is a key technology that GeoVision has been developing for its latest products during the past couple of years and will be our promotion focus for 2018.As for our business model, GeoVision is a manufacturer and also a vendor of its own-brand surveillance products. But it has begun providing ODM services to support some of our regional brand clients since two years ago. We have established a new department for the ODM business, which is currently contributing about 20% of the company's revenues.Q: What is the surveillance market's current status?A: Currently, the surveillance market has two major sectors: the traditional legacy surveillance and digital artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance.The traditional legacy surveillance system is composed of conventional cameras and a back-end server. The back-end server retrieves video data from the cameras for storage and users are able to view the recorded footage via the server system. The sector is currently being dominated by China-based suppliers with the top players accounting for 50% of the sector's shipments worldwide.Although customers are able to obtain inexpensive solutions from these China-based suppliers, there are security concerns since most of their products use the same hardware configurations and software systems to cut down costs. And these suppliers usually do not bother to encrypt the video data or enforce security measures on the surveillance system's management platform, allowing hackers to easily gain control of their systems.With dwindling profitability from the traditional legacy surveillance sector, Taiwan and other international surveillance product firms have mostly turned to the newer-generation surveillance camera systems such as those integrated with AI support.The largest player of the digital AI surveillance sector is Germany-based Bosch, which has mainly been obtaining orders from international airports.Q: What is GeoVision's business strategy for the surveillance market?A: GeoVision will continue placing efforts onto its traditional legacy surveillance systems and is at the same time spending resources on the development of AIoT products that integrate AI into Internet of Things (IoT) surveillance devices, targeting market segments including smart retailing, smart factory, smart manufacturing and smart medical care.For the AIoT business, GeoVision is pushing direct partnerships with manufacturers and factories to provide services such as upgrading their existing systems to feature AI support or planning a comprehensive surveillance solution for their new facilities. The partnership will allow GeoVision to fully understand clients' demand and provide corresponding solutions to satisfy their needs.Q: Where are GeoVision's main markets? Any new markets that GeoVision will be targeting?A: North America is currently our largest market with 60% of our revenues generated from the region. At the beginning, GeoVision's business model in North America was to supply clients with customized surveillance software that could work with their existing low-resolution camera systems but provide more functionality. But as these clients started to see the needs to upgrade their systems to high-resolution digital camera solutions, we became their first choice for procuring surveillance products.North America will remain a key market for GeoVision in 2018 with Japan to also be a major target country for our AIoT solutions in 2018. We have also partnered with a local home security service provider in Taiwan to supply our AIoT products to the market.As for Southeast Asia, GeoVision does not have a branch office in the region and is mainly partnering with local distributors to sell its products. We are aware of the region's growing demand for IT applications over the past few years and will consider establishing an office there if we are able to identify any good opportunity or local partner that can help us quickly expand into the market.Q: What is GeoVision's competitiveness?A: With the traditional legacy surveillance sector mired in fierce price competition, AI technologies are the key to differentiate the digital AI surveillance system sector from the traditional legacy surveillance one. For GeoVision, the company's R&D focus is facial recognition technologies and applications.Compared to others, the special thing about our facial recognition technologies is that we have implemented the innovations onto the cameras instead of the back-end server. The concept of the edge computing surveillance system means our clients do not need to fully replace their existing systems in order to acquire AI surveillance functions for their facilities.Currently, there are three types of AI facial recognition surveillance systems available in the market. The first type is through support from cloud computing service providers such as Google, Amazon, Tencent and Alibaba. The surveillance system can perform the facial recognition functionality by sending video data to one of these players' cloud computing platforms for analysis via high-speed Internet. However, the downside of the process is it involves high costs for the service and Internet support. Another key issue is that some companies do not wish to send their surveillance data to outside companies due to security concerns and these problems have lmited demand for this type of serivce.The second type is the full surveillance solution with the back-end server system being the one handling the facial recognition task. But such a solution will require clients to replace the whole surveillance system and add up costs.The third one is the edge computing-type surveillance with the face recognition handled directly by the cameras, and this is the direction that GeoVision is currently devoted to. Our cameras feature application processors from Qualcomm and memory for processing facial recognition functionality and clients can easily view any information the cameras analyze and store.Our cameras are able to recognize 10 faces at once and are suitable for automated employee time recording and office building access control to help keep intruders out. The systems can also be adopted in retail stores where the cameras can detect the stores' MVPs or any specific person and create alerts to notify store clerks.Max Yang, director of Sales of New Product Division, GeoVisionPhoto: Company

Linde Electronics, a member of The Linde Group, is one of the major global manufacturers of bulk and electronic specialty gases used during the manufacturing of semiconductors, displays, solar panels, LEDs and other electronics products.Facing the severe challenges of advanced semiconductor process technology nodes in sub-micron grade of silicon chips manufacturing, the company established Linde Electronics research and development center (Linde ERDC) in 2016 to enhance its local capabilities and product portfolio to meet growing demands from industries. Linde ERDC, located at Taichung Harbor Related Industrial Park in Taiwan, is a two-floor building design with advanced gases analytic laboratories and a product development centre. This ERDC has been operating to provide analytic services of high-purity electronic gases in Asia Pacific regions and is also focusing on the development of new materials, packages and services. It has supported the launch of several joint development projects to test and make new materials in-house with the closed collaboration with customers and third-party suppliers for the purposes of reduced cost, process and development time.During a recent interview, Linde Electronics' head of Electronics Technology and Innovation, Carl Jackson, pointed out that the global leading-edge pure-play semiconductor foundries have been in a tight race to lead process technology development and are migrating from 10 to 5 to even 3 nanometers in the coming years. It is becoming more critical for them to improve their electronic performance by integrating other materials when processes push the limits of silicon physics, especially considering the joint development of ultra-purity materials. Meeting this challenge is a key driving force for Linde ERDC working in tight cooperation close to customers.Jackson observed that in the early 1990s period, some materials being supplied were in the of 99% purity range. Today, industries are requesting products of 7N grade, which means 99.99999% purity, with the possibility to move to even tighter product purity specifications in the next few years. For those ultra-high purity materials, it is very important for the customers such as for Taiwan first tier semiconductor and electronics manufacturers to request proper measurement of the materials when various chemical treatments purifies them through processes. This is why Linde ERDC plays an important role in advanced process development fields.Another obvious benefit of Linde ERDC has been largely used by local customers: testing speed of the labs. Most Asia clients prefer to send the sample to a local analysis laboratory in order to obtain results faster. This is one of the the reasons why Linde Electronics continues to invest in local capabilities in Asia Pacific.Linde Electronics' non-stop efforts to pursue material development excellence achieves the strengthening of corporate core competence successfully. These strategies also leverage the synergy to maximize customers' value and win the market. Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing service providers own the superior manufacturing capability and readily react instantly toward the rapidly changing market. Therefore, Linde ERDC partners with Taiwanese companies to form a competitive edge and to be successful in the market. Here is the Q&A with Carl Jackson.Q: Linde ERDC was opened at the end of 2016. What has happened since then?A: Well, the first thing to say is that overall Linde Electronics had a very positive year in 2017. We are continuing to invest significantly in this region both in our on-site business, but also in our electronics special gases capabilities, so the set-up of this facility looks to be well-timed to support this growth and is fully aligned with our "Local Partner, Global Expertise" strategy.From the ERDC perspective, we have been very busy with one of our main activities here, which is the "fingerprinting" of materials. This means essentially processing materials through all our analysis systems to enable us to see a complete profile of the material quality, often looking much deeper than the standard specification. With this information, we are better positioned, for example, to ensure that our sub-suppliers' raw material meets our demanding operational requirements or that we are able to quickly support our customers should they need to fix or improve a particular process.Another focus area that we continue to ramp is the development of new products, in collaboration with our customers. For a material supplier like Linde Electronics, the definition of a new product has a broad scope. We can be talking about a new molecule not conventionally used in IC manufacturing that is needed to enable a new process application. It could be an existing material that is required at a higher purity, it could be a new method or equipment to deliver materials to the customer process, or it could be a combination. We are working on examples of all of these new products here in Taiwan.Q: How is having a local R&D team helping to bring value to customers in this region?A: Our investment in this facility has been very well received by our customers, who have been very quick to see the additional service and support these physical capabilities can provide. However, enabling us to get the most value out of these capabilities is our local team, which is centered here and stretches out into China and Korea.Clearly we have put a lot of emphasis on being close to our customers, which is essential when trying to coordinate the type of complex development projects that we manage. Sometimes technology does help and we can work effectively as a virtual team; however, for most projects, we need to be here, we need to be local to really understand what the customer needs and when, and we need to deliver on our commitments.Working with our regional businesses has also benefited from our new capabilities here enabling the Improvement of supply chain reliability for certain existing products. We are working on several initiatives to help our regional business localize the production of electronic specialty gases or other value-added activities so that our customers have ready access to local supply of products rather than having to rely on the traditional long supply chains.Q: Following the success here in Taiwan, do you plan to add more R&D centers in other countries in Asia?A: Linde has a significant and long-established R&D presence already in China, for example, serving our related industry sectors such as Metals and Glass, Food and Additive Manufacturing. From an electronics perspective, we are well positioned in Taiwan to serve all customers in the east Asia region. It is possible in the future that we could expand our advanced analytical capabilities, however, for product development, you need a certain critical mass of highly specialized personnel, who operate most effectively when co-located so we will continue to build our development team here.Q: What main challenges do you see looking forward?A: Our customers' speed and scope of technological innovation is relentless. Keeping pace with this and ensuring we are working in the areas that bring most value will remain a challenge as no material supplier can effectively operate in all areas. As I mentioned earlier, we have been seeing more and more non-traditional materials on the customers' development planning roadmaps, which can present an analytical challenge for us. Also, these materials may be supplied as liquids or solids, so the delivery from the source to the tool also needs a significant amount of focus to bring to high-volume manufacturing readiness.That said, we have a lot of experience successfully serving this market and are further encouraged by our experience during our first full year of operation here in Taiwan. We feel very well positioned to be able to work with our customers to solve these challenges in a way that also supports our continued growth and investment in this region.Head of Linde T&I E, Carl JacksonInner view of Linde ERDCLinde ERDC

The global semiconductor industry posted its highest-ever annual sales in 2017. With major technology players all wanting a slice of the Asia Pacific market, the strategies and operations of Avnet, a leading global technology distributor and solutions provider, play a crucial role in ensuring the company's success.In an exclusive interview, Frederick Fu, president of Avnet Asia Pacific, shares his views on the trends and changes of the global electronics industry in 2018 as well as Avnet's key strategies in the region.Smart applications built on IoT and cloud computing are the global trends for 2018On the outlook of the global electronics industry in 2018, Fu thinks the industry is trending toward "smartization" - including IoT and cloud computing applications that are already prevalent in the market. Businesses are able to provide better service models by leveraging smart applications for data collection and analysis.Fu further explains that IoT is not new in the industry. Once low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technologies become widely available, we can expect to see a more aggressive adoption of IoT. Take smart buildings for example. It used to require electrical wiring for end devices in a building to be able to engage in communication. Now this is possible simply by putting batteries and sensors in end devices. The batteries can last up to five years without the need for replacement. Wiring installation is also not necessary so this saves a great deal of time and money in planning and management.In addition, some recent hot topics including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous cars, and artificial intelligence (AI) also have critical influence on the electronics industry. For instance, semiconductor components in an automobile previously accounted for only US$20 to US$30 of the total cost, but now they run up to US$100. With cars becoming increasingly connected, electronics components may account for more than half the cost of an automobile in the future. Tapping the growing opportunity in IoT demand, in the case of ADAS for instance, Avnet has both hardware and software solutions for ADAS that has been implemented in China.The role of distributors is also undergoing changes along with the shifts in the electronics industry. Distributors used to be seen as the middlemen buying and reselling products but now their role goes beyond that. Avnet today serves as the bridge between suppliers and businesses that actively look to provide IoT products and solutions. This has become part of Avnet's business strategies, where its ecosystem connects the different parties with the latest technology– ranging from system integrators, service providers, device manufacturers, to cloud platform providers, and components suppliers – to provide an integrated approach to support and drive innovation and IoT initiatives for its customers.Eyeing Taiwan's advantages, Avnet establishes a wireless charging labAccording to Fu, Taiwan's electronics industry is aligned with global developments, including the smart trend arising from IoT and cloud computing advancements. Despite declining performance in the smartphone and tablet markets, there are still growth opportunities in Taiwan. In terms of IoT developments, the Taiwan industry has built up a solid foundation in network gateways and has been supporting many technology giants. The achievements in these two segments complement each other. Furthermore, Taiwan-based IC designers are gearing developments toward RF, mixed signal and MCU chips, also in consonance with the popular trend. They additionally have geographical advantages with Taiwan's close proximity to China as well as robust foundry technology. As one of the company's biggest market in this region, Avnet is expanding its business in Taiwan, including Taichung and Kaohsiung, to increase customers based in central and southern Taiwan. Its efforts are generating results with a growing number of customers from that region, focusing on factory automation and measuring instruments. Fu indicated Taiwan is an important market for Avnet and Avnet will stay committed to the Taiwan market. It has recently set up the first spec 1.2.4 wireless charging laboratory to support the growing demand for wireless charging and help customers accelerate the process of certification. Equipped with WPC approved test equipment nok9 CATS I and CATS II, Avnet has also formed a partnership with a test lab to ensure stringent test criteria are adhered to. Avnet effectively shortens the certification process and lead time leading to faster product launches.Expanding business scope, a distributor does more than distributingWith regards to Avnet's short-term market strategies, Fu pointed out that Avnet will continue to provide design and supply chain capabilities, as well as product development to market. The maker and startup markets are also among Avnet's focus segments. Avnet has been undertaking a series of acquisitions and expansions since 2016 to accommodate the small-quantity large-variety characteristic of business, which is also spurring a rapidly growing number of makers and startups."Small and medium enterprises are not afraid to reinvent the wheel to bring in a new wave of innovation and trends. They have great potential for rapid growth in the future or stand a chance of being acquired by big companies. Avnet has invested resources in building a connected ecosystem to help startups become the next unicorn," said Fu.IoT as well nurturing startups remain the core of Avnet's focus in the coming year. Avnet will continue to invest in the IoT space to continuously enhance our IoT solutions to the market. As a key differentiator from other distributors, the company also helps to bridge the gap between the startups and market to guide them from idea to production to market.Frederick Fu, president of Avnet Asia PacificA chronicle of Avnet's recent business expansions

Avalue Technology is one of Taiwan's veteran industrial PC (IPC) players, having been in the sector since 2000. Although it is not as big as some of the first-tier players, Avalue still has managed to stay competitive in the market leveraging its advantages in healthcare, retail and gambling machine product lines.To expand its presence, the company has been pushing into new businesses such as cloud computing solutions and development of ARM-based products. It has seen growing orders from these sectors. Digitimes recently sat down with Avalue's director of Intelligent Solution and System Jason Liu to talk about the IPC market and the company's business.Q: How is the IPC industry? What is Avalue's current status?A: Overall demand for IPCs is still growing steadily and most applications see increasing shipments.Most of our IPC products are based on the x86 platform with Intel's processors, while those with AMD's solutions are seeing a lot less demand than a few years ago. However, since two years ago, we have seen increasing issues with Intel's processors. One of the problems is that Intel has been constantly changing its CPU roadmap and has even removed many of its mobile CPUs that were originally meant to compete against ARM-based processors. Meanwhile, Intel is also having difficulties with its new CPUs, causing many IPC players to delay the launches of new products.Because of this, we have seen clients becoming less eager about upgrading their systems to the latest hardware specifications and the reluctance has become quite common in the IPC industry, undermining the business of many of its players.Meanwhile, demand for ARM-based solutions combined with Android or Linux operating system has been picking up rather fast to become a new business opportunity for us during the past few years.However, such a product line requires long-term investments in the software design and development. For Avalue, which had been an Wintel-oriented IPC players for a very long time, it was difficult at the beginning when we tried to transform our team to start focusing on writing codes for ARM-based processors, but it was a necessary step to take in order to obtain these types of orders.Although ARM-based solutions require time for development, its business opportunity is enormous. As most Taiwan-based IPC players are not familiar with developing ARM-based solutions, crossing into the related development could be challenging, but it also means that the market still has strong potential for growth.We have already been developing the ARM-based product line for over three years and are currently in talks with clients for several projects including voting machines.Q: What is Avalue's advantages over competitors?A: Recently, we have seen first-tier IPC makers launching pricing campaigns to compete for large-volume projects for general IPC applications such as point of sales (POS) and lottery machines, making these orders not as profitable as they used to be.To minimize the impact, Avalue has been shifting its business focus to product lines that it has advantages in such as medical, retail and gambling machines. We expect these product lines to boost our overall revenues by around 15% on year in 2018.In addition, we will also begin shipping in 2018 some large-volume general IPC orders that we obtained in 2017. There orders include lottery machines, fitness equipment and voting machines.Q: Is Avalue pushing any new business?A: For new businesses, Avalue is currently cooperating with Microsoft to push cloud computing-related solutions for smart retail and smart city applications. The special thing about the cloud computing solution business is that instead of the traditional method of selling only the gateway, we are offering full solutions covering front-end sensors, middle-end devices to back-end cloud computing server systems.We have assigned a special team to handle the development of the cloud computing server systems as well as firmware design for the end devices. Avalue is also working with Taiwan-based system integrators to help transform their standalone products such as sensors or devices, into total solutions. Since these system integrators' clients are mainly based in Taiwan, promoting their newly formed solutions to overseas markets including Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and Japan, will be a key business direction for us in 2018.Q: Geographically, what markets are Avalue focusing on?A: Southeast Asia is a new market for us. Compared to North America and Europe, which have been major revenue contributors to us for many years, our sales from Southeast Asia are currently still small, but the region is developing rather quickly in terms of infrastructure, making it a market full of business potential.We have also seen several Japan- and Korea-based IPC players moving their production lines to Southeast Asian countries to push industrial automation-related businesses. With these countries expected to be aggressively working on expanding their infrastructures, the facilities these Japan- and Korea-based players have invested in are expected to be able to obtain strong orders catering to these infrastructure projects.In China, our plan for 2018 is to continue focusing on products for medical care and industrial control applications. We currently still have weak presence in the market and the key goal is to expand our reach to more clients in China.Jason Liu, director of Intelligent Solution and System, AvaluePhoto: Company

There were major management changes at MediaTek last year, showing the IC deisgner's intention to regain its growth momentum. The changes included the appointment of Joe Chen as MediaTek president late in the year.In a recent interview by Digitimes, Chen talked about goals of the company, how MediaTek will improve its gross margin and restore its lost share of the smartphone SoC market at a gradual pace. He also shared his opinions on the smartphone market growth drivers in 2018, the ongoing tight supplies at foundries and certain upstream components makers, and competition from super large-scale fabless companies. The following is an exceprt of the interview.Q: As MediaTek's new president, what's your short-term, mid-term and long-term goals for the company?A: MediaTek's short-term goal is to get the company back on the growth track in terms of revenues, gross margin and profits. We stay focused on our handset SoC portfolio which will be enhanced further to include solutions for smartphones that come with more new features, and 5G devices.MediaTek is gearing up for the new generation of mobile technology. We are engaged in the development of 5G solutions, which will be ready for customer roll-outs of new products by 2020. Meanwhile, MediaTek has put increased focus on the quality rather than quantity regarding our solutions for 4G smartphones, which continue to come with innovative built-in features. We believe the efforts will gradually help improve the company's gross margin and restore our lost share of the smartphone SoC market.In addition, MediaTek has stepped up efforts to diversify its offerings to include those for voice-assistant devices, smart home devices and IoT-related applications. In the mid-term, we want to expand our target markets with key technologies extended from our existing Wi-Fi technology assets.As for our long-term recovery strategy, MediaTek is exploring new products and market opportunities to drive our business growth five years from now. Automotive electronics will be the next first target of MediaTek with regards to its long-term business growth. Applications including unmanned vehicles and autonomous driving have already drawn our interest.Besides, MediaTek has in recent years developed its ASIC business which could be another driver of the company's future growth.Q: Whould you share your opinions on the key drivers of the 2018 smartphone market?A: The smartphone market situation seems unfavorable in the first quarter of 2018, with issues such as high inventory levels throughout China's handset industry supply chain. Nevertheless, the overall smartphone demand for 2018 should be higher than the level a year earlier. MediaTek expects customer orders and end-market demand to improve at a gradual pace later in 2018.MediaTek is also optimistic new models with innovative features, such as AI, will stimulate demand in this saturated market. MediaTek has introduced its new solution to bring AI features to smartphones without the high price tag. With the built-in MediaTek NeuroPilot AI technology, the new chip brings premium features like deep-learning facial detection, object and scene identification, fluid gaming experiences, and smart camera functions.Q: How would you see the competition between smartphone vendors with their in-house developed SoCs and dedicated mobile SoC developers in 2018?A: For MediaTek, we remain focused on enhancing our offerings and satisfying efficiently our customers' needs. Unlike device vendors that have their own chips, MediaTek's business model won't put the company in a conflict of interest with clients.In addition, as the world's second-largest handset SoC supplier, MediaTek has economies of scale to provide more competitive products and services.Q: How does MediaTek address the tight supply of the foundry services, as well as certain component shortages?A: The supply of 28nm chips is sufficient in the short term, with a guarantee from our 8-inch foundry partners with their vast economies of scale. But for advanced FinFET solutions, the supply is pretty tight.MediaTek has already partnered with TSMC to develop its 12nm FinFET solutions, and has had our foundry partner's commitment to the chip supply during 2018.MediaTek has also moved to build up its component inventories in advance to ensure its sufficient supply to customers in the second half of 2018. We don't think component shortages will affect our shipment schedules.Q: M&A activities have created more super large-scale fabless companies. How do you see the trend?A: Consolidation among semiconductor companies is inevitable. In fact, M&A activities have been ongoing for so many years. MediaTek is aware of the trend. We want to make sure our technology and work force are competitive so that we are able to plan early and grasp opportunities.In the process of acquiring MStar Semiconductor, MediaTek already recognized the industry trend. All we have to do is to continue our innovation and to work closely with our customers.MediaTek president Joe ChenPhoto: Cage Chao, Digitimes, March 2018

Taiwan-based Minmax Technology is the largest supplier of DC-DC converters and AC-DC power supply units for general industrial equipment in Taiwan. Currently, the company is seeing stable demand for railway products from China, while in Japan and Europe it has also experienced impressive growth in orders from the regions' railroad markets. With over 27 years of experience and R&D in the power module segment, Minmax has grown to become a competitive module supplier of applications across industrial, medical, railway and power generation.Digitimes recently had an opportunity to talk with Minmax's marketing and technical manager Whittaker Cheng to find out about the company's latest business development.Q: What is Minmax's business structure?A: Minmax is a supplier of power modules including DC-DC converters and AC-DC power supplies. Basically, Minmax has four major product lines. The first one is the power modules for general industrial applications such as testing equipment, industrial control system, semiconductor equipment, measuring instruments and robotic arms. Equipment and IoT products that are covered within the concepts of Industry 2.0, 3.0 and even 4.0, are all included in our general industrial application category.The second product line is ultra-high voltage isolation power modules, supplying mainly for power-generation facilities including wind-power turbines and nuclear-power and solar-power plants, as well as smart grids.The third one is certified power components for railway systems. This has been the main development focus for Minmax over the past few years and we have invested heavily in related R&D, manufacturing, quality control, marketing and sales.The fourth product line is medical-level power modules. Devices in the sector are mostly used in advanced applications such as medical care equipment and enhanced isolation system. Our medical-level power modules are all certified by ANSI/AAMI ES60601-1 and IEC/EN 60601-1(2xMOPP/2xMOOP) third edition standards.Q: Can you tell us more about the railway power module business?A: For a railway system, power modules are one of the core components. Because of such an importance, Minmax usually co-designs the power modules with its railway system designer clients to ensure the system's quality.The work that Minmax and its clients do are mostly involved in the design, as the manufacturing of the systems will be outsourced to third-party electronic manufacturing service (EMS) providers by the clients' client.In addition to the business model of working with a system designer, we also have a few cases of directly supplying railway system power modules to international railway companies.Q: Where are Minmax's target markets for its power components?A: Currently, Europe is one of our major markets, accounting for a rather big portion of Minmax's operation. We are also seeing growing sales from Asia and have been paying increasing attention to the region's operation.Taiwan of course is our home market and we are the largest DC-DC converter and AC-DC power supply product maker for Taiwan's general industrial application sector. For Asia overall, we are mainly seeing growth driven by China's demand.Q: What is the status of the power module market?A: Right now, business varies from sector to sector. For the general industrial application, competition is growing fiercer as the market sector's entry barrier is becoming lower due to the maturity of the related components.However, it is totally different in the railway system power module sector where the entry barrier is high. In addition to product quality, railway companies also place a strong emphasis on the supplier's ability to provide services and maintain stable supplies.Q: What are the prospects of Minmax's product lines?A: Because of railway systems' characteristics, we expect the business of railway power module to see rapid growth. However, entering the related supply chain is not an easy task as it requires years of investments, cultivation and development.Although Minmax is benefiting from the rising business opportunity in the railway sector, especially in China and Europe, the general industrial application are currently still the largest revenue contributor for Minmax.Q: What are Minmax's advantages compared to competitors?A: One of the advantages that we are very proud of is our delivery time. While most of our competitors need to spend an average of 8-12 weeks before fulfilling their orders, Minmax's average delivery time is between 4-6 weeks.This means that our clients are able to receive their supply and complete their projects earlier. System designers are able to complete only five projects a year working with our competitors, but with us, they are able to raise the number of projects to eight a year. Of course, for clients that need special customization, the delivery time may extend.Another thing we consider as an advantage is that all the products we sell are designed, developed and manufactured in house. Our manufacturing plants are also located in Taiwan.Whittaker Cheng, Minmax marketing and technical managerPhoto: Company