Digital transformation in manufacturing is one of the key topics for the upgrading and transformation of Taiwan industries. It also shows new types of business models are emerging and leveraging the disruptive technologies. While industry 4.0 being welcomed overwhelmingly by the governments around the globe such as "Made In China 2025" and "Internet Plus", the enterprises learn to quickly response to the market using the powerful features of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and advanced IT technology for analyzing the data gathered by smart sensors.Faced with the obstacles to Taiwan's continued industrial development, the supply chains and ecosystems are providing the quick adjustment for introducing end products, making a quick grab for market share or return on investment because there is an urgent need for many companies.However, building the culture of digitalization in various organizations are not easy tasks. The current digitalization investments from enterprise may not reflect the real revenue growth yet. Companies worry more about how things going for the Industry 4.0 development. In this interview, we invite Mr. Leo Liang, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Greater China, Siemens PLM Software, to talk about his observation and viewpoints of smart manufacturing.The disruptive innovations can profoundly affect the functioning of existing industries by changing company's value chains. And the Internet of Things (IoT) technology is one of the major driving forces to enable innovation breaking the information barriers between supply chains and ecosystems. Leo highlights, lower cost manufacturing is no longer the only thing. The recent focus shifts in thinking- of understanding consumers' needs. Through the innovative PLM software systems, it transforms the needs to a realistic product and enables the power for change. Uber, AirBnB and several business innovations like mobile payment services have uncovered many good examples for great benefits in different business sectors.Siemens PLM Software provides complete product portfolios to demonstrate real values of digital transformation through Digital Twin. Digital Twin is not only a tool set of computer simulation models that provide the means to design, validate and optimize products in the virtual world. Today, Leo talks continuously, Digital Twin expands to manufacturing process or production facility. These technologies use data from sensors that are installed on physical objects to represent their real time status, working condition or position to help fabricating the new production lines to provide the flexibility for achieving the goal of smart manufacturing.MindSphere industrial clouds fulfill the needs of enterpriseAdvances in IT technologies of Siemens PLM Software have made it possible to broaden the scope of the Digital Twin to include many more capabilities, information, inputs and outputs from new product initiatives to flexible factory design. For strengthening enterprises new product development to the market much faster than ever, Siemens build MindSphere, an open IoT operating system (PaaS) and cloud infrastructure for industry. The large volumes of data generated during the production process in the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) level by IoT sensors or legacy systems need to be saved, and analyzed in real time and turned big data into smart data. And the open architecture will allow for a whole new dimension of services leveraging cloud solutions to capture process parameters, machine conditions and presented the statistical results using smartphone. This contributes to improved asset management and energy efficiency through data analysis and simulation.Meanwhile, combining with end products and delivering to end users, it will help to track real response of consumers. The collected information will link to MindSphere cloud platforms to make product design, manufacturing process improvement and exploring better use cases as a Closed Loop Manufacturing system for further increasing productivity, flexibility and shorter times to market.MindSphere enables manufacturing companies to streamline and digitalize their entire business process through the cloud technology, seamlessly integrating with the systems to develop important decision. Gathering real time manufacturing parameters to monitor the details of each process can begin at any point in the factory, from product design to service, and can extend digitalization gradually, depending on current needs of companies. MindSphere allows analyzing production assets and products as they perform and providing the insights into the entire value chain for continuous optimization. This will help customers of Siemens PLM Software to develop consistent data models and streamline the manufacturing process, product development and shorten the time to market.Taking the machinery maintenance as an effective ROI example, downtime is a serious threat to any manufacturing business. Through MindSphere cloud services, maintenance managers take preventive measures before crises occur in order to maintain machine tool and spare parts availability, Leo adds. It will turn passive maintenance to preventive maintenance strategy and gain results showing in financial reports.Acquiring Mentor Graphics to extend product offerings for servicing more industriesTo further accelerate the innovation for Siemens' customers and help them find the paths to digital transformation to drive production efficiencies and optimize the operation of their products in the markets, Siemens has made a significant move into the software space with acquisitions including UGS, LMS, Camstar, Polarion, and CD-adapco in the past few years. With recent acquisition of Mentor Graphics, Siemens will continue its proven paths of new technology into the industry's product lifecycle management software suite. Mentor Graphics is a leading EDA solution provider with well established electronics IC, systems design, simulation and printed circuit board manufacturing solutions. The combination provides mechanical, thermal, electronic and embedded software tools to the companies that develop products and strengthen the core competence.Comparing with other industries within the sectors including financial, insurance and retail services, manufacturing industry has more challenges while going digital transformation. Most of original traditional solutions for factories are not fully digital offerings. Even today, collecting control information of some legacy systems or machinery is still difficult to get. The industry shifts are creating new business models and moving from delivering a product to delivering smart, connected products as a service to customers. This trends of connected products and connected customers help fuel innovation. And Siemens PLM Software provides complete solutions and tool sets to work with customers to push toward digitalization of all aspects of manufacturing.Leo also highly suggests enterprises continuously to develop new products with new ideas leveraging the cloud technology for fast responding user's versatile tastes and preferences. The momentum needs to maintain both in manufacturing process and product design.With Siemens PLM Software solutions, manufacturing companies have better insight into every process's performance. All the software tool sets and product portfolio of Siemens offerings are proven and integrated practices in Siemens factories. This will benefit Siemens's customers bridging the gap to digital transformation and save the time for developing time-to-market products.Leo Liang, Siemens PLM Software Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Greater China, outlines the digitalization challenges for enterprises

According to the Transparency Market Research, the global connected car market is expected to reach US$131.9 billion by 2019 continuing to maintain its steady growth. Businesses are scrambling for a share of the automotive electronics market in recent years. Lelon Electronics, Taiwan's No. 1 manufacturer of aluminum electrolytic capacitors, entered the market at an opportune time and have secured their place in the OEM supply chain of American and European automakers. As the automotive electronics market continues to grow, Lelon is confident in sustaining its business model and market share in the second half of the year.Jimmy Wu, General Manager of Lelon Electronics, noted that automotive LCD panels used to be installed only in luxury cars. However, due to increased importance being placed on vehicle safety, even entry-level cars are now coming equipped with a variety of sensors to collect information, then processed and displayed on LCD monitors. Lelon is one of the select few non-Japanese manufacturers of aluminum electrolytic capacitors that are capable of being used in automotive applications. Their products now recognized by leading international automotive electronics companies. The automotive electronics market accounted for 9% of Lelon's 2016 revenue and is expected to increase to 10% in 2017. Lelon plans to introduce aluminum electrolytic capacitors for automobile transmission systems in the future to expand Lelon's automotive applications product line.Focusing on the development of high-end capacitors to build up the company's positionFounded in 1976, Lelon has engaged in the R&D, manufacturing and sales of aluminum electrolytic capacitors for over four decades. In order to provide comprehensive services for their customers, Lelon expanded into upstream material production of formed aluminum foil and automated production equipment. Through vertical integration of upstream and downstream manufacturing, Lelon is strengthening its competitive edge in technology, quality, cost, and service. Lelon now has complete offerings of aluminum electrolytic capacitors, including aluminum electrolytic capacitors (radial, SMD, snap-in, and screw terminal), organic conductive polymer capacitors, and conductive polymer hybrid aluminum electrolytic capacitors, which are widely used in automotive electronics, telecommunication equipment, cloud computing, and power electronics. Its quality products and services are highly regarded by their customers.Last year, Lelon's major revenue generators included power electronics, telecommunication equipment, automotive electronics, and consumer electronics. With the company transitioning from mid-range to high-end markets, it plans to reduce its share of products used in consumer electronics due to the fiercely competitive pricing environment. Instead focusing its efforts on aluminum electrolytic capacitors for high-end electronics, which are used in automobiles, telecommunication, healthcare, green energy, smart grid, and cloud computing.Wu further commented that the rising demand for consumer electronics, especially flat-panel TVs, smartphones, and tablets, drew a large number of companies to expand into the production of aluminum electrolytic capacitors. However, as prices of consumer electronics continue to fall, passive component markets have become "red oceans" where many vendors have resorted to price-cutting and have sacrificed quality for cost. If Lelon were to use its resources on low-end products with little margin, it would eventually impact its overall profitability and competitiveness. Lelon has always insisted on delivering premium quality products since its establishment.Actively engaging in new technology development and vertical integrationLelon has been able to come out ahead in the competitive market of aluminum electrolytic capacitors due to their long-term devotion to the R&D of advanced technologies. In addition to their own professional R&D team, they have also hired technical consultants from Japan to help refine their technology and quality systems. Furthermore, Lelon has been collaborating with Industrial Technology Research Institute to jointly research critical technologies and participate in the research of material suppliers and customers in order to develop products that cater to market needs.Lelon has generated impressive results in terms of its patents. It has obtained multiple patents in Taiwan, China and Japan, including ones for a V-chip vibration-proof back plate, a vibration-proof capacitor, a capacitor electrolytic solution with heat resistance and high spark voltage, electrolytic capacitors with optimum cooling, and horizontal capacitors. With growing public awareness of the need to protect the environment and an increasingly strict enforcement of environmental protection laws, the supply of aluminum foil for aluminum electrolytic capacitors has become rather limited. Wu pointed out that in an attempt to minimize the impact of market instability and maintain a steady supply for its customers, Lelon had already begun to search for new material suppliers prior to the Japan 3/11 earthquake and conducted testing on a variety of materials in order to understand the characteristics of the materials and the type of capacitors they were suitable for.Demand for polymer capacitors is rising with exciting developments in quick chargingA growing number of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets now feature quick charging, which requires the use of matching quick chargers. Quick chargers must meet more stringent requirements than conventional chargers and need polymer capacitors to match product design specifications. Polymer capacitors are also used in cloud computing equipment, telecommunication equipment, and power supplies. Lelon has accumulated years of experience in manufacturing polymer capacitors and will be able to produce close to 100 million polymer capacitors per month. This number includes the monthly capacity of 60 million polymer capacitors produced on the equipment acquired from Matsuki Polymer last year, and Lelon's original monthly capacity of 35 million polymer capacitors. After the completion of this expansion, which is expected to happen this year, Lelon will become a leading manufacturer of SMD polymer capacitors made outside of Japan. Benefiting from an increasing market demand, polymer capacitors will become a major revenue growth driver for Lelon this year.Wu remarked that Lelon has adopted a flexible production approach. It is able to quickly adjust the production line according to order changes and thereby meet their customers' delivery schedules. The purchase of Matsuki Polymer's production equipment of polymer capacitors was completed efficiently and economically. This deal will assist in moving up the company's original scheduled date to expand its production capacity and upgrade its production equipment. It will also further enhance the company's competitiveness.Lelon has made remarkable progress in the market of aluminum electrolytic capacitors and has become a chosen partner of multiple global companies by maintaining its goal of providing premium quality aluminum electrolytic capacitors. As it looks forward to a promising future, Lelon will devote additional resources to the development of high-end aluminum electrolytic capacitors, focusing its efforts on the high-end electronics markets.Jimmy Wu, General Manager of Lelon ElectronicsLelon focuses on the development of high-end aluminum electrolytic capacitors, and on actively expanding its high-end electronics customer base.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has grown to become more mature due to aggressive development by related players over the past few years and is now able to support more applications including autonomous driving, robots and voice assistant platforms. NVIDIA has been a pioneer of AI technology development and its expertise on GPU parallel computing also makes the company one of the top suppliers of deep learning hardware.GPUs originally served only as an engine for stimulating human imagination, conjuring up virtual worlds in video games and Hollywood films, but after over 20 years of development since 1999, NVIDIA's GPUs are now able to simulate human intelligence, running deep learning algorithms and acting as the brain of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world.When asked about what is the definition of AI and what AI is capable of doing, NVIDIA general manager and vice president of Accelerated Computing business unit Ian Buck said it is better to think it as a new way of doing computing. AI has grown to become more known by people throughout the past decade because of its ability to replace the traditional algorithms and instead of needing human to give specific instructions for it to process, its neural network is able to figure out the algorithms itself from data.By giving a few million images of an object to an image network, it will be able to learn the most efficient way to detect the object. This is actually a new way of computing and instead of writing the code manually, people can let AI figures out the code for them, Buck noted.At Computex 2017, NVIDIA announced partnerships with Taiwan-based server players including Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Inventec, Quanta Computer and Wistron to develop GPU-oriented datacenter products, aiming to fulfill market demand for AI cloud computing hardware.NVIDIA will provide these server players early access to its HGX reference architecture based on Microsoft's Project Olympus initiative, Facebook's Big Basin systems and NVIDIA'sDGX-1 AL supercomputers, as well as its GPU computing technologies and design guidelines to help them develop GPU-accelerated systems for hyperscale data centers.Buck pointed out that via the cooperation, server players can choose how they wish to design the layout of their datacenter server systems and the components they wish to adopt to create differentiation from each other and provide added value for their customers. NVIDIA's engineers will maintain close communication with these players to ensure they receive the support needed for hardware buildups, so the players are able to conduct development of datacenter server systems in the least amount of time and quickly release their products to market.NVIDIA is fully aware that clients want to have special customization such as form factor and method of cooling, for their server products, and therefore is working with the ODMs to create products using NVIDIA'sHGX-1 architecture.NVIDIA's vice president of Solutions Architecture and Engineering team Marc Hamilton also gave detail on NVIDIA's latest technology. He noted that the HGX reference design is created meant for the high-performance, efficiency and scaling requirements that cloud datacenter servers need and it will also serve as the basic architecture for ODMs to design their cloud computing datacenter servers.The standard HGX design architecture includes eight NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators in the SXM2 form factor and connected in a cube mesh using NVIDIA NVLink high-speed interconnects and optimized PCIe topologies. With a modular design, HGX enclosures are suited for deployment in existing data center racks across the globe, using hyperscale CPU nodes as needed, Hamilton added.However, this is not the first time NVIDIA has established collaboration with server players. In early March, NVIDIA announced collaboration with Microsoft to push a new hyperscale GPU accelerator to drive AI cloud computing: The HGX-1 hyperscale GPU accelerator, an open-source design released in conjunction with Microsoft's Project Olympus.The new architecture is designed to meet the demand for AI computing in the cloud – in fields such as autonomous driving, personalized healthcare, human voice recognition, data and video analytics, and molecular simulations. It is powered by eight NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs in each chassis, as well as NVIDIA NVLink interconnect technology and the PCIe standard – enabling a CPU to dynamically connect to any number of GPUs. This allows cloud service providers that standardize on the HGX-1 infrastructure to offer customers a range of CPU and GPU machine instance configurations.NVIDIA believes that cloud workloads are growing more diverse and complex than ever, and the highly modular design of the HGX-1 allows for optimal performance no matter the workload. It also provides up to 100 times faster deep learning performance compared with legacy CPU-based servers, and is estimated to deliver one-fifth the cost for conducting AI training and one-tenth the cost for AI inferencing.With its flexibility to work with data centers across the globe, HGX-1 offers existing hyperscale data centers a quick, simple path to be ready for AI.Buck pointed out that NVIDIA currently has two major areas where it can contribute in the AI market. One is in the datacenter, a lot of end devices actually need to communicate back to datacenters to get answers and NVIDIA has been focusing on developing AI technologies and training the neural network to learn new things. NVIDIA also works with its partners to develop software and hardware and is supplying kits including Cuda, cuDNN and TensorRT, which leading frameworks and applications can easily tap into, to accelerate AI and research.The second area is the GPU used in devices. An example is autonomous driving system. Since a car cannot only rely on datacenter to drive, equipping a super computer into car is a necessary work for the application. NVIDIA has several solutions including Jetson embedded platform and GPUs that are used for datacenter, can be adopted into the super computer.Microsoft, NVIDIA and Ingrasys, a Foxconn subsidiary, collaborated to architect and design the HGX-1 platform, which they are sharing widely as part of Microsoft's Project Olympus contribution to the Open Compute Project, a consortium whose mission is to apply the benefits of open source to hardware, and rapidly increase the pace of innovation in, near and around the data center and beyond.To further improve the HGX platform's performance, NVIDIA launched Volta, its new GPU computing architecture, created to drive the next wave of advancement in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing in early May at NVIDIA's GTC show. The first Volta-based processor, the NVIDIA Tesla V100 data center GPU, is able to bring extraordinary speed and scalability for AI inferencing and training, as well as for accelerating HPC and graphics workloads.Hamilton noted that Volta, NVIDIA's seventh-generation GPU architecture, is built with 21 billion transistors and is able to output a performance that is equivalent to 100 CPUs in deep learning applications.Volta provides a 5x improvement over Pascal, the previous-generation NVIDIAGPU architecture, in peak teraflops, and 15x over the Maxwell architecture, launched two years ago. This performance surpasses by 4x the improvements predicted by Moore's law.Datacenters need to deliver exponentially greater processing power as these networks become more complex. And they need to efficiently scale to support the rapid adoption of highly accurate AI-based services, such as natural language virtual assistants, and personalized search and recommendation systems.Volta will become the new standard for high performance computing. It offers a platform for HPC systems to excel at both computational science and data science for discovering insights. By pairing CUDA cores and the new Volta Tensor Core within a unified architecture, a single server with Tesla V100 GPUs can replace hundreds of commodity CPUs for traditional HPC.Technologies include Tensor Cores designed to speed up AI workloads. The Tesla V100 GPU is equipped with 640 Tensor Cores to deliver 120 teraflops of deep learning performance, equivalent to the performance of 100 CPUs.An improved NVLink provides the next generation of high-speed interconnect linking GPUs, and GPUs to CPUs, with up to two times the throughput of the prior generation NVLink.Developed in collaboration with Samsung, the GPU supports 900GB/s HBM2 DRAM, allowing the architecture to achieve 50% more memory bandwidth than previous generation GPUs, essential to support the computing throughput of Volta.Both NVIDIA Tesla P100 and V100 GPU accelerators are compatible with HGX. This allows for immediate upgrades of all HGX-based products from P100 to V100 GPUs.With new NVIDIA Volta architecture-based GPUs offering three times the performance of its predecessor, ODMs can feed market demand with new products based on the latest NVIDIA technology available.HGX is an ideal reference architecture for cloud providers seeking to host the new NVIDIAGPU Cloud platform. The NVIDIAGPU Cloud platform manages a catalog of fully integrated and optimized deep learning framework containers, including Caffe2, Cognitive Toolkit, MXNet and TensorFlow.NVIDIA is seeing strong growth in AI applications across different channels, noted Buck adding that people are highly interested in hyperscale cloud, traditional OEM and AI-supported personal workstations. Demand from AI developers and researchers for high-end consumer-based PCs and notebooks has also been picking up.Currently, all major public cloud computing service providers have adopted GPU-power datacenter servers for their calculation need and the driving force for such a trend is AI, Buck said.This fact also corresponds to the latest market trend. In 2016, Taiwan's server revenues increased 4.8% on year, reaching NT$555.8 billion (US$18.6 billion) because of increased server demand worldwide. Revenues are estimated to grow to NT$588.6 billion in 2017 as demand from datacenter clients including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft is expected to rise further.With demand for products featuring AI, such as robots, smart voice assistants, and autonomous driving solutions, continuing to see growth, GPU-oriented datacenter server shipments are expected to gain popularity in the industry.Although many of the related applications are not yet fully mature, business opportunities have grown quickly over the past few years. With NVIDIA's close involvement and assistance, especially on the software side, AI is expected to become a new growth driver for the IT industry and a new business direction that Taiwan-based hardware players can venture into to seek new opportunities.NVIDIA HGX reference architectureNVIDIA Tesla V100

According to GTM Research's Global Solar Demand Monitor, global PV installations are expected to reach 85GW in 2017, after seeing a 30% growth to 78GW in 2016. China as a major solar energy producer has become the world's largest market of photovoltaic technologies.The 11th SNEC International Photovoltaic Power Generation Conference & Exhibition 2017 in Shanghai was a global, professional and colossal industrial event with far-reaching influences in China, Asia and other parts of the world. As a veteran that has contributed to the development of the solar energy industry, Heraeus released several innovative metallization pastes at the event and debuted its total solution bundling the company's technologies, products and services to bring optimum values for customers.In his interview by Digitimes, Dr. Weiming Zhang, Chief Technology Officer of Heraeus Photovoltaics, pointed out Heraeus securely holds its leading position in terms of the market share of PV metallization pastes, with widening distance between itself and its rivals, and will continue to launch solutions for renewable energy to contribute to an expected reduction of 50% in the levelized cost of renewable energies in the next five years.At the event, Heraeus also announced it has delivered 4,000 tons of silver pastes to its customers in eight years since it developed its first metallization paste in 2008. The number technically translates into around 3 trillion crystalline silicon solar cells able to produce more than 133GW, enough to sustain 156 Longyangxia Dam Solar Parks, the world's largest solar farm.Interview summaryQ: Heraeus has grandly unveiled eight new products and services at SNEC 2017. Could you highlight the reasons behind these important product launches at SNEC 2017 and their respective features?A: Heraeus attaches great importance to our development in the China market. By announcing several metallization pastes at the event this year, we are making these high efficiency new products and services available to our China customers as a first priority. With the metallization pastes as vehicles, we help customers analyze their production process, find solutions and raise efficiency. Heraeus will continue to devote resources to R&D of new photovoltaic solutions. This is also Heraeus' commitment to customers.First of all, for PERC cells, the SOL9641B series helps boost efficiency to a whole new level. On mono- and poly-crystalline ULDE and PERC cells, the series raises cell efficiency by up to 0.2% with its improved finger geometry. Better metallization contact and less shading enable this efficiency boost. In addition, the organic vehicle system for ultra-fine line printing has been improved. Mass production of this series has kicked off.For black-silicon solar cells, which we expect to become the mainstream poly-crystalline silicon technology this year and the next, Heraeus offers the 9641A series to address the big challenge that the nano-structured black-silicon cell surface introduces to metallization pastes. Its specifically designed formula features a unique glass chemistry and fine-tuned organic media to perfectly fit the particular surface morphology of black silicon with superior adhesion and tension.Furthermore, the SOL9641AX/BX series is custom-made for the knotless screen printing technology. Compared to conventional wire mesh, this emerging technology gives the paste more room to pass through and is also expected to become mainstream. Designed to fully leverage the advantages of knotless printing screens, the whole new SOL9641AX/BX series features superior printability, unique paste rheology, and a significantly higher aspect ratio on ultra-fine-line fingers, likely to achieve a 0.1% efficiency gain.Heraeus has also launched a double-print package for customers transitioning from traditional technologies. The upgraded double-print package with SOL9642A and SOL9642B silver pastes carries all the advantages of the SOL9641A and 9641B platforms. An outstanding efficiency gain of up to 0.1% is enabled through improved double-print Ultra-fine-line (UFL) printability with a higher aspect ratio, which translates to lower costs and higher performance for customers.Finally, for n-type cells, Heraeus offers the SOL9360 breakthrough metallization paste, an upgrade from the previous generation 9350 series. An efficiency gain of 0.1% can be achieved with the fine finger width. Customers have confirmed to have achieved higher efficiencies with significantly less paste usage, thereby considerably lowering a cell's cost per watt. We think n-type cells will ultimately set a benchmark for photovoltaic cells, as they mature from a technology with high barriers to a product with differentiating features.Q: How are customers in China responding to these new products you mentioned? Are there any success stories you can share with us?A: Heraeus is working with major customers in China to put these new products to use. For example, we are supplying SOL9641BX knotless screen metallization paste to EGing Photovoltaic Technology, which is also the first customer of this product. EGing is able to build up production capacities for mono-PERC cells using knotless screen printing technology and SOL9641BX paste, achieving a 0.1% efficiency gain and boosting the power output of mono-PERC modules up to 310W. With further optimized production processes, the performance of EGing mono-PERC modules can be even higher.We think PERC cell development is only now at phase 1.0 (about 21.5% conversion efficiency) with ample room for improvement in terms of materials and processes. What we call PERC1.5 can provide a 23% conversion efficiency. Lab tests now show PERC cells will be able to deliver higher than 24% conversion efficiency in phase 2.0. The market has promising potential and commercialization can be expected in the next five years.In addition, Heraeus and Jolywood have entered into a strategic R&D cooperation agreement to jointly develop high efficiency n-type mono bifacial solar cells and promote their applications and popularity. Heraeus' frontside and backside silver pastes enabled Jolywood to produce n-type bifacial solar cells in volume last year. This year, Jolywood is strengthening the collaboration with Heraeus to further increase n-type cells' frontside and backside efficiencies, cells in mass production currently reaching 21.3% frontside and 19.2% backside efficiencies, a world-leading performance.Q: Further to the success stories of your China customers, could you talk about Heraeus' future plans for expansion into the solar energy industry in China? Compared to the rest of the world, what are the characteristics of the customers in China and what product features do they place great importance on? How do you envision business growth over the next three to five years?A: When Heraeus first set foot in the solar energy business in 2008, our first customer was from China. As China is the world's largest solar energy market, we pay great attention to our investments and strategies toward this market and this is why we are headquartered in Shanghai. Also for this reason, we provide package solutions as well as products to bring optimized values to customers. With our large service teams established in Shanghai, we are continuingly accumulating success stories from key customers and expanding at larger scale.Heraeus invests a double-digit percentage of its photovoltaic technology revenues into R&D every year and will keep devoting more resources. Our worldwide R&D team comprising nearly 80 members will continue to grow. Planning for products and services will include short-, mid-, and long-term strategies. Collaborations with research and academic institutions will help maintain our edge in future technological advancements of the solar power industry. This is also why customers trust us and are willing to engage in extensive partnerships with us.We have observed significant changes in customer characteristics in China over recent years. They have transitioned from technology followers to technology leaders. Not only do they go after spurring growth in scale, they also pursue technological upgrade. In terms of supply chain relationships, they value long-term partnerships more than mere buying and selling deals and care about win-win gains from close and deep collaborations.Our task force in China added 50 new recruits last year and will keep growing this year to provide customers premium local and timely services. It's no doubt that China will be a key market in the next three to five years.Q: Please share Heraeus' views on the global trend of the solar energy market. Please also give an analysis on Heraeus' market share of paste solutions. What are Heraeus' leading edges compared to other competing brand suppliers?A: The solar energy market experienced a 20%-25% growth in 2016 from 2015 and the first quarter of 2017 is likely to also deliver a yearly increase of 20%-25% compared to the corresponding period of 2016. However, the installations in China in 2017 will not be as high as the level seen in 2016; it's likely to stay flat. This will impact small-to- mid scale suppliers with less significant influence on large suppliers. Other parts of the world such as Southeast Asia, India and the US can expect to see more optimistic growth projections.With a 30% share in the market of metallization pastes for solar cells according to the latest statistics, Heraeus securely holds the No. 1 spot, with widening distance from the second place holder.This market is seeing many newcomers. However, it should be highlighted that Heraeus' advantages come from its ability to reduce costs and significantly boost performance for customers. Furthermore, we think that short term sales relationships will not sustain business growth and trust that only by strengthening collaborations with technologically capable manufacturers, we will be able to maximize values. As such, we are fully committed to R&D and continue to extend product offerings as we value long-term partnerships, not just short term sales.Q: Metallization pastes for solar cells are one of the key materials with deciding influences on the conversion efficiency of solar cells and the related patent technologies are also critical. What are Heraeus' latest advances on innovative patents? Also, we are closely watching your patent litigation with a competitor based in Taiwan. Could you comment on the recent litigation developments?A: Heraeus places great emphasis on patents and holds more than 300 patents through internal organic growth, ongoing R&D and even external acquisitions, expanding its patent portfolio by 10% to 15% every year. The huge investments in patents are due to Heraeus' belief that the solar energy market will eventually progress toward positive, healthy, orderly and sustainable development and Heraeus is preparing itself for this.For example, the fact that Heraeus is able to maintain a leading market share in Japan is due to the trust that Japanese customers place in Heraeus technologies and the guarantee of long-term relationships. This perfectly illustrates the Heraeus Photovoltaics advantages.Heraeus is confident that the patent litigation with the Taiwan-based vendor will come to a conclusion in the second or third quarter of this year barring unforeseen circumstances. We believe the court will make a fair ruling. Meanwhile, we will further our legal pursuit against the other party not only in writing but also with actual follow-up actions as well.Dr. Weiming Zhang, Chief Technology Officer of Heraeus Photovoltaics

As part of Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen's five-plus-two innovative industries initiative, Taiwan is looking to transform into a center of biotechnology and medical R&D in Asia and has budgeted NT$10.94 billion (about US$360 million) in 2017 for a biomedical promotion plan.Recently, Corning Life Sciences VP Richard M Eglen visited Taiwan for the first time to meet with ITRI and discuss possible future partnerships between Corning and Taiwan organizations. Digitimes sat down with Eglen to discuss key trends in the life sciences market.Q: In Taiwan, Corning is known for its glass products, can you provide some background for the Life Sciences Division at Corning?A: Life sciences at Corning got stated about 100 years ago with the invention of Pyrex glass (Pyrex is a Corning brand name). Pyrex was a mainstay of the life sciences and chemistry industry for many years. For example, Pyrex containers were used when they were first scaling up insulin production, Pyrex glass was used when penicillin was first being scaled up and Corning was involved when Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine.The thing about Pyrex is that it is very resistant to chemical damage so it is perfect in terms of surviving broad ranges of hot and cold temperatures, which is a necessary trait for certain types of experimentation. It is also perfect for holding chemicals since there is no interaction between the glass and the chemicals. So it quickly became a standard product for chemical research as well as biological experimentation.Since then, Corning Life Sciences has moved more toward plastics but we remain focused on the same principles that have made us a success in the past.Q: What is the focus now for the Life Sciences Division?A: There are three major areas where we focus. The first is on standard laboratory products. Almost anywhere you go in a life science laboratory you will see Corning lab bottles or containers.Another area is in the growth of cell cultures. When it comes to growing cells in the lab you need specialized products that can host the cells and that are really a fit when it comes to growing the cell cultures.Q: What do you mean when you say specialized products?A: Well, you have to offer a range of vessels that come in a variety of shapes and feature an assortment of coatings. Some of the coatings are naturally derived like agar but other vessels need to be chemically coated in order to make the plastic more friendly to the cells; in a way you need to influence the cell biology.Q: What is the third area of focus?A: The growth of cell cultures has naturally flowed into the area of bio production. For example, drug development needs to be able to move from basic research or cell discovery into mass production of vaccines or the mass production of biologically based drugs, just like any other industry. As a manufacturing company, Corning has strong understanding of this area and we are a key player in that ecosystem.Q: When we see plastic bottles or containers, even in the medical field, the first thought of many people may be of inexpensive production from China rather than a value-added brand such as Corning. How can you compete in the market? Is it the quality of the products or the specific coatings that enables Corning to be a major player in this area?A: Of course the first point is the high quality of everything we produce. If you are doing a life science research project the quality of material you are using has to be perfect, really. For many researchers, the Corning brand is a differentiator and we are instantly recognizable in the lab due to the orange caps on all our products.We also have some proprietary designs on the vessels and some proprietary coating that we put on the plastic. But like any business, you cannot simply look at the products; you need to look at the entire operation. As I mentioned previously, Corning is a manufacturing company so we also understand the importance of a reliable and efficient logistical supply chain and the importance of customer service.For example, we have application laboratories all around Asia where customers can receive support from Corning in areas varying from the design of their experiments -- and we do that for pharma and academic customers -- to the best way to supply products that can have requirements such as being very sensitive to temperature. So when you talk about quality, a lot of things can be done that stand behind the product.Q: This is your first visit to Taiwan. Can you talk about some of the trends Corning Life Sciences is seeing in the Taiwan market and why they are of interest to you?A: Like many regions in Asia, Taiwan is facing an aging population and low fertility rates, which has led to a growing interest in healthcare. To give you some numbers, the percentage of the population that is 65 or older accounted for about 11.5% of the population of Taiwan in 2013. That share will rise to 20% by 2020. So you have this aging population which means there is an increase in demand for related health care professions, such as for therapists, but there is also strong government interest in terms of looking at a biological approach to addressing this issue.With regard to Taiwan's five-plus-two programs, areas such as healthcare, biotechnology and biological drug production are seeing increased investment. So my purpose here is to evaluate the situation in terms of the interest level in terms of products but to also see if we can develop partnerships with local organizations. For example, I will be meeting with ITRI to discuss technology associated with 3D cell cultures, which is an area that ITRI is interested in researchingQ: Can you speak briefly about trends in 3D cell cultures?A: As you can imagine, cells grow in your body in three dimensions to form tissue but historically biologists have grown cells on a flat surface - think of the petri dish most people were first introduced to in high school. In a petri dish, cells grow on the agar in flat sheets. This may be a convenient way of growing cells but there is an increasing recognition that cells don't behave in the body like they do in a petri dish so there is strong interest in developing technologies that allow cells to grow in three dimensions, which is closer to the way cells grow in nature.And this is not just for basic research but it can also be used to produce better models for disease. Think of a cancer tumor. Tumors are 3D spheres. So there is an interest in doing drug development on cells that are grown in 3D as well.This has been a huge area of interest at Corning Life Sciences. We already know how to engineer plastics. We know how to coat plastics and manufacture them at scale. So now we have gone about producing new design systems to let people do 3D cell cultures and there has been strong interest in this worldwide.Q: How is it done?A: The sheet of cells is grown on a surface where they come together and form a ball of cells. Then, for example, maybe that ball of cells will behave like a tumor does and the related drug research that is done on that ball would be like how a drug would react with a tumor from a patient. It is a new way of doing drug discovery.And the potential can go all the way to making complicated tissues, where you can even print the cells or print tissue structures just you can with 3D printers. So you are getting the authentic biology that you don't get on a flat dish.Q: How new is this development?A: The concept of using 3D cell structures has been in the background for many years but it has really accelerated in the past five years. The reason is that technology companies have become increasingly involved in making the technology simple and easy to use.And this is where a manufacturing company like Corning comes into play in the ecosystem. Previously, this type of research may have been done in isolated research labs but each case was different and the technologies were very unique to that laboratory. So the results didn't scale and were hard to use by others due to complicated protocols, etc.Q: How big is the market?A: Globally, the market for cell cultures is about US$700 million and is growing at about 10% a year.Q: What are some of the key challenges for the life sciences industry moving forward?A: First of all, the biology is moving quickly. People used to make vaccines using chicken eggs, now you can grow them in a dish. So you have this dramatic acceleration of the biological methods. The next challenge is bringing scale to the technical solutions. A research team may be able to achieve something in a closed sterile system but they need to turn it into a manufacturing process because you want to scale production. For example, demand for a new rabies vaccine is very high and would come from all over the globe. So you would need to figure out how to satisfy that demand. And that brings us to the final challenge. Different regions of the world have different barriers when it comes to regulations and barriers for introducing new drugs. After all, we are talking about medicines and this means requiring medical approval.Richard M Eglen, VP and general manager, Life Sciences, CorningPhoto: Company

CEVA is a global leader that provides the semiconductor industry with digital signal processing (DSP) silicon intellectual property (SIP). The firm has been developing DSP technology since 1991. DSP is capable of real-time data processing and can satisfy and support applications that require real-time response without any delays. Some of DSP's mainstream applications are ultra-high-speed voice processing, background noise elimination, data compression, and signal quality and efficiency enhancements that require mathematical algorithms. CEVA's DSP cores can help smart devices offer clearer sounds, sharper images and faster data processing, and various smart devices such as smartphones and wearable devices adopt DSP technology.CEVA is listed on NASDAQ and more than 7.5 billion chips carrying CEVA technology have been widely used in telecommunication, network, multimedia and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. During the CEVA Technology Symposium 2016, Mr. Moshe Sheier, director of strategic marketing at CEVA, gave an interview where he talked about the trends and future developments of DSP applications.CEVA targeting the rapid growth of cellular IoT devicesThe semiconductor industry has seen a lot of major mergers in recent years to cope with market and technology process changes. For example, Softbank acquired ARM for an astonishing figure and it has been one of the most significant acquisitions in the semiconductor industry in 2016. Now many firms have made significant moves and investments in IoT, racing to establish a foothold in what is seen as the most promising emerging sector in the IT industry. With the smartphone and tablet markets close to saturation, the next big thing will be IoT applications.Many IoT devices have relied on smartphones that support short-distance communication protocols, such as Bluetooth and Zigbee, which has limited the growth of IoT's popularity. And industrial IoT applications face different kind of problems when used outdoors or in the wilderness, such as a lack of electric sockets or WiFi access points. With the coming of Industry 4.0, IoT devices have entered a new era where low power consumption, low cost and long-distance connection are vital. The connectivity problems crippling outdoor IoT devices are one of the crucial problems that need to be solved.International telecommunication associations and organizations like 3GPP have sped up the standardization of NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT), allowing firms in the industry to step up efforts to develop various NB-IoT nodes for different market segments. Because of this, Sheier sees a new generation of IoT devices moving towards being independent of smartphones by relying on more sensors, edge processing and low power wide area technologies. As telecom firms are looking to use LTE frequencies to construct NB-IoT systems and adopt LTE-compatible infrastructures, many major chip vendors have devoted large amounts of resources to developments for cellular IoT networks. Now the industry is eagerly anticipating IoT devices with multiple sensors and long-distance wide area connectivity.According to market research done by Ericsson, the number of long-distance cellular IoT devices will likely grow from 400 million units in 2016 to 2.1 billion by 2022 with a 30% cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR). The market research also predicts that by 2018, the total number of IoT devices will exceed the number of mobile phones. In terms of semiconductor chips, smartphones account for 1-2 billion devices per year but chip demand from IoT devices may soar to 30-50 billion cumulative units, driving powerful growth in the semiconductor market. Sheier is very optimistic about the future of cellular IoT.Computer vision and image recognition DSP applications lead machine learning boomComputer vision and image recognition technologies used in self-driving vehicles and drones are an important development for DSP applications. In addition to improving the quality of the images, CEVA has invested a great amount of resources to develop vision applications, and with always-on, always-sensing, and always-connected technologies, combined with Big Data processing and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for machine learning, CEVA's DSP has successfully expanded its reach from monitoring and security systems to emerging applications such as smart city and smart medical ones. The technology has also been welcomed by mainstream brand vendors.CEVA works with strategic partners on developing edge AI technologies and uses neural network to develop machine learning applications. This year, CEVA has introduced the second generation of CEVA Deep Neural Network (CDNN2) software framework to further simplify the machine learning process for low power embedded systems.Combining lower power consumption and machine learning technologies, CEVA's strategic partner, emza Visual Sense, showcased an IoT visual sensor with power consumption of only 2mW at this year's symposium. With support by always-on technology, a DSP and special software algorithm, it allows IoT devices to perform automatic image recognition. The visual sensor can be operated over a long period of time using batteries and is a highly flexible solution.This type of battery-powered AI visual sensors that can be used for long periods of time is quite suitable for long-term and elderly care. Although such devices may not offer high-resolution images or replace monitoring systems equipped with high-end cameras, they offer smart medical and smart city solutions featuring machine learning and real-time response.Software integration is the keyThe development of Big Data analytics and AI has been stimulating the development of different IoT systems. Sheier cited examples from the pharmaceutical and biomedical sectors. During the transportation of pharmaceutical products, temperature control is crucial. The data collected through various sensors of the IoT systems and processed using different software algorithms can predict the impact on the pharmaceutical products caused by different transportation vehicles and the length of transportation time. Based on the information, remedial measures can be adopted to make sure the products arrive in time for the patients. This example shows the important role that software with precise algorithms play.With the increasing popularity of machine learning and Big Data analytics, a lot of software now comes with value-added services. To accommodate this trend, CEVA has been focusing on enhancing the development environment and interface for software, in particular, the machine learning technology based on the deep neural network. Addressing embedded systems' limitations in memory and computing abilities, CEVA has developed offline operation environment by setting the development of machine learning in exterior systems and using training framework and library such as Caffe and TensorFlow to transfer the result of machine learning onto the CEVA embedded processors.Using CEVA Network Generator, this type of software development for machine learning systems can shift the complicated neural network structure and weight, and turn it into a customized neural network enabling real-time response for embedded systems that are undermined by power loss and lack of memory. It is meant for IoT applications that require fast response time, have low tolerance of delay, and do not wish to rely on cloud network. With CEVA's new CDNN2 structure and the highly flexible and customizable assessment and deployment kit (ADK), the integration with more sensors and smart devices can become easier.Based on many years of development and successful experiences in the IP industry, CEVA has won strong recognition for its innovative skills on quality and technology from Taiwan-based firms. The easy access to DSP and connectivity IP allow Taiwan-based IC design houses and OEM/ODM firms to target different market segments and avoid price competition by developing differentiating products for emerging applications such as cellular IoT. This is an opportunity to ride the IoT wave and achieve a win-win situation.CEVA Director of Strategic Marketing, Moshe Sheier

Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming powerful driving forces of business transformation. The technologies to connect devices for monitoring and managing things have inspired many startups to explore the immense possibilities in the IoT industry.According to Mckinsey 2015 report, the potential economic value of the IoT is estimated to be US$11.1 trillion per year in 2025. Although the value of improved health monitoring and consumer electronics could reach $1.1 trillion per year by 2025, the firm said that business-to-business (B2B) applications will create more value than purely consumer applications. While wristbands, fitness trackers and smart watches attract the most attention and can create significant values in past few years, the report suggested that the B2B business can generate nearly 70 percent of potential value enabled by IoT technologies. In other word, the B2B sector deserves more investment and resources.Enterprises do not want to slow down the pace of adopting IoT solution. however IoT technology such as cloud infrastructure, Hadoop, Big Data analytics schemes, open source software tools and etc are not easy tasks for enterprises. Some IT experts even worried that the required resources and technology will not be available for most of enterprises. That explains why only 21% of enterprises implement or test IoT solutions. Enterprises need more help from IoT technology providers.Founded in 2011, General Mobile Corporation, or called GMobi, is in response to the huge demand for mobile device industry and provide value-add services to assist enterprises to build up all content and allow developers to expand to the target markets with its unique PaaS(Platform as a Service) technologies. The company is aiming in emerging market including India, Russia, Middle East and south East Asia countries.Paul Wu, CEO of GMobi, talked about PaaS services in the interview with DIGITIMES. Prior to GMobi, Paul worked for developing internet platform for smartphones at MediaTek and Foxconn. His years of experiences in China allowed him to build up mobile service ecosystem with several China big online rivals. The cooperated project with Nokia in the early time, Paul highlighted, provided a great opportunity to deeply looking into the Indian mobile phone market. The strategy to go to Indian market is the clear goal for GMobi when starting developing global business.GMobi's Firmware Over-The-Air and Mobile Care technologies managing 160 millions devices in the worldToday, GMobi solutions provide an end-to-end, customized, firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating service for Android mobile devices. Currently, the GMobi enabled software management services are being used by OEM including smartphones, tablets, smart watches and wristbands, such as Micromax, Cherry, Advan, FLY, Intex and etc There are three key advantages as to why GMobi can leverage its previous mobile experiences to connected car industry:First of all, Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA). As Android operating system demands continue to grow, especially in emerging markets, through GMobi FOTA turnkey services, OEMs can always provide software updates to users with new OS versions, latest features and bugs fixed. The OTA solutions reduce customer services cost, fix any software issues, provide most up to date features in just a minute.It plays a pivotal role to increase brand loyalty and to build a corporate image for OEMS.The second is the Mobile Care. This is a unique software virtualization technologies applying to mobile devices to help OEMs to remotely manage the client mobile devices. GMobi Mobile Care include better software migration, increased device security and isolation, faster time to market, enhanced device performance, and cost savings. The Mobile Care solution bundles several reporting systems to generate statistics to track OTA status, bugs fixing, software version control and customer feedbacks.The third is GMobi's proven PaaS cloud platform currently managing 160 million devices and the volume continuous to grow. This is the strength building upon over-the-air software and firmware upgrading services in the smartphones, smart TVs and wearable markets. GMobi has a very strong presence in OTA service in the world, Paul proudly pointed out.Consumers in emerging markets have high expectations from local brands to offer innovative mobile devices, which is why OEMs choose GMobi solutions. It is reliable, flexible and proven services to handle versatile requirements from highly competitive and rapid changing markets.Successful in India, the GMobi first way to successThe Indian market has immense potential of smartphone business. It is the second most populous country in the world but lower penetration rate of mobile phones. In emerging markets, local OEMs are taking away market share from the world leading mobile phone brands such as Samsung. These local OEMs are successful because they know how to create competitive pricing, customize user experiences and offer the same features as other international brands, said Paul. He was determine to enter India market and initiated the cooperated projects with Micromax in 2011.Paul knew Micromax Informatics since he was still at MediaTek. At that time, Micromax started its business as a distributor for Nokia mobile phones. When Mediatek introduced all ranges of chipsets which provide turnkey solutions to many local mobile phone brands, Micromax took the opportunity and became an OEM itself and slowly build up its leading position in the local marketLike any new players that started their business, Micromax suffered from the Time-To-Market pressure, it needs to establish a rigid production schedule with suppliers just to be able to deliver products with very short lead time. Mostly, there was no enough time to test all software features . GMobi's FOTA solution provides in time support to help Micromax to shorten its time to market and software development cycles to win the market share and strong presence in India market.There is a story to show how GMobi leverage its unique technical strength to support Micromax solving the local constrains on interoperability and Internet infrastructure. The full version of Android operating system takes about 1 gigabyte file size. In India, the internet connection speed varied by regions and Telecoms ranged from 2G to 4G LTE protocols. The 1 gigabyte sized OTA could not be transmitted in a 2G network. GMobi fixed this problem by reducing software package size and include only the patches files. GMobi R&D teams introduced tools to build OTA files only by incremental codes between different Android OS. The technology removed common build file and provided a cleaner build file, which is much smaller than the original full version. GMobi OTA technology reduced the transfer file sizes from gigabyte to megabyte and delivered equally benefits to all mobile devices that connect to GMobi platform. With the confidence of Indian market development, Micromax push APP stores and other mobile advertising services to ramp up the profits from smartphone market. Both mobile advertising and payment are important services that help Micromax to gain financial incomes. These two features allowing users to make in app purchase, make payment via text messages and mobile wallets or subscribe certain services that are pushed to their phones.. The paymen will added to the monthly phone bill or deducted from a pre-paid balance used by mobile phone operators, It is a very good solution consider the credit card penetration rate is still very low in India. Each transaction contribute to both GMobi and OEM's revenue. There are 40 million smartphones connected to GMobi platform. The growth is promising.Other than our successful business engagement with local mobile brands, GMobi also have substantial development in connected devices such as Smart TVs, wearables and POS. Meanwhile, Paul also mentioned that more robots coming to factories. China manufacturers will significantly accelerate their use of robots over the next few years as expected to dramatically boost productivity and took advantage of low-cost manufacturing against payroll growth of labors. The robots also require software upgrade. There will be more business opportunities for GMobi.GMobi delivers a superior OTA service targeting the automotive market with Trend Micro IoT security technologiesGlobal automotive companies are more aware of the importance of a software-driven user experience inside the cars. The infotainment, navigation, telematics, and rear-seat entertainment systems become high-end embedded systems with which new features can be added through constant software updates. This will be a perfect place for developing OTA services. Carmakers are looking into OTA technologies can add functions for new entertainment and safety services throughout the car's lifetime. When combining software upgrade and automotive-grade systems, a proper secured separation should be put in place to prevent any malware or misbehaved applications from gaining access to the car's functionality. This is why cyber security playing an important role for Car OTA services.GMobi is in collaboration with Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cyber security solutions to provide layered data security to protect information on mobile devices, endpoints, gateways, servers and cloud platforms. Trend Micro offers IoT security SDKs (Software Development Kit) to provide the full visibility of risk assessment. The combined strength of both parties will enable global car manufacturers and mobile device suppliers to enhance service offerings, reduce development costs, and explore mobile application opportunities under a secured networking environment and keeping the systems securely isolated.Paul highlighted, GMobi's gaol is to provide OTA service for car manufacturers starting in 2018. GMobi has hosted several ongoing projects to kickoff and explore the business opportunities with European and Japanese car manufacturers. Frankly speaking, although some car components and system are too critical to be compromised and it will take time for car manufacturers to put OTA solutions in place for those parts, but in some it is a chance for infotainment system such as navigation, multimedia, and climate control to automatically upgrade through GMobi OTA services. OTA services for infotainment system can save up over hundreds dollars cost in one car, and ultimately tens of millions dollars in total savings per year.GMobi is one of the top 3 OTA service providers in the world. GMobi will take the opportunity to leap into the new industry. With the essential foundation gaining from the smartphone markets and experience to host more than 160 million devices, GMobi is planning to expand into car OTA services with the support of all employees and a strong determination to win. OTA service is an unavoidable trend, but the market demands and customers expectations are also moving GMobi forward. GMobi will soon become a leading supplier for comprehensive and full-featured OTA solution in automotive industry.Paul Wu, CEO of GMobi

In 2012 Google set off a big bang in the artificial intelligence (AI) community and brought deep learning into the eye of the public when it announced that Andrew Ng and the Google Brain project had taught an army of servers how to recognize cats simply by showing them hours and hours of YouTube videos. This was a milestone in the AI industry in that Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) were used for machine learning and it has revolutionized artificial intelligence and the analysis of big data, dramatically influencing how the challenges of applications such as voice recognition and translation, medical analysis and self-driving automobiles are being approached. In addition, it has introduced a new computing model to the market, a model that quickly placed NVIDIA front and center in the deep learning community and which is now starting to deliver what NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang characterizes as superhuman results for the company.In its most recent quarterly results, NVIDIA announced record datacenter revenues of US$143 million, up 63% year on year (compared with 9% growth YoY for Intel) and up 47% sequentially, reflecting the enormous growth in deep learning.Hyperscale companies have been the fastest adopters since NVIDIA first began being involved in deep learning three years ago. NVIDIA GPUs today accelerate every major deep learning framework in the world. NVIDIA powers IBM Watson and Facebook's Big Sur server for AI, and the company's GPUs are in AI platforms at hyperscale giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba and Baidu for both training and real-time inference. Twitter has recently said they use NVIDIA GPUs to help users discover the right content among the millions of images and videos shared every day.And now with the launch of the NVIDIA DGX-1, the world's first purpose-built system for deep learning and based on NVIDIA's ambitious new Pascal GPU architecture, the company expects increased deep learning adoption within academia and the hyperscale landscape, as well as growing deployment among large enterprises.Neural networksWhen Ng approached machine learning with the Google Brain project, he saw that traditional coding, i.e. writing if-then statements to classify every feature of every object in every image would be too labor intensive for Google's massive video, image, and voice datasets. Instead, Ng used an A.I. algorithm called a Deep Neural Network (DNN) which works by training the computer program with data, without having to write traditional computer code.For neural networks, rather than having to write code to identify what a self-driving car is seeing on the road, or identify what an x-ray image is, researchers implement a framework and then feed it a lot of untagged data - in this case, 10 million YouTube video frames. The network transforms this input data by calculating a weighted sum over the inputs and applies a non-linear function to this transformation to calculate an intermediate state. The combination of these steps is called a neuron layer, and through repetition of these steps, the artificial neural network learns multiple layers of non-linear features, which it then combines in a final layer to create a prediction.However, one main issue with neural networks is that they are computationally greedy, and can thus be quite expensive if they involve too many neurons. Up to that point, most had been designed having 1-10 million connections. Ng wanted to utilize over one billion connections. But while he rethought the software side of the equation by using a DNN to make it more efficient, Ng stuck with a traditional approach on the hardware and simply leveraged 2,000 Google servers (16,000 cores and using 600,000 watts) from its datacenter to create a distributed computing infrastructure for training the neural network, at a cost of millions of dollars.It did not take long for researchers to realize that since neural networks at their core are based on matrix math (non-linear) and floating math, they were inherently well suited to be processed by GPUs, which can have up to 3500 parallel CUDA cores. But researchers were amazed at how well-suited GPUs were. A follow-up experiment was performed using a combination of GPUs and off-the-shelf hardware and the results of Google's neural network training experiment were achieved with just three commodity servers using 12 GPUs.This was a key turning point for deep learning, setting off dramatic growth in the market and perhaps more importantly, democratizing deep learning. There are only a handful of companies in the world that can dedicate 2,000 servers and 600,000 watts of power to a project but to get three servers at a cost of around US$50,000 is affordable enough for any research center at any division of a large company. And customers quickly started housing GPU-based solutions at data centers or plugging makeshift solutions into wall sockets at their offices. Even at the basic level, a single user can buy a GeForce to get going on deep learning or users can even just start accessing GPUs in the cloud.GPUs are not only cost efficient but they also allow researchers to be more productive. As previously mentioned, deep neural networks need to be trained by inputting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of images. This training takes time. For one image-recognition neural network called AlexNet, it took an NVIDIA TITAN X (that sells for less than US$1000) less than three days to train the model using the 1.2 million image ImageNet dataset, compared with over 40 days for a 16-core CPU.That was in 2015, and the results did not satisfy Jen-Hsun Huang, who challenged the company's engineering team to come up with a solution that could have AlexNet trained an order of magnitude faster. And while we all know that Moore's law doesn't improve performance 10x in one year, at this year's NVIDIA GTC (GPU Technology Conference) the DGX 1 was able to train AlexNet in only two hours. This also highlights Huang's commitment to achieving a post-Moore's Law era of computing acceleration, whereby new models are implemented in order to create productivity and efficiency gains. GPU computing is not only a major new computing model but one that is now going mainstream.And it is not just hyperscale firms like Google and Baidu that are taking advantage of deep learning. For example, there are now 19 different automotive companies that have research labs in Silicon Valley. In the medical imaging industry, every big company has big data projects of some kind or another and they are all seeking out NVIDIA. In 2015 alone, the company spoke with 3500 customers to talk about deep learning projects. Interest spans all different industries.The reason NVIDIA is being sought out is that its GPUs are really the ideal processor for the massively parallel problems tackled with deep learning, and the company has optimized its entire stack of platforms, from the architecture to the design, to the system, to the middleware, to the system software, all the way to the work that its does with developers all over the world, so that it can optimize the entire experience to deliver the best performance.For example, the recently launched DGX-1 is the first system designed specifically for deep learning - it comes fully integrated with hardware, deep learning software and development tools for quick, easy deployment.The turnkey system is built on eight NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs based on the Pascal GPU architecture. And Pascal is really the first GPU platform that was designed from the ground up for applications such as deep learning that are well beyond computer graphics. Each Tesla P100 GPU is partnered with 16GB memory and the system delivers up to 170 teraflops of half-precision (FP16) peak performance, providing the throughput of 250 CPU-based servers.The DGX-1 features other breakthrough technologies that maximize performance and ease of use, including NVIDIA NVLink high-speed interconnect for maximum application scalability. The GPUs are manufactured using 16nm FinFET fabrication technology and are the largest, most powerful 16nm chip ever built, delivering 15.3 billion transistors on a 600mm2 chip for unprecedented energy efficiency.Key research centers around the world will be receiving the first servers this month, with the customer list including a number of universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, NYU, the University of Toronto and Hong Kong University. Massachusetts General Hospital will also be among the first to get a DGX-1. The hospital launched an initiative that applies AI techniques to improving the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases, drawing on its database of some 10 billion medical images. This is the kind of research that the DGX-1 was designed to support.As a turnkey solution the NVIDIA DGX-1 also features a comprehensive deep learning software suite, including NVIDIA Deep Learning GPU Training System (DIGITS), the newly released NVIDIA CUDA Deep Neural Network library (cuDNN) version 5, and a GPU-accelerated library of primitives for designing DNNs. It also includes optimized versions of several widely used deep learning frameworks - Caffe, Theano and Torch.Over the past three years, NVIDIA has seen how quickly the technology has changed in the deep learning community, including with the software. Most of the software used is open source, and while hyperscale companies like Baidu and Google may be very comfortable working in an open source, the same cannot be said for more traditional companies like high-end automotive firms or hospitals. Therefore, NVIDIA will provide services for maintaining and patching the open source software for the DGX-1. A system box can be installed in a data center and connected to NVIDIA's cloud. There, the customers can find their deep learning software and download the latest optimized versions, with NVIDIA patching any bugs that come up. And all the while, all of their data remains secure and never leaves their data centerWhen it comes to deep learning, NVIDIA is seeing deployments not just in one or two customers but basically in every single hyperscale datacenter in the world in every single country. Jen-Hsun Huang thinks this is a very, very big deal and that it is not just a short-term phenomenon. The amount of data that the world processes is just going to keep on growing.For neural networks, researchers do not write code to identify what a self-driving car sees on the road, or identify what an x-ray image is; instead they implement a framework and then feed it a lot of untagged data.

OCZ, an SSD brand offered by Toshiba for the consumer market, has been further strengthened presence in high performance solid-state storage drives (SSDs) market with resulted in improved system performance, lower power and more reliability. Alex Mei, Vice President Marketing, GM of Etail/Retail SSDs, talked about the prospects of the storage market and product highlights in Computex Taipei 2016 during an exclusive interview.1. What are the key products which OCZ would showcase in Computex Taipei 2016?As part of Toshiba we are now seeing a convergence of our client SSD product line, OCZ is now a premium series of solid states drives under the Toshiba portfolio that is specifically designed for high performance consumers. This will be one of our key messages this Computex and we will be showing our updated line of SATA SSDs ranging from our value oriented TR150 series to the high performance VT180 series which is designed for gamers and power users, as well as our brand new RD400 M.2 solid state drive series, designed to propel high-end computing into a new realm of possibilities. The OCZ RD400 PCIe Gen3 x4 outperforms SATA SSDs by over 4.5 times in sequential read (up to 2,600 MB/s), and over 3 times in sequential write performance (up to 1,600 MB/s) so end users will be able to enjoy the storage bandwidth their data-intensive workloads require. The OCZ RD400's next generation NVMe® interface provides a more responsive PC experience and shorter storage latency than that of today's traditional hard disk drives and SATA SSDs. Along with high performance, the OCZ RD400 is designed for mobile, desktop, or workstation applications and will be available both as a standalone M.2 module or AIC (Add-In-Card) version making this solid state solution easy to deploy across the complete spectrum of mobile or desktop platforms, and even enable users to change configurations over time based on their evolving needs.2. Through massive efforts to promote SSD drives and applications, what is the current situation of how industries adapted these storage solutions?SSD technology continues to develop at an increasingly rapid pace and the benefits of SSDs are no secret to customers, whether they are an end user gamer or a hyperscale datacenter architect. Across just about every industry there are opportunities to leverage SSDs to improve the performance of their products and services, and it is very exciting to see all the ways that different industries are leveraging SSDs to provide an even more robust and feature-rich offering to consumers. I am particularly excited about NVM Express, which provides a standards based approach to enabling broad ecosystem adoption and PCIe SSD interoperability. It has never been easier for industries to adopt and leverage the potential of today's latest compact yet high performance PCIe SSDs.3. Various market research highlighted global SSD market posting a high CAGR growth for the next five years, what do you see the SSD market trends?SSDs continue to see positive growth, fueled by use in both client and enterprise applications. SSDs are now becoming the go-to solution for most high performance PCs, and the average capacity is also trending upwards quickly as this adoption accelerates. NVMe is an area where there is going to be rapid adoption, and as customers look for a more compact yet high capacity solution M.2 will likely be the form factor of choice moving forward. In the enterprise market hyperscale customers will continue to be among the earliest adopters of the latest SSDs as their workloads are driving datacenter expansion. This includes hyperscale applications like ingesting and serving content, organizing and preserving information, and computing and analyzing large data sets rapidly and dynamically.4. How does OCZ look at the future of SSD solutions?Toshiba offers a complete spectrum of quality SSD solutions for both enterprise and client applications, and the integration of the OCZ brand within Toshiba has enabled us to focus on what the brand has been known for historically, innovative and high performing products designed for enthusiasts. As the consumer market continues to grow we see a lot of opportunity to address the market with the Toshiba-OCZ branded SSDs as we continue to invest in products that are really designed with the end-user in mind. We want our solid state solutions to be easy to use, more reliable, and improve the computing experience for our customers whether they are working or enjoying the latest games. A few years ago many believed that console gaming would kill PC Gaming, but this clearly has not been the case. PC Gaming is not only alive and well but exclusive titles, eSports, streaming, and even virtual reality, are all driving the need for better storage. We are embracing gamers by introducing products like our RD400 NVMe/PCIe SSD which are designed specifically with their needs in mind.5. Any message for Taiwan?It is no surprise that Taiwan is the home of so many platform providers, and not only do we appreciate all the support that our partners and customers have shown the OCZ brand over the years, but we are even more excited about what we have to offer now that we are under the Toshiba portfolio. I would just like to say thank you to all our valued customers in Taiwan, and rest assured the best is yet to come!The demonstrations of OCZ SSDs can be viewed between the hours of 9:30AM and 5:00PM from May 31st through June 3rd 2016 in private suite at Room #1141 of the Grand Hyatt Taipei Hotel.Alex Mei, Vice President Marketing, GM of Etail/Retail SSDs

Conexant has been putting lots of effort into developing its AudioSmart technology in recent years, and has successfully driven a wide range of emerging audio applications. At this year's Computex, the company will demonstrate its latest-generation AudioSmart 3.0 technology, including highly-efficient, powerful silicon and software solutions that are redefining the audio experience for a range of consumer electronics - such as tablets and PCs.Two Major Trends in the Audio Market"Conexant has achieved 50% revenue growth over the past year," noted Saleel Awsare, Conexant's president. "This is significant, and our remarkable performance is a result of our being at the forefront of two important trends: the emergence of various voice control interfaces, and the migration to the new USB-C standard."He further explained that leading high tech companies are providing intelligent personal assistant applications, such as Microsoft's Cortana, Google's Google Now, and Apple's Siri, which have been widely adopted by consumers. Also, next-generation consumer products like 2-in-1 detachable PCs and smart appliances including TVs, speakers, and smart home hubs are rapidly adopting voice control interfaces. These changes in the market are creating broader opportunities for Conexant's audio technology, which is perfectly suited to voice-enabled applications.Additionally, the adoption of USB Type-C (USB-C) has been the fastest in the history of USB standards, with many smartphone, laptop and tablet manufacturers already implementing USB-C connectivity into their products. Much smaller in size than a standard USB-A connector, USB-C also beats previously released USB connectors in terms of power, bandwidth and data speeds. Most importantly, it consolidates power, data, and multimedia transmission into one, fully-reversible cable to greatly enhance its usability.According to Awsare, smartphones and notebooks will gradually remove the traditional 3.5mm analog jack and transfer to the new USB-C connector. This opens up new opportunities for audio accessories, and the market is expected to grow significantly over the next couple of years.Turning Notebooks into Group SpeakerphonesIn the wake of these new developments, Conexant has enhanced its technology portfolio to embrace the emerging business opportunities, and has impressive demonstrations on hand at this year's Computex.One of the major highlights is that the company will be showcasing the world's first PC to receive Microsoft Skype for Business certification as a Group Speakerphone device - a result of Conexant partnering with a top computer maker.By adopting Conexant's high-performance far-field voice input pre-processing technology along with context-aware control automation software, a highly portable notebook computer can completely replace a desk-based speakerphone. Loud, clear telephone calls are now possible directly from the PC itself."The level of performance achieved by this platform addresses the fact that Skype audio problems often hinder communication and put a damper on productivity," Awsare said. "Similar challenges arise when attempting to communicate with intelligent personal assistants. Isn't it frustrating when Microsoft Cortana can't understand you or produce the results you need?"With AudioSmart 3.0 technology, Conexant's voice processing algorithms allow users to speak naturally and be heard - as well as better hear what others are saying. With advanced de-reverb, superior noise reduction, integrated smart amplifier technology, and excellent Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) hit rates, AudioSmart 3.0 makes VoIP communication more natural - even in far-field conditions.The first certified Skype for Business notebook to offer Group Speakerphone certification will be available in the second half of this year, targeting the commercial PC market. "Among the top five notebook makers, four of them are Conexant's customers. As the PC market matures and consolidates, PC makers are eager to differentiate their products to maintain a competitive edge. AudioSmart technology enables them to provide their customers with a significantly better audio experience," Awsare noted.A Promising Outlook for USB-C Audio ApplicationsAs for USB-C, Conexant has announced the CX20985 and CX20899, two new USB DSP audio CODECs that support USB-C connectivity for smartphone headsets and docking stations. The new CODECs enable a best-in-class audio experience on USB audio peripherals.The CODECs are highly integrated, single-chip solutions that are fully compliant with the USB-C standard - as well as enterprise requirements for Skype for Business. The devices minimize bill of material (BOM) costs by eliminating the need for an external crystal, and integrating a capless headphone driver that produces a full-range frequency response and eliminates AC coupling capacitors.End-to-end AudioSmart solutions bridge devices, docking stations, and peripherals together with focus on complete implementation and a robust user experience at the full-system level. By contrast, a piecemeal approach with multiple silicon devices and software from different vendors often results in mismatches between critical components, such as amplifiers that do not properly link with Acoustic Echo Cancellation software and speakers that pop due to interface timing issues.As one of the earliest entrants into the USB headset space, Conexant is the leading provider of gaming and office headset technology, having shipped over 40 million units to market leaders. According to Awsare, this track record of innovation makes Conexant uniquely qualified to identify and implement the next big audio accessory trend."While there are other vendors that offer USB headset and docking technology, we have the audio expertise to deliver what they cannot: single-chip, comprehensive solutions that include software and are truly plug-and-play," Awsare noted. "We're taking our innovative technology that is enabling advancements such as voice control and contextual awareness in smart home devices, TVs, smartphones, and more - and we're bringing all of its benefits to audio accessories."Continuing to lead the way forward for audio accessories, Conexant plans additional enhancements to its AudioSmart family of USB-C compliant audio CODECs soon. Innovative features such as active noise cancellation (ANC) will be introduced for hearables, including health monitoring headsets and other applications in the near future.Working Closely with Customers to Drive New DesignsEmbracing the trends of voice control and USB-C audio, Conexant is further enhancing collaboration with customers to jointly develop new products. For example, Conexant has formed a strategic partnership with China's Unisound to bring AudioSmart voice control to smart appliances. LG and LeTV have also selected AudioSmart technology to be used in their TV, set-to-box, and IoT hub products."There are lots of design activities in the Asia Pacific region, so this is a very important market for us. We will keep investing in the area to prep growth. To accommodate a larger staff, we expanded our Taipei office and established test facilities last year to provide better services for customers in this region," Awsare said.At Computex, Conexant will showcase a range of its AudioSmart silicon and software technologies. Demos will include audio solutions for PCs, headsets, smart appliances, and USB-C docking stations, with a focus on end-to-end systems including preprocessing software for 4-mic arrays, intelligent control software, and smart amplifiers. Attendees are encouraged to stop by Conexant's suite #1002-10F at the Grand Hyatt Taipei during the show.Saleel Awsare, Conexant presidentPhoto: Conexant's AudioSmart technology enables a best-in-class voice control interface with clear speech