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  • 2 days ago
COMPUTEX 2026 kicked off with keynote speeches from the heads of Qualcomm, Marvell and Intel. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan praised Taiwan's role in the global semiconductor supply chain, calling it a "silicon island." TaiwanPlus speaks with semiconductor expert Marco Mezger, executive vice president and COO of Neumonda, to discuss Tan's remarks and Taiwan's role in the global AI supply chain.
Transcript
00:00So we heard from US chip giants like AMD's Lisa Su and NVIDIA's Jensen-Huans,
00:05a head of Computex. Could you share the key takeaways from Intel CEO Libbuton's keynote speech today?
00:10That Intel is coming back, especially because of the 18A process node,
00:15which is kind of comparable of the TSMC N2P and N3P process node.
00:23As you remember, Intel was always lagging behind and had huge challenges, you know, with different CEOs.
00:28And now Libu is in charge. And he has a very engineer mind.
00:34And I have to admit that the way how Libu is structuring Intel, like the new Intel,
00:40with this engineering focus, and also not only for the lithography,
00:45so when you talk about the process nodes, also in advanced packaging.
00:51Advanced packaging is one of the key technologies today if you look into computing and if you look in AI.
00:59Intel has there some really good products comparing, like you have Cobos with TSMC,
01:05and so Intel has their own solutions. There is also a good fit into the ecosystem.
01:11So my feeling is they are coming back. So they are coming back into the game,
01:16and they are trying to basically also revive their legacy into the market because the AI market is so big
01:23today.
01:24So NVIDIA has announced a new AI chip designed for Windows laptops.
01:28How can companies like Intel and AMD compete? And is it a zero-sum game moving forward into the AI
01:35PC era?
01:35So now with NVIDIA entering the game, they come from a different angle.
01:40They come from the GPU angle into compute.
01:42And we need to see at which price point these notebooks or workstations will come out.
01:49Because we have to understand this is not for entry-level, not even for mid-level.
01:54So I normally would assume that this is more like on the higher-end level.
01:58So for people who really need the power to have kind of an offline AI and also for more privacy.
02:05There will always be customers or consumers. There are some discussions in the industry.
02:10It should be between two and a half thousand to three thousand dollars.
02:13But that is a lot of money for just a normal notebook.
02:16So I think we want to see how this filter evolves.
02:19Lately, we have a shortage on CPUs.
02:23And the shortage on CPUs comes when you look at the AI.
02:26You have large language models. That is basically when you train.
02:29But later when you use the models, you do inference.
02:33So you do queries and you are asking.
02:35And there you need more CPU power, traditional CPU power.
02:40And that is why the CPU makers like a traditional one like Intel or AMD
02:45also see a much bigger demand now than maybe in the last two years.
02:49So this market is really exploding so wide that we are not at the moment in a situation
02:55that you are biting market share away.
02:58So we see many tech giants coming to Taiwan during Computex.
03:01Many looking to secure the supply chains.
03:04But how can Taiwan manage the demand in the sector?
03:07Taiwan, you continuously build new factories, right?
03:10So there is an expansion.
03:12I mean, if you look at Narnia building a new memory fab, right?
03:15Winbon building a new fab in Kaohsiung.
03:17And then TSMC building several fabs here the next two or three years.
03:21But people have to understand that also all the data from all the other factories,
03:25they come together here in Taiwan.
03:27Because this is the core value of TSMC to understand yield and manufacturing process.
03:35So I think for Taiwan, Taiwan is right now at the epicenter of AI hardware.
03:43The hardware, definitely we are here, I would say, kind of the leader in the world.
03:48Because if you think about Quanta, Compa, Foxconn, Vistron,
03:53these are all next level infrastructure companies who make the racks.
03:58Of course they have factories around the world in different areas,
04:02but they are all Taiwanese companies.
04:04So I think Taiwan has always a foot in the door and you cannot push them out.
04:10They are a vital part. Without Taiwan there is no AI.
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