TAIWAN ECOSYSTEM
Nvidia works with some of Taiwan’s biggest names in tech, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which makes many of its chips. However, the underlying infrastructure for AI would not be possible without the hundreds of Taiwanese companies, big and small, supplying components and manufacturing know-how needed to construct Nvidia’s complex AI systems.
“The purpose of Computex was to bring together the ecosystem and the supply chain,” said Ian Cutress, chief analyst at consultancy More Than Moore.
Such a network is necessary to support the deals announced in the Gulf and those that are likely coming elsewhere in the world in the coming months, Cutress said.
Taiwanese industry has embraced Huang, who is perceived as a locally born hero hailing from Taiwan’s historic capital of Tainan before migrating to the US when he was nine years old.
By the time he flew out on Friday, Huang had appeared on stage or at banquets with nearly every prominent Taiwanese tech executive, including Chairman Young Liu of AI server builder Foxconn, who called him the “leader of Team Taiwan”.
MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai gave Huang chunks of guava in a plastic bag from the Nvidia leader’s favoured fruit stall in Taipei during one of the chip designer’s events.
Solomon Technology, a provider of industrial automation and AI-based inspection solutions which uses Nvidia’s software tools, said working with Nvidia is a win-win situation.
Shares of Solomon have surged 241 per cent since Huang mentioned the firm at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference in March last year.
“The collaboration with Nvidia has given us greater visibility. We weren’t very well-known before, but with Nvidia’s support, many more people know us now,” said Solomon Chairman Johnny Chen.
