UMC, once a major rival to TSMC in pursuing advanced manufacturing nodes, decided about two years ago to shift its focus away from joining the race to 10nm and more advanced process technologies. Now the pure-play foundry expects its renewed focus to start bearing fruit in 2020. Following two years of corporate adjustments, UMC has set new goals to be accomplished over the next five years, according to UMC co-president Jason Wang.

Silicon Valley-based Kiwi Campus is a startup dedicated to operating a semi-autonomous robotic platform for delivering foods, beverages and groceries to consumers on college campuses and in neighboring communities. The company, attracted by Taiwan's sound business climate, robust hardware manufacturing, and R&D prowess, is planning to set up operations in the country, according to company founder Felipe Chavez Cortes.

Taiwan cloud software startup SoftChef has been devoted to developing comprehensive solutions from edge devices to infrastructures since its inception in 2017, providing customized IoT solutions to better serve clients, according company founder and CEO Josh Chai.

Both 5G and Wi-Fi 6 networks provide advancements in performance to enhance mobility, capacity and data rates. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, computing is becoming more powerful, enhanced by wider bandwidth, high speed, low latency and massive connectivity. Servers are almost everywhere, but things not just happen in the data center, but also remotely.

Supermicro, a first-tier server vendor worldwide, has been aggressively developing gaming-related products with its experience from the server business. Supermicro is able to offer customers products with server quality.

AR can create brand-new gaming experience, but for industry applications, AR can help firms tackle their long-existing pain points, according to Roger Lu, founder and CEO of Mind & Idea Fly (Mifly), a Taiwan startup dedicated to multimedia AR/VR content development solutions.

ARPlanet Digital Technology, founded in 2010 as an AR startup, provides a full range of virtual and physical realities integration solutions. The company is now one of few startups in Taiwan able to export its AR PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions.

IOTA Foundation, a German blockchain NPO, announced on May 17 that it is setting aside US$2 million to set up an IOTA Ecosystem Fund to support developers. The announcement has caught much attention in the blockchain community, but not too many are aware that IOTA Foundation is also building its first Asia outpost in Taiwan.

With one of the strongest processor ecosystems in the industry, Arm's role to accelerate the adoption of machine learning (ML) at the edge can't be overemphasized, and its effort to enhance its CPU performance and software support for ML workloads is now in full swing. According to Jem Davies, Arm fellow, VP and GM, Machine Learning Group, the market outlook, challenges, and Arm's overall strategy to address the huge opportunity are clearly disclosed.

TH Tung, chairman of Taipei Computer Association (TCA), likens the startup scene - whose fundamental elements are capital, talent, technology and market - to wine making, which depends on the sunshine, rainfall and terroir. Apart from these, the type and quality of the grapes are also very important.