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

Commercialization of Micro LED displays have come closer to reality since Sony unveiled CLEDIS (crystal LED integrated structure) display based micro LED technology in 2016.As the key technology of mass transfer has yet to mature, micro LED will be initially applied to smart wearable devices and large-size displays which do not require high ppi (pixel per inch) levels, Digitimes Research believes.As "pick and place" process is difficult to be used in olume production for micro LED displays - even more so for RGB applications, researchers from Sophia University's Graduate School of Science and Technology in Japan, the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science, and US-based Ostendo Technologies, are developing monolithic process where a RGB array is formed on a micro LED wafer that can be directly used on a display.Based on the current development, there are two directions for applying micro LED technology: one is small displays with 200-300ppi forf wearables, and the other is 55-inch and larger displays with low ppi such as 15ppi. The low resolution is unnoticable when viewed from a distance.

China-based drone maker Da-Jiang Innovations Science and Technology (DJI), which claims the largest share of the consumer market segment, has extended to the commercial sector. Intel is also promoting commercial drones via cooperation with UK-based Cyberhawk Innovations.For the enterprise segment, DJI has cooperated with US-based drone software solution developer 3D Robotics (3DR). DJI has launched FlightHub, a platform for online management of drones to enable enterprise users to remotely control drones. DJI has also unveiled Zenmuse X7, a compact Super 35 CinemaDNG-format video camera supporting 6K 30 frames per second, and launched dedicated battery charging station DJI Battery Station.Intel's partnership with Cyberhawk develops drones for inspection of infrastructure and historical sites and research in animal protection. Intel's US-based subsidiary Movidius has unveiled Myiad, a vision processing unit able to be used in drones.There is increasing demand for drones used in military missions. Police are also using drones to help with anti-terrorism and disaster relief work.

Global market value for 3D sensing technology, which has caught attention since Apple unveiled iPhone X with face-recognition functionality in early November 2017, will increase to US$9-10 billion by 2020, Digitimes Research estimates.The 3D sensing technology featured in Iphone X was developed by Israel-based PrimeSense, which was acquired by Apple in November 2013. PrimeSense-developed 3D sensing technology was also adopted by Microsoft for first-generation Kinect.In addition to consumer electronics, 3D sensing can also be applied to industrial automation, aerospace, smart medical care and smart home-use devices. For example, robots equipped with 3D sensing systems are, like human vision, able to recognize sizes and shapes of objects, enhacing their flexibility in their operation.

Artila Electronics is a long-term player in the IPC industry, but unlike most others that focus on developing x86 applications, Artila has chosen ARM-based systems as the main direction for its IPC road trip. Although its products are considered niche devices, the company has still managed to grow rapidly in the solar and power management sectors and are gradually expanding into some emerging sectors such as electric vehicles and charging stations.Mike Kao, director of Artila's IoT Division, talked about the company's businesses during a recent interview by Digitimes.Q: What products and business does Artila do?A: Artila is a developer of ARM-based industrial PC (IPC) products and the company's founders are all from IPC-related industries.When we started the business, the combination of x86 architecture hardware and Microsoft's operation system was the most commonly seen IPC configuration that companies were offering. To differentiate, we put our focus on ARM-based processors - which by then were used mostly in handsets products - to design and develop IPCs.ARM-based processer's low-power-consumption advantage allowed us to create IPCs in a rather small form factor. Our main product line: the intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) gateway consisted of IPCs with sizes of a cigarette box and they were also the first device we developed when we were founded.The IPCs are designed specifically to handle headless applications including data collection and industrial protocol conversion, that do not require a user's interaction and therefore they do not feature any display port for graphic output. After gathering the data, the IPCs then transmit it to a back-end server system for further processing, making the products suitable for device networking purposes.We started developing the IPCs 12 years ago and by then the concept of Internet of Things (IoT) still did not exist and many traditional industrial devices still could connect to Internet. To connect these traditional devices - that can only output data via conventional serial ports - to the Internet, we have developed our computers to act as a bridge for the two, as Internet has gradually become a standard for data transmission.Our computers use Linux operating system. With its open platform and powerful functionality, our clients are able to quickly start the application development without hassle. The built-in web server and Internet utility also make remote control of traditional industrial devices an easy task like managing regular office PCs.For clients that are capable of designing customized networking boards for their traditional devices or wish to integrate the function into their hardware instead of adopting an add-on, Artila is also able to supply only the system on module (SoM) to the clients. The clients only need to place a paired socket for the SoM on their customized boards in order for our SoM to function.In addition to the intelligent IoT gateway product line, we also have remote I/O products, which are similar to programmable logic controller (PLC) and can be used for auto switch or simple logic control applications such as sensor, data collection or power control.Q: What applications can the intelligent IoT gateway be used in?A: One of the major applications for our IPCs is solar power systems. Our device is able to calculate how much power has been generated by the system and sold to the power company.Another major application is the energy management system. We have seen our shopping mall clients adopt our IPCs to measure each store's power consumption instead of the traditional method of having the power company put a meter for each one of them. The advantage of using our solution is that the shopping mall's management team is able to negotiate better terms with the power company as the team is the one managing the power system.Q: What are Artila's main target regions? Does Artila have plan for expansion?A: Currently, Europe is our main market and demand is primarily from the solar and power industries.For Asia Pacific, our business is mainly from the solar and power industries. Since many of the countries in Asia Pacific, especially those in Southeast Asia, have been aggressively building new power-related infrastructures, demand has been gradually picking up. We are also seeing rising demand from Australia.North America is another region where we have been expanding our presence. However, instead of the solar and power industries, which have already reached saturation, we are seeing increasing orders from the unmanned device management segment. For example, we have seen clients purchase our solutions to set up IP cameras in sightseeing attractions and sell the videos or photos the device captured to visitors.Since our solution is based on an ARM processor, its low power consumption and low heat generation are giving it advantages in some niche sectors such as 24-hour surveillance in the wilderness.Our products are also being adopted in emerging applications such as electric vehicles and their charging stations for measuring power and handling payment.Q: What is the IPC market's current status based on Artila's observation?A: We are actually not seeing many players doing solutions like ours and our products so far still have not yet become a solid market that can attract enterprises to form an ecosystem. Although we do not see much of a competition, finding clients is also not an easy task for us.Simply put, instead of finding clients, our business model is more relying on having clients find us.Q: What advantages do Artila's products have in competition?Artila's specialty is actually its firmware customization services. For x86-based IPCs, companies need help from Microsoft to assist them in software, but for ARM-based IPCs, companies need a service provider that is able to write firmware to control the devices for them to perform the functions they need. Atrila's team is able to assist its clients to customize their firmware to best suit their demand.With IoT gradually becoming a major part of the IPC industry, Artila has been devoted to developing cloud transmission technologies and standards. In the past, we simply added networking functionality to traditional IPCs for them to transmit data to a server system, but now we are also offering support on multiple cloud protocols to our devices for them to build databases in any of the third-party cloud computing platforms from players such as Amazon, Microsoft and IBM.Compared to x86-based systems that could easily crash after a few power outages, Artila's system features a power outage-proof measure that can prevent system crash and prolong the devices' product life.Artila director of IoT Division Mike KaoPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, December 2017

China's development of innovative technologies used in smart medical care in 2018 will focus on AI (artificial intelligence)-aided interpretation of medical images and gene inspection mainly for cancer detection.According to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, the country's population aged over 60 will increase to 300 million in 2025, or 21% of the total, Currently in China, there are 15 doctors per 10,000 persons, far fewer than the average of 30 in developed countries, and bed utilization in first-class hospitals is 98%, much higher than the 60% for private hospitals. Hospitals see decreases in medical insurance payments and in incomes from medication and medical devices. Therefore, it is necessary for hospitals to introduce smart medical care technologies to reduce operating cost and hike efficiency.In China, venture capital investment in startups engaged in smart medical R&D took off in 2015, with total investment reaching CNY1.05 billion (US$167 million). The investment in 2016 rose to CNY2.4 billion, mainly in cloud-based medical services. In 2017 the sum is estimated at the same as that in 2016, with a strong focus on AI applications for medical care and gene inspection, Digitimes Research has found.As development of third-generation genome sequencing approaches maturity, prices for single-time gene inspection will drop to below US$100, with AI application for gene inspection to detect cancers expected to grow fast in 2018. AI will be used to analyze individuals' genomes and correlations between genomes and parameters on their physiological measurements and living environment to develop precision medicine and personalized health care solutions.

The popularity of HBM2 (second-generation high bandwidth memory) solutions has been increasing recently due to the adoption of such products by Nvidia's Tesla P100 accelerator and Quadro GP 100 graphics card as well as AMD's Radeon Vega chip, Digitimes Research has found.In addition to HBM-based products, there is a variant version of HMC (hybrid memory cube) chips. While both HBM and HMC solutions are made with a similar vertical stacking process to integrate multilayer DRAM devices on a base logic die, the HBM is more like a 2.5D stacked-die packaging solution, and the HMC is closer to a 3D stacked-die packaging process.While SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics are using wafer-level packaging (WLP) process to fabricate HBM2-based chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is adopting CoWoS (chip-on-wafer-on-substrate) process for HBM2 devices. On the other hand, the Micron Technology/Intel camp focuses mainly on HMC-based products.However, Intel's release of its deep-learning chip, Lake Crest, which came following its acquisition of Nervana, has come with HMB2. This indicates that HBM-based architecture will be the main development direction of memory solutions for HPC solutions by GPU vendors.The high packaging cost and compatibility are likely to continue to affect the applications and popularity the HBM2 chips, Digitimes Research believes.

Multi-rotor drones are now employed to do many jobs, such as pesticide spraying and field inspection, but it remains challenging to increase their duration on the air and loading capacities that could extend their uses.Most drones are unable to fly over 30 minutes in a single flight because of battery limitations. Carrying more batteries would not necessarily increase the flight time, as the weight of the extra batteries would cancel out the additional power.Some multi-rotor drone makers have tried to hike loading capacities by enlarging the devices' dimensions, but they face difficulties: longer vanes of rotors, for example, may be break easily. The problem could be solved by adopting the mechanical structure of helicopters, but that would lose the original advantage of the drones' simple mechanical structure.Some solutions are being tested, such as adding fixed wings to multi-rotor drones, using aerial power charging devices or fuel cell batteries. However, these options have yet to mature for commercialization.

As Microsoft and Qualcomm jointly announced in early December that the first Windows 10 notebooks with ARM-based Snapdragon 835 processors will be officially launched in early 2018, there will be more and more PCs with ARM processor architecture hitting the market. This is expected to let ARM-powered models dominate the midsize and low-end PC market, leaving the high-end professional and gaming segments to x86-based processors, according to Digitimes Research.Due to cost concerns, PC replacement has slowed down and users would rather choose entry-level models for replacement if needed. This will inspire leading PC makers to roll out more devices with ARM-based processors that can help them reduce cost and sales prices to secure higher profitability. Qualcomm said Window 10 devices with Snapdragon 835 processors have three advantages. They can turn on almost immediately, feature wireless LTE connectivity, and - maybe most importantly - offer the kind of battery life that can let users get through a day or two of work without having to recharge. The first two advantages can also be found in many higher-end PC devices using x86-architecture processors developed by Intel or AMD, but the "wireless LTE connectivity" function will be incorporated into all the entry-level Window 10 notebooks with ARM processors, branded by Microsoft as the "always-connected devices," Digitimes Research reveals.HP and Asustek have released some ARM-based notebooks with Windows 10S, boasting cloud convenience, Microsoft Edge and Windows community apps. But the notebooks cannot run any non-community apps, meaning that any third-party apps downloaded by users cannot be executed in the devices. Users, however, will be allowed to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro free of charge to execute more Windows apps.Digitimes Research believes that computer devices with ARM-architecture processors may rival those with x86 processors in performance along with their growing technological maturity. This, coupled with lower pricing and great extension of battery life, will pose a major impact on Intel's Ultrabook and other ultraslim notebooks with x86 processors, forcing such processors to serve even higher-tier and higher-performance PC or server markets. Qualcomm will accordingly have a chance of developing a presence in the PC processor market long dominated by Intel.

With the growing popularity of smart speakers and voice assistance tools offered by first-tier Internet service providers, many have focused on the development of emerging home devices. But for UnlimiterHear, which develops audio solutions, it sees the potential of integrating voice assistance functionality into mobile devices such as Bluetooth earphones and speakers. UnlimiterHear expects the new smart Bluetooth earphones and speakers to be able to gradually replace traditional Bluetooth earphones and speakers.Digitimes recently had a chance to sit down with UnlimiterHear chairman Kuo Ping Yang and CEO Tony Huang to talk about the business opportunity of the voice-assistance products and the company's latest operations.Q: What kind of company is UnlimiterHear?Yang: UnlimiterHear is an intellectual property (IP) holder and currently owns 140 audio-related technological patents. Our main business model is to license the patents to clients including chip designers and makers as well as brand vendors of audio products such as earphones and speakers.In addition to the licensing business, we offer modularized ICs and total solutions that have already integrated our audio technologies and cloud computing support, and provide customizable in-house designed apps to help satisfy clients' specific demand.Q: What product lines does the company currently have?Yang: Our businesses can be summarized into two major categories: the healthcare and the consumer, while Bluetooth mobile earphones and speakers are currently our largest business.For the healthcare sector, our technologies are mainly implemented into two major products: hearing aids and hearing protection devices, while for the consumer area, we have the EarCommand technology, designed for voice assistance-supported devices and can be used in products including smart speakers and earphones and the EarEQ technology that can personalize a speaker or earphone's frequency output to best suit the user's hearing.We are also developing a new technology that can provide real-time oral translation via voice assistance platforms.Huang: For the EarCommand, the technology is designed primarily for portable devices particularly Bluetooth earphones and speakers, and supports short-distance voice recognition. Users simply need to press a button on their earphones or speakers to begin the voice recognition process and the recorded voice will then be transmitted to the app on users' smartphones via Bluetooth and then send to voice-assistance platforms provided by first-tier Internet service providers.Our app is able to support several different voice assistance platforms including Amazon's Alexa and China-based IFlytek's voice assistant tools. Since Bluetooth speakers and earphones have a much higher usage rate than traditional speakers, we believe the product line will have a strong potential in the upcoming years.Our IC modules all support Bluetooth communication and are certified by the official standard organization. We also provide several customized firmware to support different kinds of applications. Currently, our IC module business is mainly seeing orders from the healthcare market and the solutions are primarily used in hearing aids.Q: What is UnlimiterHear's view on the Bluetooth earphone and speaker market?Yang: The trend that we are seeing in the market is similar to feature phones' competition against smartphones.Feature phones, which were the original mainstream of the handset market, eventually lost their ground to smartphones and are now mainly in the entry-level sector due to smartphones' better functionality and diverse usages.The same thing is also occurring to Bluetooth earphone and speaker products. The "feature" Bluetooth earphones and speakers will be replaced gradually by new-generation "smart" Bluetooth earphones and speakers and our technologies will become one of the key drivers for the transformation and help traditional earphones and speakers become smart and accelerate the replacement trend.Q: What are UnlimiterHear solutions' advantages?Yang: Traditional Bluetooth earphones and speakers' key usage is to transmit audio wirelessly, but our technologies are able to further enhance their functionality, allowing the devices to support apps and personalize their hearing frequency for specific users with EarEQ.We began our business four years ago developing Bluetooth hearing aids and designed apps to implement our technologies. Seeing the emerging voice-assistant business opportunity in the Bluetooth earphone and speaker sector, we decided to put our technologies into these mobile product lines to help create added values.Huang: As far as we know, we are so far the only solution provider that is integrating the voice assistance function into Bluetooth earphones.For our clients, they have many options for adopting our technologies into their products. They can purchase our chips or procure solutions from our chip partners including CSR and Microchip and get a license from us.Although we are the first player to offer short-distance voice assistance-support Bluetooth solutions in the market, we still see rising competitions from other IP developers. However, our experience in developing hearing aids has given us advantages in the competition.Our technology is able to filter out noises and collect only the user's voice and will then send the voice through Bluetooth to our app on a smartphone for the software to transmit the voice to third-party voice assistance platforms.This technology is exclusive from our development of hearing aids. There are not many earphone vendors able to come out with such a profound sound technology. What we are trying to do is to implement our professional-level hearing aid technologies into consumer products to create added value.With a clear voice, our technology is able to receive a faster response from voice assistance platforms and also more accurate answer.Our Acoustic Algorithm Simulation System (AASS) also played a major role in improving voice assistance platforms' responding time. With our AASS, time spent from asking a question to receiving an answer can be shorten by over 25%, which is expected to greatly improve user experience.UnlimiterHear chairman Kuo Ping Yang (right) and CEO Tony Huang (left).Photo: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, December 2017