The year 2019 marks the official kick-off of 5G commercialization. The sky is the limit with 5G opportunities but it may be challenging for firms to overcome the high barrier and tap into the worldwide market with the complexity in product R&D from design to testing.Different regions or segments may impose different electromagnetic standards and frequency specifications, which manufacturers have to take into consideration throughout their product development cycle from concept, design to commercialization.Other than 5G communication, radio frequency (RF) technologies are growingly present in people's daily life as their applications expand into consumer electronics, automotive systems, and even healthcare and medical devices. Accordingly, there are rigorous standards to be followed with respect to the safety, reliability, performance and power consumption of RF products. Manufacturers need specific know-how to be able to develop compliant products. They cannot just come up with a product and put it on the market.Collaborations across industry, academia, government and researchTo help manufacturers overcome the challenges, Auden Group has been offering guidelines for design platforms and test flows that manufacturers can follow. It also provides design consultation services to small and medium firms that are unable to foster in-house RF teams to help with their product development needs.In an endeavor to shed light on where the industry is headed, Auden Group organized the Workshop on Next Generation Smart Life, Bio-EM, and Advanced Communications Technology with IEEE EMC-Society Taipei Chapter. Going into its fourth year, the international symposium has been aimed to engage participants from the industry, academia, government and research for discussions on a number of topical tracks. Speakers invited to give talks at the symposium have included representatives from the government as well as professionals from the industry. This year's event was hosted by Tzong-Lin Wu, Associate Dean, College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, National Taiwan University, joined by experts from IBM and USFDA to broaden the attendees' horizons.In the morning keynote speech following Auden chairman's opening talk, Li-Fung Chang, Chief Architect, Department of Industrial Technology (DoIT), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), highlighted the critical role Taiwan will play in the global 5G scene and elucidated the Taiwan government's recent efforts at lawmaking, driving industry collaborations and advancing research and development in preparation for the 5G era.According to Chang, in line with the Taiwan industry's characteristics, Taiwan's 5G ecosystem will most likely develop in the form of vertical applications. With government regulations easing to allow infrastructure, frequency and network sharing, 5G services can be provided by operators other than the existing telecom carriers, enabling small-cap companies to operate application-specific 5G services, rather than having the 5G market dominated by large-scale carriers.Ruey-Beei Wu, Chairman, Taiwan Electromagnetic Industry-Academia Consortium, also noted in the opening speech that RF technologies will bring a myriad of applications to reality. How to quickly grasp the trend among the range of industrial applications, enhance competitiveness at the global level, foster professional talent and ensure adequate supply of human resources will be the key to success.Moreover, different industries need people with different skills and they also need cross-industry talent that can plan strategies or lead technological development from a macro perspective. This is a goal to strive for through education policymaking or industry-academia collaborations.Challenges for mmWave radar designDr. Xiaoxiong Gu from IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center gave an insight into the challenges that developers of millimeter wave (mmWave) radars have to address. mmWave radars are widely used in autonomous driving. In fact, 5G RF technologies are related to mmWave technologies with quite a few common issues to overcome. Gu highlighted some pending problems to be resolved, such as signal loss during transmission, signal loss when establishing connection, technological barriers and overwhelming testing costs.Gu proposed using phased arrays as a solution to signal loss during transmission. That is, using a set of antennas formed in an array to increase signal strength in a specific direction while decreasing signal strength in other directions. This can effectively reduce interference and enhance signal quality.To address signal loss when establishing connection, Gu suggested embedding antennas in integrated circuits. By shortening the transmission path, interferences to signal flow is kept to a minimum. Of course, manufacturers still have to deal with industry ecosystem issues when designing mmWave products as certain technologies are owned by a few companies, putting up a high barrier for latecomers. IC, antenna and digital signal processor (DSP) firms can work in alliance to tackle a common issue as they will hardly benefit from any synergistic effect if approaching mmWave product development alone.Gu also offered a number of solutions to circumventing issues regarding test environment and costly test equipment, in addition to opinions on mmWave application scenarios and antenna designs.Amid growingly rigorous electromagnetic standards for medical devices, Taiwan and US firms join forces to capture opportunitiesDr. Wolfgang Kainz from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) made a rare appearance at the symposium and gave an in-depth explanation on the safety designs of medical devices used in healthcare environments with respect to electromagnetic radiation and the evaluation mechanisms.This topic may not seem directly related to 5G communication. However, all kinds of sensitive and high-risk devices operate in medical institutions. The lack of thorough mechanisms to ensure signal transmissions are compliant with regulations and prevent them from interfering with one another during operation will not only affect healthcare quality but can threaten the life of patients. Taiwan is well-known in the world for providing premium-quality healthcare and therefore should pay attention to medical device standards especially with the leaping advances in this sector.Kainz also emphasized that electromagnetic devices are among the main equipment for medical diagnosis. How to prevent interference between electromagnetic devices and implanted devices such as cardiac pacemakers from putting patients at risk will require technological implementations and protection mechanisms at multiple levels. He noted that USFDA is working with a number of research institutions in Taiwan to come up with solutions to such problems.Health concerns over mmWave radiationDr. Mark Douglas from Schmid & Partner Engineering AG gave an enlightening presentation on the implications of mmWave wireless communication with rising popularity as well as mmWave test and measurement technologies.By harnessing extremely high frequency spectrum, mmWave communication enables large capacity data transfer and thus will become the core for next generation wireless communication, including not only 5G but also the latest Wi-Fi. IEEE C95.1 and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation and Protection (ICNIRP) guidelines are two standards that specify the signal power density limits for exposure of human body to mmWave radiation.The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also provides guidelines on testing and measuring after conducting simulations and testing under worst-case scenarios. In an endeavor to find potential health risks of mmWave radiation, FCC designed a test flow, which includes all beam forming tests with a range of antenna elements and beam signal strength measurements under full-load operation.Instead of a uniform transmission mode, mmWave signals can be transmitted in the forms of a single-antenna system or multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna array, thus requiring tests and measurements over different ranges and in different scenarios.The tests and measurements will have to be conducted over different surfaces as well. Furthermore, test reproducibility and traceability must be guaranteed so that uncertainties are kept to a minimum. Thorough testing and measuring mechanisms will help manufacturers design mmWave products that are compliant with international standards and free of risks to human health or surrounding devices so that they can go to market globally.Cross-industry efforts are needed to capture 5G opportunities and beyondDong Yang Hsu, Director, MOEA's 5G Office followed with an informative introduction on the evolution of wireless communication technologies and products from 1G to 5G. When mobile phones transitioned from 1G to 2G, the revolutionary change was the upgrade from analog signals to digital signals. With mobile communication going into 3G, data services were added. 4G networks are all IP-based with voice services also sent in data packets, significantly improving voice quality.The fundamental concept to 5G is the use of high frequency spectrum and virtualization of transmission and bandwidth management to support extremely large data capacity, ultra-low latency and over one million simultaneous connections.Accordingly, 5G is not just much faster for live streaming video that needs high bandwidth but enables the buildup of IoT ecosystems connecting a massive number of edge devices. Aside from edge device manufacturers, IC design firms should also gear up to capture 5G opportunities. The 5G market is the perfect stage for Taiwan-based firms that have long excelled in high-tech product development and manufacturing.From the perspectives of 5G application and hardware, Hsu indicated virtualized cloud-native mobile networks will be the trend for 5G application while white-box 5G base station platforms will be the way to go for 5G hardware. Cloud-native mobile networks allow 5G communication to disaggregate not by operators but by the types of services and applications. The disaggregation of 5G and sharing of frequency bands and networks will bring more flexibility to 5G service providers and enrich their service offerings.With white-box base station and open interface becoming the trend, 5G hardware will mature toward standardization with open-source software growingly adopted as well.High-density deployment of 5G base stations combining mmWave and MIMO technologies is expected to spur massive demand for RF components, fueling their growth momentum. To satisfy the requirements of high frequency, low noise, high power, dielectric strength and energy efficiency by 5G communication, the demand for next-generation semiconductor materials such as GaAs or GaN will also take off.Coupled with AI and machine vision, 5G communication can also be used in industrial automation to boost manufacturing efficiency. To autonomous driving that is at the center of public attention over recent years, 5G is the key enabler of smart city infrastructure buildup and autonomous driving cloud platform planning. Cars driving in cities can more efficiently and automatically communicate with traffic control cores to select the best route without human interference. Smart city implementations can automatically divert traffic flow to mitigate congestions on busy roads. The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA), founded by Audi, BMW, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Intel, and Qualcomm, is committed to helping define communication standards for mobility and transportation services.With the use of a wide frequency range and the massive number of potential applications, 5G communication imposes unprecedented challenges to information security. As 5G allows multiple ways to connect to the network and more wide-ranging vertical applications, an enormous number of smart devices can be built on top of 5G infrastructure, including smart factory, autonomous driving, healthcare, smart IoT and others. Without a way to guarantee information security, 5G may bring more nightmares than conveniences.Partnering with the industry to create new business opportunities, academics infuse innovative thinking into technology developmentProfessor Tzyy-Sheng Horng, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, gave an eye-opening demonstration on how existing RF technologies can be used to track activities of living creatures. He not only provided an insight into the technologies but also disclosed the massive business potentials the technologies can unleash.Horng showed two technological developments – gesture detection and the use of an RF device using injection locking as a physiological radar for humans.Horng used a 2D camera from a smart device combined with an injection-locked-oscillator based Doppler radar of Wi-Fi signals to achieve gesture detection. The theory is to make use of a pixel-based computer vision algorithm with Doppler-Shift Detection. Horng designed a coordinate calibration algorithm for 3D hand gesture trajectory, wherein pixel-based 2D coordinates are converted to coordinates in a real space to thereby track information about the lateral hand movement. Then, Doppler-Shift Detection of Wi-Fi signals is used to obtain information about the vertical hand movement by calculating the Doppler shift of reflective Wi-Fi signals resulted from the hand movement. The 3D trajectory of the hand gesture in the real space can then be constructed by combining the information about the lateral and vertical hand movement.To convert the hand gesture to graphic representation, at first, Horng used motion tracking technologies, wherein the hand's center of gravity was found by identifying the difference between the movement and the background model. However, he encountered some issues and needed to modify the algorithm so he ended up selecting an HSL-based block identification algorithm. For the radar, a monostatic passive radar system was used to first perform detection of 1-D and two-hand gestures, followed by the 3-D gesture trajectory detection through software implementations and computer vision processing. Both non-real-time and real-time gesture tracking techniques have been developed, achieving a hybrid gesture sensing radar system.Among gesture detection technologies, hybrid gesture sensing radar systems have more development potentials than main stream technologies today because they are less resource-hungry and more energy-efficient. As they become miniaturized, they can be integrated into smartphones to enable AR or VR interactive experiences with no need for extra cameras or high-frequency signal generators.The other important development is a new type of data collection device combining radar and Wi-Fi to detect people's heartrate, breathing and movement for smart city and smart building applications.As the gesture detection technique mentioned above, the device also uses Doppler sensors to demodulate Wi-Fi signals that are transmitted and reflected. It can detect minor vibrations in a non-contact approach, for example checking the subtle up-and-down movement of the chest and the pulse on the skin, to thereby monitor physiological signs.If the device is incorporated in an office Wi-Fi access point (AP), it can keep track of employee's health conditions as well as the number of employees entering and exiting the premise and automatically adjust the air conditioning accordingly for smarter energy use. Lowering signal interference and raising sensitivity is the biggest challenge to overcome, which calls for new use of physics know-how.Horng's wireless radar makes use of the physics effect – injection locking. As an oscillator can change its frequency in harmony with people's movement, by using a Doppler sensor to demodulate the changes in oscillator frequencies, information about the subject being detected can be obtained.Horng played video clips of the radar technology in action, detecting a subject's physiological signs when the subject is in the same room and in another room. He demonstrated the technology works without glitch even through concrete walls.Afternoon sessions of the symposium included 16 brilliant presentations of forward-looking views and analyses themed on three topical tracks.Auden Group hosted the event with the aim to bring the industry refreshing perspectives and thinking on RF designs, regulations and future 5G applications. The panel of speakers from the government, industry and academia shed light on the direction for policymaking and technology development. More than that, they enlightened attendees with tremendous possibilities of applications. Representatives from Auden Group noted in the post-event interview that the company has geared up to help the industry upgrade equipment and technology and tap into a broader market.Opening VIP photo of the eventYue-Pin Chang, chairman, AudenLi-Fung Chang, chief architect, 5G Technology Program OfficeRuey-Beei Wu, Chairman, Taiwan Electromagnetic Industry-Academia ConsortiumTzong-Lin Wu, Associate Dean, College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, National Taiwan UniversityDr. Xiaoxiong Gu from IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research CenterDr. Wolfgang Kainz from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA)Dong Yang Hsu, Director, MOEA's 5G OfficeProfessor Tzyy-Sheng Horng, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen UniversityDr. Mark Douglas from Schmid & Partner Engineering AG

Intelligent robots and robotic arms are expected to play vital roles in the Factory of the Future. In addition to achieving precise and consistent performance, robotic arms can function in environmental conditions too harsh for human operators, irrespective of manpower irregularities.In the face of labor shortages and high employee turnover, a metal processing factory in Southeast Asia sought to incorporate robotic arms to support operation of its wire electrical-discharge machining (WEDM) operations, so as to reduce requirements for human intervention whilst maintaining production stability. To accomplish this, the WEDM devices need to provide precise processing coordinates to the robotic arm controller, which then instructs the robotic arm to position the workpiece correctly.The existing WEDM devices in the facility are, however, outdated and unconnected. Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication between the legacy WEDMs and new-generation robotic arms is unavailable, a situation requiring immediate rectification. After evaluation, the factory chose ADLINK's DEX-100 data extraction and network connectivity solution to help bridge the communication gap between the old and new equipment.Before the development of robotics, metal processing facilities relied on human workers to move workpieces from station to station. When, for example, a cutting process reached a certain point, the workpiece was stabilized and retained in position by an operator utilizing a tool such as tongs who would then transport the processed workpiece to the next position. This process not only required considerable physical labor, an asset with only limited renewability, but was also slow and inefficient, limiting productivity.As such, the development of robotics was welcomed by a wide variety of processing and manufacturing concerns, with concrete hopes that synchronized operation between robotic operations and WEDM devices will reduce or eliminate reliance on manual labor.In situations like that of the factory under discussion, where WEDM machines are outdated, the inability to provide sufficient information to admin can be seen as a serious choke point keeping the operation from achieving production goals. Robotic arms, unable to receive exact coordinates, are unable to precisely pick and place the workpiece of the workpiece that is about to finish the cutting process. Consequently, the metal processing factory reached out to the WEDM supplier for assistance in updating the WEDM program. Much to their surprise, the WEDM supplier was less than eager to provide assistance and demanded more than US$30k for each WEDM update, an expenditure well beyond the manufacturer's means. Compounding the difficulties, the robotic arm controller could only communicate via MODBus communication, which the WEDM devices could not, adding to the demands required of any solution.ADLINK's DEX solution synchs WEDM device and robotic arm function to stabilize production and minimize error-based downtimeThe metal processing factory was able to achieve dramatic growth towards connectivity with ADLINK's DEX-100. The built-in scanner instantly captures precise coordinates as displayed on the WEDM device and converts them to MODBus format for transmission to the robotic arm controller.The robotic arm can then keep track of the cutting process every step of the way. When a workpiece is about to finish cutting, it is instantly relocated, opening up the current station for another workpiece, significantly boosting efficiency and productivity.ADLINK's DEX solution synchs WEDM device and robotic arm function to stabilize production and minimize error-based downtime

United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that FTSE4Good has named UMC as an index series constituent for the second consecutive year. The FTSE4Good Index Series is designed to measure the performance of companies demonstrating strong Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices.A quote provided by FTSE Russell stated, "FTSE Russell (the trading name of FTSE International Limited and Frank Russell Company) confirms that United Microelectronics has been independently assessed according to the FTSE4Good criteria, and has satisfied the requirements to become a constituent of the FTSE4Good Index Series. Created by the global index provider FTSE Russell, the FTSE4Good Index Series is designed to measure the performance of companies demonstrating strong Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices. The FTSE4Good indices are used by a wide variety of market participants to create and assess responsible investment funds and other products."S.C. Chien, president and chairman of UMC Corporate Sustainability Committee, said, "UMC has been committed to sustainable and responsible manufacturing for decades. Being recognized by FTSE Russell further validates our efforts in ESG business practices, and we will continue to strengthen our operations using corporate sustainability as a guiding principle."In addition to being named on the FTSE4Good & FTSE4Good TIP Taiwan ESG Indexes, UMC was also selected for the Taiwan HC 100 & Taiwan CG 100 Indexes.

The rise of smart manufacturing has enabled a wide selection of industries to benefit from real-time data integration and IoT technologies, with TV broadcasting one.Indonesia, a vast archipelago comprising thousands of islands, has a large number of broadcast towers spread across the country, many of which are located on remote islands. In the past, when transmitter failure occurred at any of these remote locations, timely repairs were impossible, interrupting TV service and degrading the broadcaster's reputation among users.In its existing framework, the broadcaster had no way of ascertaining if transmitters at the broadcast towers were operating normally, leading to a rising number of customer complaints. In response, an NMS was set up with the intention of collecting status data for each broadcast tower for remote monitoring and immediate dispatch of maintenance teams for timely proactive resolution of any malfunctions. Preventing completion of this goal, however, were the outdated non-networkable supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems operating at the various towers.ADLINK's DEX solution connects isolated systems maintain signal quality nationwideAfter consideration, one TV broadcaster decided to use ADLINK's DEX-100 data extraction solution to monitor output from each transmitter, uploading status data to a network management system (NMS) in real time without a hitch. The system operators could thus remotely monitor the conditions at each broadcast tower and respond immediately in the event of any potential issue, dispatching maintenance teams to troubleshoot and thereby minimize service downtime.ADLINK's DEX-100 serves as a bridge, connecting local SCADA systems with the central NMS, allowing formerly unavailable data to be shared and integrated with the centralized management platform. DEX-100 extracts data from the display content of the SCADA systems at the broadcast towers and uses RESTful Web API to send the data to the central NMS in real time with high reliability. The broadcaster can thus maintain complete awareness of the conditions of all broadcast towers.With this real-time data at its disposal, the broadcaster can now use big data analytics to build predictive models based on the failure data extracted from the display content at the broadcast towers. If the monitoring system spots a broadcast tower showing signs of malfunction, it can implement proactive repair process to prevent service interruption. By anticipating equipment failure, service quality and operational efficiency are significantly enhanced.ADLINK's DEX-100 serves as a bridge, connecting local SCADA systems with the central NMS, allowing formerly unavailable data to be shared and integrated with the centralized management platform

With the ongoing adoption of Industry 4.0 initiatives, manufacturers are endeavoring to equip their production machinery with network connectivity, providing highly precise, efficient access to machine status in real time, for the comprehensive analysis critical to data-driven decision making.A major challenge is the lack of universal network connectivity among automation machines, especially in legacy systems that are still in production use. These systems, along with important data regarding their function and performance, are vital business assets, essential for migration to smart manufacturing. In addition to their unconnected status, such elements are complicated to maintain. Affordable, easily adopted methods of implementing complete connectivity are, accordingly, of paramount importance to operators of systems comprising the legacy devices.A printed circuit board (PCB) producer in China found itself facing this very dilemma, with its efforts to embrace full connectivity hindered by the presence in the system of numerous legacy PC-based PCB drilling machines with no networking capability. With the inability to acquire data from these devices seriously hindering migration to smart manufacturing, the operator chose ADLINK's DEX data extraction and network connectivity solution to circumvent the obstacles in the smartest manner possible.The ideal data extraction solution brings legacy machines onboard for painless transition to Industry 4.0The inability to extract data from the legacy PCB drilling machines has been a major obstacle to the manufacturer's achieving the Industry 4.0 standard. After examining several potential solutions, the manufacturer finally selected ADLINK's DEX-100.Outdated OS renders legacy production machines data islandsIn the PCB manufacturing environment, a number of unconnectable PCB drilling machines, still operating through PC-based controllers, exist as data islands, unconnected from one another and functioning in isolation. Data extraction from the individual machines is difficult, and integration among the devices basically impossible.One major cause is that the legacy drilling machines still run OS2, for which end-of-sale and end-of-life were announced in 2005, with no available resource for obtaining the source code. Furthermore, the machine supplier did not implement Open API, preventing consolidation of drilling device data.DEX, the most cost-effective path to smart manufacturingThe DEX-100 performs optical character recognition (OCR) upon VGA/DPI display output from a legacy device, with the result converted to digital data. DEX-100 performance is unaffected by limitation of OS platforms or versions, requiring no Ethernet connection port or the requirement to recognize convoluted log files. Circumventing these barriers, the DEX-100 gathers machine status data with ease.As well as solving the network connectivity issue, DEX-100, when connected to a barcode scanner, can retrieve the serial number of the required drilling recipe, retrieve the corresponding recipe from the recipe management server and upload the serial number to the manufacturing execution system (MES), which sends the correct recipe to the DEX-100 for input to the device. Thus drilling is always executed according to the correct recipe, eliminating errors caused by manual input.To operators pursuing system connectivity, upgrading to Industry 4.0 while keeping costs to a minimum is an ongoing struggle. By extracting machine data from display content, ADLINK's DEX-100 ingeniously connects legacy systems, giving them a new life and enabling them to function fully in process automation and machine monitoring.ADLINK's DEX data extraction and network connectivity solution to circumvent the obstacles in the smartest manner possible

Winbond Electronics Corporation, a leading global supplier of semiconductor memory solutions, today announced that its innovative SpiStack dual-die NOR+NAND code storage product has been included on NXP Semiconductors FRWY-LS1012A board for use with its Layerscape LS1012A communications processor.NXP chose Winbond's W25M161AW SpiStack product for its new FRWY-LS1012A development board for the LS1012A processor. The W25M161AW provides 16Mbits of serial NOR Flash memory for the board's boot code, and 1Gbit of serial NAND for its Linux operating system.Winbond is demonstrating its SpiStack product running on the FRWY-LS1012A board at its booth 721 during the 2019 Flash Memory Summit (Santa Clara Convention Center, California, 6-8 August).The stacked-die construction of the SpiStack products and the software Chip Select capability developed by Winbond enable a serial NOR Flash die for fast boot and a serial NAND die for high memory density to be accommodated in an 8-terminal WSON package with a standard 8mm x 6mm footprint and pin-out."The W25M161AW SpiStack device provides the perfect pairing with our Layerscape LS1012A SoC," commented Jeff Steinheider, director, product marketing, NXP Industrial Applications Processors. "The W25M161AW saves board real-estate for compact designs with the LS1012A, while still providing 1Gbit of storage for a full featured Linux OS."Visitors to Winbond's booth at the Flash Memory Summit can also view demonstration systems exhibiting the industry-best Read performance of its W25N01JW High Performance Serial NAND product. The W25N01JW offers a new high data-transfer rate of 83MB/s via a Quad Serial Peripheral Interface (QSPI).Winbond's new High-Performance Serial NAND technology also supports a two-chip dual-quad interface which gives a maximum data transfer rate of 166MB/s.This high-speed Read operation, some four times faster than existing serial NAND memory devices offer, means that the new W25N01JW chip can replace SPI NOR Flash memory in automotive applications such as data storage for instrument clusters or the Center Information Display (CID).This is important for automotive OEMs because the adoption of more sophisticated graphics displays in the instrument cluster, and larger display sizes of 7" and above in the CID, is increasing system memory requirements to capacities of 1Gbit and higher. At these capacities, serial NAND Flash has a markedly lower unit cost than SPI NOR Flash, and occupies a smaller board area per Mbit of storage capacity.Syed S. Hussain, Director Segment Marketing at Winbond, said: 'Winbond's TECHNOLOGY at the Flash Memory Summit is proof of our continued commitment to product development in the low- to medium-density specialty memory sector. The SpiStack and High Performance Serial NAND products are great examples of the way that Winbond invents creative solutions to enable our customers to get the storage capacity and performance that they need in small packages at a competitive cost.'Both the W25M161AW and W25N01JW are available now in production volumes. More information may be found at www.winbond.com.About WinbondWinbond Electronics Corporation is a total memory solution provider. The Company provides customer-driven memory solutions backed by the expert capabilities of product design, R&D, manufacturing, and sales services. Winbond's product portfolio, consisting of Specialty DRAM, Mobile DRAM and Code Storage Flash, is widely used by tier-1 customers in communication, consumer electronics, automotive and industrial, and computer peripheral markets.Winbond's headquarters is in Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP) and it has subsidiaries in the USA, Japan, Israel, China and Hong Kong. Based in Taichung and new Kaohsiung 12-inch fabs in Taiwan, Winbond keeps pace to develop in-house technologies to provide high-quality memory IC products.About Flash Memory SummitFlash Memory Summit, produced by Conference ConCepts, showcases the mainstream applications, key technologies, and leading vendors that are driving the multi-billion dollar non-volatile memory and SSD markets. FMS is now the world's largest event featuring the trends, innovations, and influencers driving the adoption of flash memory in demanding enterprise storage applications, as well as in high-performance computing, automotive, mobile, and embedded systems.SpiFlash and SpiStack are registered trademarks of Winbond Electronics Corporation. All other product names that appear in this material are for identification purposes only and are acknowledged trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.Winbond's W25M161AW SpiStack product in an 8mm x 6mm package provides 16Mbits of NOR Flash for boot code and 1Gbit of NAND for a Linux or other full-featured operating system

With the goal of fueling innovation in medical devices and bridging the gap between Taiwanese startups, clinical resources, venture capitals and big-name medical device companies from Europe and the US, Show Chwan Medical Group put together the third BEST Asia Innovation Program in an effort to combine business, engineering and surgical technology - 3 essential elements for R&D innovation in medical devices.The third BEST Asia Innovation Program is powered by IRCAD Taiwan, the Institute of Image-Guided Surgery (IHU), Karl Storz, Medtronic, BE Accelerator, the Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories of ITRI, Hiwin Technologies, INTAI Technology and MedicalTek. The program came with a collection of additional features including a 1-year online course as well as a 1-week onsite course, which takes on a bigger responsibility than just a training camp for youngsters. It is also a matchmaking platform at international level for academic-industry collaborations. Students, engineers, physicians and entrepreneurs, over 200 participants from around the world attended the program this year.The program is on its third year since 2017. Every year, domestic and foreign experts with backgrounds in healthcare, engineering and business are invited. This year in particular, the program worked closely with the BIODESIGN team including thought leader, James Wall from Stanford Beyer Center of Biodesign (US); Atsushi Nakagawa from Tohoku University (Japan); Cheng-Li Sung from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (China); S Perretta from IHU (France); Dennis McWilliams; Founder, Apollo Endosurgery (US); William Tai, Partner, AMED Venture (US); Avi Yaron, Founder, VisionSense (Israel) and Stefano Stramigioli, the grandmaster of robotics (Netherlands), etc. The program was also joined by Wayne Huang, Director, IRCAD Taiwan; Arthur Chen, Executive Director, BE Accelerator and BIODESIGN fellows, Tien-Jen Liu, Po-Hao Huang, Kai-Che Liu and Hsiao-Wei Tang. The event this year saw richer representation of experts and academia participation offering broad insights into corporate venture building, minimally invasive surgical strategies and the industry trend.Show Chwan Medical Group and its international strategic partners ended the program strong with a symposium, which took place at the Windsor Hotel. The symposium focused on discussing how accelerators and capitals' investments came to drive innovation in the medical device industry. At the final session of the symposium, a memorandum of understanding serves to establish and implement joint efforts to bridge the gap between the field of business, engineering and medicine, was officially signed by IRCAD Taiwan, ITRI and BE Accelerator. Chi-Wan Lin, Director of the Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories of ITRI underscored the value of the collaboration in which BE Accelerator will take on the role as VC, ITRI as the industrial innovation partner and IRCAD as the surgical innovation hub. Under the MoU, three parties will undertake efforts to strengthen the linkages between clinical practice, business and industry.The 3rd BEST Innovation SymposiumA MoU signed between ITRI, IRCAD Taiwan and BE AcceleratorPhotos: Company

Indium Corporation will feature its proven Indium3.2HF Solder Paste for LED manufacturing at Touch Taiwan Display International, August 28-30 in Taipei, Taiwan.The use of high-power LEDs, MicroLEDs, and MiniLEDs is growing exponentially due to light quality, energy efficiency, and reliability. These attributes are directly related to design and assembly methods and materials. Indium Corporation's Indium3.2HF Solder Paste provides:• Consistent printing performance• Long stencil life• Outstanding slump resistance• Excellent wetting ability• Superior fine-pitch soldering ability • Water-washable flux residueIndium Corporation also provides a myriad of materials for LED manufacturing, such as IndiTri or indium trichloride for manufacturing common MOCVD precursor materials, metal-based thermal interface materials (TIMs), gold-tin solder preforms and pastes, and ultra-low voiding solder pastes.See Indium Corporation's experts at the show or visit www.indium.com/LED to learn more.

To help potential users, target users and partners better understand how the Open Compute Project (OCP) organization can benefit data centers, edge computing and other applications, the OCP Foundation, Cloud Computing and IoT Association in Taiwan (CIAT)/OCPT, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Taipei Computer Association co-hosted the first annual OCP Taiwan Day at the Taipei International Convention Center alongside Computex 2019.The theme of the event, "The road to 5G, AI and edge computing," gave a clear picture about what the event would focus on – collaborated research achievements and open source contributions OCP and its members have made over the years in 5G, AI and edge computing. Executives and experts from the open source community, including OCP, ITRI, Microsoft, MiTAC, Delta, Open Networking Foundation (ONF), Edgecore, Intel, Wiwynn and Yahoo JP, gathered at the event to provide insights into a myriad of topics encompassing the results of OCP projects and subprojects, AI edge computing, smart cloud innovations and building smart, efficient, and green data centers.Open source contributions meet four tenets - efficiency, openness, scalability and impactAccording to OCP community director Archna Haylock, the organization leads a host of projects and subprojects, including: the Open Networking Linux (ONL), Open Network Install Environment (ONIE), Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) and Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) subprojects under the Networking Project; the Advanced Cooling Solutions (ACS), Power Shelf Interoperability (PSI) and Open Rack V3 subprojects under the Rack & Power Project Group; the Archival Storage and Cloud HDD Fast Fail Read subprojects under the Storage Project; and the PCIe 3.0 Mezzanine Card, Open Accelerator Infrastructure (OAI) and Open Domain-Specific Architecture (ODSA) subprojects under the Server Project.More subprojects under the Data Center Facility Project, Telco Project and Hardware Management Project include Modular Data Center (MDC), openEDGE and Open RMC. OCP also drives additional projects in High Performance Computing (HPC), Open System Firmware (OSF) and Security. All OCP projects are contributed by the OCP ecosystem comprising organization members, integrated solution providers, suppliers and sales channel operators.The OCP community continues to grow and now includes hundreds of corporate members. Thousands of engineers are engaged in the 10 OCP projects. Sunlai Chang, senior vice president and CTO, Wiwynn, noted OCP requires that all members self-examine their open source design contributions and workshops to ensure they meet the four core OCP tenets: efficiency, openness, scalability and impact.Emily Hong, president and CEO, Wiwynn as well as chairperson, OCP Taiwan (OCPT), noted that OCPT, launched May 23, 2013, is among the organization's first few international chapters. Playing a critical role raising the IT community's awareness in Taiwan, OCPT focuses on coordinating industry efforts toward open design, promoting education and driving cross-industry contributions to all OCP projects.ITRI was authorized to set up an OCP Certification Lab in 2014. Instead of "OCP Certified" marks, OCP-recognized products began to receive "OCP Accepted" or "OCP Inspired" marks in mid-2017 for the purpose of expanding the OCP application scope. The OCP Marketplace was also established in 2017.Edge cloud drives 5G upgrade and AI edge computing becomes a focus of open source developmentRajeerv Sharma, director, software & technologies, OCP, commented that by 2020, the number of connected devices will surge to 20 billion and IoT will generate 115 YB of data while collecting 1,587 EB of data. The amount of data growing at an astounding rate will drive demand for edge computing. The number of IoT devices supporting data processing at the edge of the network will top 5.6 billion by 2020.Edge computing arises from such demand. According to Gartner, edge computing is part of the distributed computing topology, wherein the data generated or used by devices and users is processed at the edge. Chi-Long Wang, team leader, data center architecture and cloud application software, Information and Communications Research Laboratories, ITRI, said cloud computing and edge computing are not mutually exclusive approaches but actually complement each other, rather than compete against each other.Edge computing has become a force driving 5G upgrade. According to a Gartner report, by 2020, 30% of the service providers delivering 5G services will also offer edge computing services and 50% of enterprise data will be created and processed outside of traditional data centers or cloud. Edge virtualization and its use on edge cloud will be a fundamental force driving 5G development.According to Wang, eye-catching opportunities will actually come from the combination of AI and edge computing, which will be built on the basis of 5G or high-speed wired/wireless network, edge data centers performing computation and deep learning neural network image processing applications. Development tool kits available for such purposes include Intel OpenVINO for inferencing and Google Edge TPU for predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, machine vision and other widespread uses. AI edge computing can be applied in smart surveillance, image-based remote patient monitoring in smart hospitals, AI-based medical image analysis and new-generation smart retail and smart manufacturing.Murugasamy Nachimuthu, principal engineer, Intel, noted that Intel has made several innovations openly available to drive edge computing advances, including remote management, open firmware and simplified firmware, firmware resilience as well as rack and power management.Open source design extending from hardware to firmware security enables flexible boot up mechanism for heterogeneous systemsAccording to Wei-Yang Ding, chief technology officer, Microsoft Taiwan, Microsoft joined OCP in 2014 and introduced its next generation rack-level solution – Project Olympus within OCP's Server Project in 2016. By engaging community collaborations, Project Olympus enabled a new open source hardware development model through a modular architecture with which the designs of components including the rack, universal power monitoring distribution unit, air blocker, accelerator and universal motherboard are made open to the public as they are being developed.In 2017, Microsoft further introduced Project Cerberus - the next phase of Project Olympus. Project Cerberus extends open source hardware development to include security implementations for open source firmware and I/O devices. The hardware root of trust is finally expanded to encompass peripheral I/O devices. Project Cerberus specifications are open to the public. All Project Olympus motherboards are deployed with Cerberus security. Furthermore, Project Denali, launched in 2018, redefined the rules for large-scale flash storage and introduced new EDSFF-based SSD designs.The latest Project Zipline announced in 2019 is Microsoft's cutting-edge compression algorithm suitable for both traditional data sets such as system logs and modern data sets such as IoT remote sensor data. Project Zipline is particularly tailored to usage models including network data processing, edge computing, IIoT and big data analytics.System firmware today typically runs on server nodes installed on racks in cloud centers and is mostly of closed architectures. When different silicon solution providers each have their own boot-up process and silicon interface, the need to have "Single Implementation" can hardly be satisfied. Also, with the current firmware development model being unable to keep up with the needs of many cloud hardware manufacturers, OCP's OSF Project comes into play.Sharma said that we need a silicon interface firmware module (SIFM) that can flexibly support the start-up mechanisms of wide-ranging heterogeneous systems. With SIFM, users can boot up Linux systems from Coreboot (formerly LinuxBIOS) through the help of Intel or AMD. Users can even boot up Windows systems via open-source Linuxboot.OCP saves DC power and footprint and accelerates deploymentOCP is working on the planning and promotion of its Rack and Power Project, of which the OpenRMC subproject focuses on rack management. In more detail, the rack management controller (RMC) is a dedicated hardware device managing a plurality of racks both on the computation level and the rack level. The controller supports all network packet interface specifications, including Redfish, Swordfish, I2C, WebGUI, IPMI and SSH.Commenting on the reason and importance for data centers to incorporate OCP, Hancock Chang, MiTAC OCP Technical and System Lead, pointed out OCP delivers excellent power usage effectiveness (PUE) and low PUE reduces OPEX. An OCP server reduces OPEX by 35% and saves data center footprint by 50% compared to a conventional rack server. With its tool-less design, OCP servers can accelerate data center deployment.MiTAC contributed the OCP ESA specification in July 2018, which supports EIA standard equipment and OCP solutions in the same rack without the need to rebuild conventional server rooms or data centers. Furthermore, it achieves energy and cost savings, speeds up implementation, enables interchangeability and gives users the freedom to choose suppliers.Richard Chan, Delta technology director, spoke about the company's DC facility development strategy and said Delta's requirement on data center infrastructure management (DCIM) is moving from real-time monitoring and management at present to overload prediction based on machine learning and PUE modeling and optimization. To lower CAPEX and OPEX, Delta demands WBG devices to achieve 98% PSU and UPS efficiency and improves overall DC efficiency through the battery management system. For availability and reliability enhancements, Delta is upgrading from the current use of redundancy design and warning system to predictive maintenance implementations leveraging machine learning, big data analytics and proactive maintenance. For quick deployment, Delta is transitioning from pod-based data centers to containerized high-density power modules.Nachimuthu noted Intel is committed to developing optimized high-density cloud platforms and offers them to the OCP community through open source contributions with Inspur. Intel has also introduced a solution to improve data center thermal management efficiency with a power trend predictor, which is contributed to the OCP DC Facility Project.Intel also open sourced its own Platform Resource Manager (PRM), Firmware Support Package (FSP) and Coreboot through the OSF Project. There is also Storage Disaggregation based on the NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-of) architecture made available by Intel.According to Sunlai Chang, senior vice president and CTO, Wiwynn, its two-phase immersion cooling system is capable of supporting the operation of up to 100 OCP TiogaPass server motherboards. The overall system design enables easy maintenance and eliminates the need for fans, heat sinks and facility air conditioning. It achieves not only lower PUE but also 40% more saving on energy costs compared to existing water cooling systems. Furthermore, integrated with 48V and Power Pooling technologies, Wiwynn's solution can reduce 12V power transmission loss by 93%.Open source developments drive continuous availability of high-quality 5G network applications and servicesONF researcher Charles Chan noted ONF is an operator-led open source initiative aiming to promote the integration of telecom edge cloud, open source software, distributed hardware and cloud technologies. CORD is ONF's flagship project for such purpose. Another noteworthy point is the availability of the new reference design known as SEBA (SDN enabled broadband access) built on the CORD platform.ONF also leads the development of a myriad of open source modular components, including VOLTHA, which abstracts the passive optical network (PON) network to appear as a programmable Ethernet switch to an SDN controller, Trellis, which manages multi-purpose leaf-spine fabric architecture, and NG-SDN, the next-generation software-defined network matching innovative services with programmable pipeline and unified interface.George Tchaparian, president and CEO, Edgecore, remarked the advent of the 5G era spurs AI and edge computing developments, which in turn trigger massive demand for bandwidth earlier than expected. Adoption of 5G communication, AI and edge computing will also bring new expectations and needs for network services with continuous availability and high quality. This will also boost operation efficiency and drive the development of ultra-low latency and smart applications. To keep CAPEX at bay while putting appropriate infrastructure in place, it is imperative that businesses plan their strategies along the lines of openness, white-box business model, hardware disaggregation and automation.According to Sunlai Chang, 5G brings OCP benefits to a wide variety of new applications. OCP will work with other organizations including the Linux Foundation (LF) and ONF to make a stronger impact. Telecom operators will embrace openness, allowing existing equipment to commercialize. OCP will benefit three 5G specifications - enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) and Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC). Edge computing products developed in accordance with OCP OpenEDGE spec can expand 5G and edge computing user ecosystem and enrich the options.In 2015, Microsoft announced its networking OS Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) specifically for software-define network (SDN), which supports the OCP Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI). The specification has been officially accepted by OCP as a standardized C API to program ASICs. In the following year, Microsoft was the first to take part in OCP SONiC for the purpose of enabling its SDN software to easily manage all hardware components on the network. It then open sourced the innovative breakthrough in network switch operation and management.Built on SAI, SONiC allows network operators to fully leverage rapid advances in silicon, CPU, power supply, port density as well as optical network and speed while ensuring ROI for their investment in a unified software solution for cross-platform operations. SONiC is the first solution to separate switch software into multiple containerized components. It enables fine-grained failure recovery and in-service upgrades with zero downtime.With the container design, operators can minimize the efforts needed to add new components and incorporate third-party, self-developed or open-source software. They can also customize SONiC to suit specific use scenarios. Going forward, Microsoft looks to have data centers fully support SONiC and further expand it to network and wide-area network access control.OCP enables significant cost reductions at Yahoo!Japan, completely unshackled from vendor lock-inKazuhide Fujimi, server infrastructure engineer from Yahoo!Japan, noted that in order to reduce costs for hardware installation and management, Yahoo!Japan decided four years ago to embrace OCP. As the OCP market and ecosystem mature, the unit costs of OCP servers and racks have come down sharply. The company started massive adoptions about two years ago, and so far over 4,000 computing nodes at its three datacenters run on the OCP architecture.Over the last four years, Yahoo!Japan has not only enriched its experience and technological know-how using the open-source architecture, but also saved substantial amounts, including 29% in cost reductions for server units, and a 18% decrease in rack costs. And because OCP completely avoids vendor lock-in, the company has a lot of flexibility in purchasing hardware peripherals and components. As it takes longer lead time to deploy OCP servers and racks, and the OCP racks are wider in length than standard ones, careful planning for the server room is needed. Currently Yahoo!Japan maintains a mixed-rack deployment strategy, but will gradually increase the proportion of OCP in the future.

As more telecoms turn on 5G networks in 2019, consumers are eagerly awaiting firsthand, real-world 5G usage experiences. With a global presence that delivers extraordinary user experiences by offering immersive sound and imaging solutions, Xperi presented its latest audio, imaging and semiconductor solutions at Computex 2019. The company continues to expand its reach through several advanced releases and product updates based on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. In a recent interview, Geir Skaaden, Xperi's Chief Products and Services Officer talks about three major product focuses showcased at Computex.There are three main opportunities that leverage Xperi image AI solutions and immersive sound solutions through AI, as well as across all of its brands and technologies. The first focus is face detection technology, which is integrated into LG's 2019 flagship smartphone utilizing Fotonation Image AI technology and Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors. This feature provides a user-friendly interface on LG phones, while also allowing for greater convenience and increased security for financial transactions.The second opportunity centers on Xperi solutions for smart IoT devices. There is an ongoing trend around the industrial convergence between smart IoT devices and traditional mobile phones and laptops. Offering both image AI and audio solutions, Xperi is working with mobile device manufacturers and IoT solution providers to facilitate this convergence and bring new products to market.The third opportunity focuses on the gaming sectors. Gaming PCs and smartphone devices continue to evolve with enhanced sound technologies to deliver immersive entertainment experiences. Xperi's DTS immersive audio product offerings bring compelling sound effects to powerful gaming laptops, smartphones and other gaming devices, which serve to maintain the company's strong product differentiation and leadership.Image AI performs on leading edge of Face ID with ToF sensorsWhile face ID technology in smartphones is one of the more important features for enabling flagship models given the current technology hype, cost remains an issue. Structured light sensors are expensive. Through Xperi's FotoNation image AI solutions, manufacturers can access cost effective ToF sensors to maintain the same level of accuracy and allow banking services to use the system to authenticate specific transactions.The ToF sensors represent a 34% cost advantage when compared with a structured light sensor approach, Skaaden notes. With the right level of accuracy, face detection is the most user-friendly technology enabling biometric identification. This is why Fotonation Image AI technology has been so successful in helping smartphone brands to maintain leading market positions. Investing in AI technology for more than 15 years, Fotonation has built its own AI models with specific training image data sets and image AI technology that continuously seeks to improve accuracy to desired levels.With powerful algorithms and code optimization capability, the engineering teams of Fotonation provide tailored products for its customers by leveraging AI inferencing engines, edge computing technologies and low-power consumption embedded system design to assist powerful application processor of smartphones and achieve higher performance.The features of FaceSafe, Xperi's facial biometrics solution, will continue to penetrate the market covering PCs, laptops and other intelligent IoT devices as use cases expand and drive increased uniqueness demands for other devices. Skaaden predicts that the upcoming CES and MWC exhibitions will show even more innovative products coming into the market.Taiwan ecosystem partners playing important rolesDTS immersive sound product offerings bring powerful branding effects for customers by providing a new level of quality in 3D sound experiences for the everyday consumer. The enhanced user experience created by immersive sound technologies will allow new 5G smartphones and mobile devices to take full advantage of high speed data transfer rates and smarter edge technologies, Skaaden added. One of the unique benefits aligns with the trend of cloud gaming services shifting gears to boost the use of edge devices and create more immersive effects for the gaming experience. A lot of big mobile gaming titles with smart edge technologies are expected to enter the market, providing a higher level of quality in immersive sight and sound experiences.Smart edge technology that enables better gaming experiences is made possible by lowering latency and improving accessibility at a more affordable cost to gamers. When workloads run at the edge of the network instead of being sent to cloud servers for processing, data need only travel the minimum necessary distance, reducing associated lag time and enabling more interactive and immersive experiences. Further, DTS immersive sound products have current strength in the Windows platform. As the 5G PC concept gains market adoption, this will also help android systems to access the mobile gaming segment, benefitting from the full features of immersive sound effects. Xperi is watching these opportunities closely with some potential customers continuing to apply immersive sound technology to deliver intelligent edge solutions at the gaming sector.The new development trends for Xperi are increasingly targeted for AI related use cases. A variety of applications include functionality like detecting how many people and each individual in a room through image recognition technology, which is becoming a more interesting and hotter use case under development. Meanwhile, additional emerging solutions enable intelligent music playback features when recognizing the person in the driver seat. Such kinds of smart and fun applications that provide interactive control and overcome human interface challenges are attracting global brands and Taiwan ecosystem partners. As he talks optimistically about future business opportunities, Skaaden believes these convenience enhancing features will meaningfully benefit from Xperi image AI and immersive sound technologies.Furthermore, the Taiwan electronic industry has a very unique market position for connecting these cooperation programs as global brands pursue OEM/ODM orders with Taiwan electronics manufacturers. This makes the Taiwan electronics industry and supply chain a leading place for global market growth. That's why Xperi invests in dedicated engineering support teams locally in Taiwan to work with Taiwan ecosystem and chipset design vendors to support its long-term strategic relationship with Taiwan partners. With 5G and AI enabled technologies evolving to play an important role in driving future growth for electronics industries, Xperi will continue its efforts to help Taiwan partners to provide a robust user experience for high consumer satisfaction and looks forward to broadening and deepening its partner relationships.