Digi-Key Electronics, a global electronic components distributor, has opened a new office in Shanghai to support record growth in the company's China market. The new office is one of two in China and will enable Digi-Key to continue to maintain a strong presence in the growing China market.Digi-Key's new Shanghai office will house several employees who will serve Digi-Key's whole China RMB business. The office is located on the 32nd floor, Office Tower 1, Raffles City Changning, No.1133 Changning Road, Changning District."Our teams in Shanghai and Hong Kong have experienced the highs of supporting crazy growth over the last two years. Now dealing with uneven market conditions in general has given us a chance to catch our breath and continue improving our local presence in the region," said Dave Doherty, president/COO of Digi-Key. "Our continued commitment to the China market has not wavered one bit. We are excited to announce our move to new offices in Shanghai. We take 'the long view' with our strategic initiatives in the region and continue to invest in the future of the China market."As a recognized leader in electronic components distribution, Digi-Key continues to expand their global footprint. With over 4,000 international employees, 18 international offices, and shipping to over 170 countries worldwide, Digi-Key is deeply committed to serving international customers with regional support in sales, customer service and technical staff.Along with the expansion of their workforce and international offices, Digi-Key is expanding capabilities to ship components to makers around the world as quickly as possible. Digi-Key currently offers more than 8.7 million products, with over 1.7 million products in stock and available for immediate shipping and delivery in as little as 72 hours.Digi-Key also has extensive online resources to help makers bring their innovations to life, including the DK IoT Studio, EDA and design tools, datasheets, reference designs, instructional articles and videos, multimedia libraries, and much more.Digi-Key opens Shanghai office

Leading semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest Corporation has partnered with MultiLane Inc. to develop instrumentation that extends the V93000 platform's ability to cost-effectively test the next generation of digital high-speed interfaces. The Multilane instruments provide test data rates up 112Gbps in PAM4 and 56Gbps in NRZ with scope analysis capabilities with 50GHz bandwidth.By working closely together, the two experienced test equipment companies have developed a highly integrated solution that brings these high-frequency resources very close to the device under test (DUT) and significantly enhances signal integrity and test accuracy.The companies combined resources to provide truly innovative solutions ideal for testing the next generation of devices for applications including data centers and artificial intelligence (AI). The new instruments, to be sold and supported by MultiLane, expand the V93000's digital and analog top-end frequency limits to levels critical for development of the newest communications infrastructure. Breaking the mold of traditional automatic test equipment (ATE) solutions, this collaboration allows use of the ATE DUT board with MultiLane's high-frequency instruments on the bench as well as use of bench-type measurement and characterization tools on the ATE.An integrated software environment maintains the flexible, interactive aspect of bench instruments while adding hooks to control and manage the instruments in high-volume production environments."By working together, MultiLane and Advantest have grown and enhanced each other's capabilities, providing our customers with the wide-band 112-Gbps PAM4 test capabilities that are so critical for data center and AI growth plans," said Juergen Serrer, executive vice president of the V93000 Business Unit within Advantest Corporation's ATE Business Group."MultiLane is excited to bring our products to Advantest's semiconductor-test-focused customer base and to bring the V93000's rich feature set to MultiLane's communications-focused customer base. As our traditional customers expand their integration levels, the V93000 will provide them with many fully integrated capabilities to improve the testing of their products and speed their time to market," said Fadi Daou, CEO of MultiLane, Inc.Both Advantest and MultiLane are actively discussing the new instruments with multiple customers.

China-based IC design firm Sage Microelectronics (Sage Micro) recently raised CNY240 million (US$35 million) in capital investment, which will be used toward the development of high-end controller chips for enterprise-class data storage and server products.China's economic growth has long been fueled by its flourishing housing market. Investors prefer to bet their money on tangible assets such as machinery equipment and real estate and look down on the value knowledge industries like the semiconductor sector can create. In fact, China has always relied heavily on imported semiconductor chips. Concerned over such dependency on foreign supply, the China government is taking the initiative to change things around with its unique "state-led movement." It looks to build semiconductor plants across the country as a way of fostering a domestic IC industry. However, as China-based IC design firms still have a hard time securing investments from venture capital funds, they don't stand a chance in the competition against international companies. The fact that privately operated Sage Micro was able to raise a large sum of capital in this round of funding in addition to the launch of the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-focused STAR Market signifies the China government's clear determination toward incubating domestic technological firms with core competence.Founded in 2011, Sage Micro has risen to become China's leading brand of storage controller chips. Its R&D team has created a wealth of IC design intellectual property (IP) in computer interface and solid state disks (SSD) in more than a decade, a rare achievement among its peers. Over its eight-year history, Sage Micro has been recognized as China's High and New Technology Enterprise, integrated circuit design firm, designated producer of commercial cipher products, Zhejiang Province Enterprise Research Institute and Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory. As a matter of fact, Sage Micro's mobile storage, SSD, and storage array controller chips are being used by international leading storage manufacturers, making it a key supplier of chips used in storage cards, USB drives, external hard disk drives (HDD), SSDs, large-scale storage arrays, computer bridge circuits, high-speed server bus and accelerators. As one of the very few China-based IC design firms capable of exporting semiconductor solutions, what Sage Micro has achieved is truly commendable. With the additional US$35 million capital in place, Sage Micro will use the fund to promote collaborations with international strategic partners and jointly develop high-end controller chips for enterprise-class products, according to information the company has made public. The deal not only indicates that international leaders are paying attention to the China market and recognizing Sage Micro's technological strength but also that Chinese investors are starting to take notice of the value IC design firms can bring. Companies with core technological competence are coming into play and the market can expect more Chinese IC design firms to rise up over the next couple of years.Established by a team of Silicon Valley veterans, Sage Micro acquired Initio Corp, a Silicon Valley design house with complete bridge controller IC technologies and product offerings. Through the acquisition, Sage Micro gained access to physical layer and protocol layer interface technologies including SD/MMC, PATA, SATA, SAS, USB2.0/3.0 and PCIe, which are applied to storage cards, motherboards, hard disks and disk arrays. Its customer base has also expanded to include leading international hard disk manufacturers and computer companies. Being the first in China to introduce an SSD controller chip, Sage Micro brought its first SATA SSD controller chip to reality in 2012 - China's first locally developed multi-core SSD controller chip. In 2014, Sage Micro unveiled the world's first SSD controller chip supporting up to 5TB capacity at Flash Memory Summit (FMS). At that time, a standard 2.5" SSD with 9mm thickness came with maximum 10TB capacity. The jump of five times in capacity wowed the market and set a new SSD industry record. Furthermore, Sage Micro is one of the lead providers of storage bridge controller chips in today's global market.Leveraging its core IC design technologies, Sage Micro provides a full spectrum of self-managed and self-controlled solutions including large-scale data storage, encryption modules and controlled self-destruction SSD. Its solutions are certified by the China Office of State Commercial Cryptography Administration (OSCCA) and comply with the US NIST/FIP-140 standards to enable robust data security at the chip level. At home and broad, Sage Micro is considered an expert in storage controller technologies with the ability to develop unique solutions. The company's CEO Dr Jerome Luo is among the organizers of FMS held in Santa Clara every year and he also hosts forums in China, which are part of his efforts to help China's storage industry synergize with the international community.Commenting on the company's Internet strategic planning, Dr Luo noted, "Sage Micro gears its efforts toward enterprise-class SSD controller chips and disk array controller chips. Competition in these high-end controller segments is at the global level and it requires extensive technological know-how." Leveraging the technological strength built up through years of development, Sage Micro is working on disk array controller chips, which will be the core designed with intricate technologies to power massive-scale data storage comprising hundreds and thousands of hard disks. In addition to existing partnerships with manufacturers of bridge controller chips and hard disks, Sage Micro will further engage in collaborations with new storage device suppliers to drive the research and industrialization of enterprise-class SSD, large-scale disk arrays and server peripheral bus controller chips. No Taiwan-based firms have ventured into these market segments while China-based IC design houses lack sufficient IP in these areas so a few industry giants, such as Broadcom and others, hold key technologies and dominate the market. Manufacturers of large-scale data storage including those based in China have no choice but to purchase critical controller chips from the small number of companies that are monopolizing the market.Take the flash memory controller chip market for example. With the China government actively advocating and promoting development in this sector, many firms have debuted controller chips that are purportedly developed in house. In fact, dozens of firms have emerged in the past couple of years but few of them have the real core competence to move forward to volume production. China's IC design industry has yet to build up solid technological strength, particularly lacking extensive IP in specific fields. Some of the so-called in-house developments are actually complete IC designs sold by international fabless firms in the form of total solutions to Chinese companies or organizations which then package and market them as domestically produced chips. However, this does not mean China-based firms have nothing to show for their efforts. There are companies that stand out. For example, DRAM controller chip developer Montage successfully went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market. GigaDevice as a NOR flash vendor got IPO successful, too. With state-backed investments into flash memory production lines, Tsinghua Unigroup is making good progress. Sage Micro is set become a rising star in controller chips for computer peripherals, large-scale data storage and servers.Amid escalating US-China trade tension, China is ramping up efforts toward "hard technology" developments, especially targeting the semiconductor industry. The launch of the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market is aimed to encourage IC firms first and foremost. Accordingly, it is not surprising that Sage Micro, with robust IC design capabilities accumulated through years of efforts, was able to win favor with investors. Not many IC design firms in China have built up extensive semiconductor IP as their American competitors normally do. Both its Silicon Valley based subsidiary and Taipei based technical support team kept Sage Micro's culture not isolated with the global semiconductor industry and market. As an expert in computer peripheral interface and storage controller chips, Sage Micro is among the very few Chinese firms that are able to expand internationally. It is only a matter of time before Sage Micro goes public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market. This may very well be the reason why investors suddenly became so interested and scrambled to pour funds into Sage Micro.Sage Micro founderSage Micro CEO Dr Jerome Luo headed several research projects of large-scale communication systems and integrated circuit technologies in China and has received multiple awards from provincial and central governments for driving technology advances. He worked as a senior IC designer in Silicon Valley in 2001 and co-founded Baleen Systems Inc. in 2003. Dr. Luo returned to China in 2011 and established Sage Micro. Based on his successful experiences in leading research teams in China and decade-long overseas career, Dr. Luo is a seasoned veteran in IC design planning and the application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) industry. The fruits of the research projects he headed have commercialized into ten product lines that are in volume production. More than 30 papers have been published in domestic and international academic journals and more than 40 patents have been granted around the world. Dr. Luo is also enthusiastically devoted to pro bono work for the data storage industry. Not only does he serve as the director of Micro-Electronic Research Institute (MERI) in Hangzhou Dianzi University (HDU) but he is also one of the organizers of the renowned Flash Memory Summit (FMS). In the past six years, he invited more than 20 Chinese flash memory experts to speak at FMS and more than 10 international experts to present at local storage forums and academic events in China.Sage Micro provides a comprehensive range of storage chip solutions, targeting cloud storage, personal storage and industrial applications.Sage Micro CEO Dr Jerome Luo

The idea of IoT has been around for more than a decade and after years of market development, a wide range of applications are recently coming into reality. The industry now has growing needs for IoT solutions and particularly focuses attention on NB-IoT, which can help developers quickly build high-performance platforms based on current network infrastructure. At AMobile Solution Forum, executives of IoT solution expert AMobile Intelligent and industry leaders shed light on the development of NB-IoT technologies and applications in their engaging presentations.Speaking at the event, Jasmine Chang, Deputy CEO, AMobile Intelligent, noted with information technologies (IT) rapidly advancing and networking being a critical trend of IT industry development, today devices are connected not only within an industry but also across industries, enabling different industries to interconnect and thereby create all kinds of applications to make people's life more intelligent. However, to get more and more things connected, wide-ranging technologies and applications are being developed. From the technological point of view, sensor, gateway, database for big data, cloud platform, and even upcoming 5G communication and blockchain technologies each attempt to address different aspect of IoT. It is unlikely that an individual firm will be able to develop all solutions independently so building up an industry ecosystem will be the only approach to IoT development.Not only does IoT encompass wide-ranging technologies but it also brings never-before-seen applications across different fields. IT products used to focus on consumer devices. With the advent of the smart era, IoT is being put to use in automotive systems, transportation, warehousing, logistics, retail, energy, healthcare and manufacturing. Each of these areas imposes its own system requirements and industry-specific know-how is imperative in order to develop the ideal solution. This is the reason why AMobile Intelligent joins forces with MediaTek, Arbor, Honeywell, Wistron, and Konka Group to form close partnerships, through which AMobile Intelligent will be able to integrate professional expertise of different fields and thereby optimize IoT platforms for customers.Enabling optimal energy efficiency and system performance, NB-IoT holds promising potential for widespread applicationsTo build the ideal architecture, every element of the system needs to be optimized. Communication technologies have reached maturity. In fact, network bandwidth and performance today is already too powerful for applications that are not bandwidth-hungry and data-intensive but include a large number of nodes. For this type of IoT applications, NB-IoT is a suitable communication standard. According to Garry Ganis, general manager, Arbor Technology, Australia, among LPWAN technologies for IoT connectivity, aside from NB-IoT, LoRa is also one of the communication standards that catch market attention. NB-IoT enables better transmission performance compared to LoRa but the two standards have distinctive characteristics and are suitable for applications in different fields. LoRa will be used in equipment condition monitoring and energy management, such as predictive diagnostics of end devices in factories and new-generation super-capacitor uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). NB-IoT will mainly be used in sensors, smart meters, asset tracking, smart parking and smart agriculture.Ganis further pointed out NB-IoT has been successfully applied for asset tracking with many use cases in smart grid, gardening, water management and sharing economy. Featuring simple design and installation, NB-IoT builds a network system and expands the area where data can be collected so that users across different fields can quickly develop an IoT architecture suited to their needs.Elaborating on what Ganis was talking about, Hector Lin, executive vice president, AMobile Intelligent, noted system integrators have been putting NB-IoT to use in different application scenarios based on NB-IoT's unique features. For example, IoT systems are used in smart agriculture to monitor and control pH level, humidity and lighting in farm environments. A large number of sensors are used to detect vacant parking spaces in parking lots, monitor shelf space at warehouses and check air quality in cities. Achieving a low power consumption and deep signal penetration, NB-IoT is an ideal choice to connect the network of sensors.AMobile Intelligent offers a spectrum of value-added services to meet different application requirements and customer needs, including private label service, semi-custom design and ADMS manufacturing model. Private label service encompasses customization of software, button colors and brand logo. For semi-custom design, AMobile Intelligent provides the internal motherboard design and customers decide the casing material and style as well as the internal sensors. ADMS manufacturing includes OEM and ODM service models, wherein AMobile Intelligent has modularized the essential components such as the battery, CPU, RF device, sensor and power supply to enable quick assembly and shorten time-to-market to meet customer demands.AMobile Intelligent products have been put to use in a variety of systems across different fields. With advances in technologies and increases in applications, IoT architectures continue to evolve, among which edge computing and distributed processing are the most important trends in recent years. According to Joey Yeh, product sales manager, AMobile Intelligent, with edge computing, the data collected at the bottom layer of the IoT model can first be consolidated, filtered, selected and processed before being sent to the upper cloud layer. Edge computing can reduce bandwidth usage at the communication layer and ease computational load at the upper system layer, thereby boosting overall performance.Building an industry ecosystem, AMobile Intelligent strengthens partnershipsIn addition to its own executives, AMobile Intelligent also invited leaders of its key partner firms, including MediaTek and Honeywell, to speak about IoT technological trends at the forum. According to MediaTek product manager Jo Wang, market research reports indicate 150 million NB-IoT devices will be shipped by 2020, representing 50% of the IoT market. MediaTek also offers highly-integrated NB-IoT solutions to help customers build high-performance IoT products. Honeywell BD Director Kai Figwer gave an in-depth look into sensor technologies used in IoT. Although sensor technologies have matured and are widely used in different application scenarios, they will have to further evolve to keep up with burgeoning applications in different industries arising from advancing IoT development. Not only do sensors have to be more precise and stable but they also need to have communication capabilities. In view of the fact that NB-IoT will be an important communication standard going forward, Honeywell is fully prepared for NB-IoT opportunities.With the history of IoT development, worldwide industries have gained sufficient understanding of IoT and are beginning to engage IoT technologies in their operations. As everything becomes connected, NB-IoT, featuring low energy consumption, easy development, deep signal penetration and long transmission range, will rise to be the main communication standard used in various types of sensors and smart meters. In response to emerging market demand for NB-IoT solutions, AMobile Intelligent offers a complete portfolio of products and services to help customers address design and manufacturing needs so as to speed up time-to-market and capture massive IoT opportunities.At AMobile Solution Forum, Hector Lin, executive vice president, AMobile Intelligent, noted NB-IoT is an ideal choice to connect the network of sensors.NB-IoT will be a communication standard going forward, Honeywell BD Director Kai Figwer said.

Gorilla Technology Inc will join their partner Zoomtech this year to demonstrate State Safety and Enterprise Security solutions at Interpol World from July 2-4 at the Sands Expo Centre in Singapore.Gorilla IVAR, an edge AI video analytics product optimized by Intel's OpenVINO toolkit, has been used widely in transportation safety, sea and land border control, and criminal vehicle tracking. Combining big data, data statistics, and correlation analysis helps law enforcement officers efficiently improve case handling techniques through science and technology. Traffic management and direction analysis of vehicles have also been a great asset for various traffic enforcement units. Law enforcement in Taiwan, Thailand, and the middle east have worked closely with Gorilla and our smart and safe solutions including IVAR on cases from suspect vehicles to bank heists. This has led to an overall decrease in known illegal activities.Zoomtech is a global leader in their field of auto-gate and turnstile access solutions. Their mission to provide the best customer satisfaction through high quality standards can be seen and experienced first-hand in many airports, offices, banks, and casinos. Gorilla and Zoomtech recently partnered to focus more deeply on security and access control for both border control and enterprise security in Asia.At the show, Gorilla will present and give experiential demonstrations on AI-based solutions from State Safety with Security Convergence to Smart Enterprise with IVAR. Visitors to Zoomtech booth C13 will have the opportunity to experience improved field security for alerting to stray guests, intrusions, and unauthorized personnel through superior face recognition combined with the latest smart access control system. This includes scheduled main entrance and area monitoring, black and white lists, suspicious behavior analysis capabilities, and more.Spincer Koh, Gorilla CEO, will give a brief talk on the solutions outlined above as well as on Gorilla's pioneering concept of Security Convergence at 3:30PM on the show's opening day, July nd. Gorilla's Security Convergence solution can detect, locate, and map malicious attacks as well as infected devices that cannot be detected by firewalls - all in real time. This reduces potential damages while law enforcement can enhance verification for a more robust system or data center by combining face recognition and MOTP (Mobile One Time Password) to create a multi-factor authentication login system.The overall focus of Interpol World this year is "Engaging co-creation to prepare for future security threats" and with partners like Zoomtech and cutting edge solutions like IVAR and Security Convergence, Gorilla is poised to impress at the show.More information about Gorilla Technology and their solutions can be found on their website: https://www.gorilla-technology.comGorilla to showcase security solutions at Interpol World 2019 in Singapore

As a company that provides the architecture at the heart of modern computing, Arm aims to maintain its leading role in the emerging machine learning (ML) market by leveraging its existing advantages to drive the widespread application of ML on various edge devices.At Computex 2019, Jem Davies, Arm Fellow, VP, and GM, Machine Learning Group, explained Arm's views and strategies on the development of the ML market, emphasizing that Arm is the only vendor in the market that has the broad portfolio of CPU, GPU and NPU, as well as strong ecosystem support. By adopting a total compute approach, Arm will be able to provide the best integrated solutions to address the challenges today, in a bid to enable huge possibilities of ML applications.ML is going everywhere"There is no doubt that ML is going everywhere," Davies said. Arm estimates that there are 4 billion smartphones in the world, and 85% of smartphones run ML only on CPU or CPU+GPU. And looking at the most common use cases, ML is already taking place on the CPU from Google Translate, "Bokeh" focus on Instagram, speech recognition to 3D secure login.In addition, Davies stressed, "Some ML algorithms are used in the areas that we never thought of before. For example, in voice recognition, traditionally, we need to perform audio processing, such as noise cancellation, microphone separation, and beam forming, and then run ML algorithm. But now, you can directly throw the raw microphone data to ML algorithm and it will clear up the noise itself. Or, tell you what's wrong when you are running by putting air pressure sensors into your shoes.""More and more we have seen that ML is used in a very disruptive way, and the trend surprises lots of people. With the huge amount of available data at the edges and in the cloud, we expect an explosion of creativity in the future, and Arm will strive to unleash the possibilities with our wide range of ML-optimized solutions."ML is a software problemFrom Arm's perspective, ML is fundamentally a software problem. "ML starts with the CPU, and every device that runs ML has a CPU, which runs the code or hands it to the GPU or NPU. That's why we enhance our Cortex-A and Cortex-M cores to run ML more efficiently, and also introduces dedicated ML processors to address the requirements of higher performance and power efficiency."Davies said that it's Arm's unique advantage to put CPU/GPU/NPU designers and software architects who optimize the codes for CPU/GPU/NPU in the same room, so that we can produce the RTL simulation for the code running for the three processors. Arm is capable of enabling hardware and software together seaminglessly."By taking a holistic view on this, Davies believes that Arm can provide the most flexible and integrated ML solutions to meet customers' different requirements. With a common hardware architecture, Arm aims to strengthen its software and ecosystem supports to help accelerate ML deployment and overcome the fragmentation challenges that the industry is facing today."We have one of the biggest computing ecosystem, but for ML, it's quite different from the existing one, since there are lots of new players coming into this new area," Kathleen Kallot, Director, Machine Learning Ecosystem, ML Group, said. "It's important for us to engage with key partners. For example, we are partnering with Google to develop TensorFlow Lite Micro for embedded devices.""In addition, as ML algorithm players are key to drive innovation, we also need to engage directly with them, to make sure they can get the best performance out of our IPs. We can expect lots of things coming this year and next year, and the ecosystem is building very fast."Arm's ML processorAs ML emerges, domain-specific computing becomes a buzzword in the market. As a leading general-purpose computing technology provider, Davies stressed that Arm has been in the domain-specific game for 15 years, saying, "Of course, we provide CPU, and as display function gets important, we have developed GPU and make it successful in the market. And now, as the market evolves, we also move into the ML processor segment."In fact, it's Jem Davies that makes Mali GPU a successful story at Arm, and now he wants to repeat the history again in the ML game. "For some tasks require higher efficiency, they might need domain-specific processors to run the specific workloads. For us, ML processor is just the domain-specific processor for neural network computing to handle matrix arithmetic and convolution.""From a system perspective, we will not push people to use ML processors. Depending on different use cases, customers need to figure out what the best way is to run the ML code, and sometimes, maybe the CPU is enough."Being a part of Arm's complete portfolio, ML processor boasts an industry-leading power efficiency of 5 TOPs/W and outstanding performance of up to 4 TOP/s. Also, with multicore scalability, it can scale up to eight NPUs and 32 TOPs in a single cluster or 64 NPUs in a mesh configuration. "Data compression technology is important for ML processor development. With our advantage in GPU and video, we will bring that into ML," Davies stressed.Taking a holistic approach to prevail in the ML marketWith so many existing and new players jumping into the NPU market, Davies is confident that Arm will still prevail in this area, saying, "Different from other companies, we consider ML a software problem, not a hardware one. That's why we invest lots of resources to make Arm NN good and easy to use for developers, since making software run efficiently on Arm cores is our job."Though Arm is not the first one to move into NPU market, he said that it gives us the "second-mover advantage", so that we can learn from those who claim to be the first, and provide something better.As ML market is highly fragmented with many different software and hardware architectures, Davies said, "The ecosystem wants one solution and only tolerates 2 or 3, there is no way to have two hundreds solutions in the market. So we will see that lots of players will be out of business.In particular, most of the start-ups are focusing on developing ML hardware, and they don't have enough resources to write software and build the ecosystem."On the other hand, Davies has seen amazing innovation in the ML algorithm space, "These new players are very important to our ecosystem, we will do our best to leverage their expertise to enable more possibilities."He summarized that, to truly unlock the next generation of ML use cases, we need the building blocks optimized and built together from the ground up. And Arm can provide that total compute solutions from hardware, software, and ecosystem to actually fulfill the market needs.Jem Davies, Arm Fellow, VP, and GM, Machine Learning GroupArm "Total Compute" provides the best integrated solutions to enable huge possibilities of ML applications

Specializing in developing and marketing standardized power supply products, Mean Well expanded into the medical power supply segment in 2000 by leveraging its market insight and technological strength. It now offers more than 500 models of medical power supplies in its product portfolio to meet every requirement on power solutions by medical equipment for diagnosis, treatment, lab test and home care purposes. With years of efforts, Mean Well has quickly risen to the No. 8 position in terms of its market share in the segment.According to IHS, the global medical power supply market has a value close to US$500 million. The segment with a much smaller scale compared to power supplies for consumer and IT devices puts up a high technological barrier as medical power solutions impose more stringent requirements than industrial-grade power solutions. Vendors that are able to secure a market position in the segment will not be easily overtaken. Eying the niche opportunity, Mean Well has been putting efforts toward this segment for nearly two decades and has received positive results. Medical power supply products generate NT$1 billion in revenue for Mean Well, representing about 3.3% of the company's total revenue of NT$30.6 billion. The share may be small but the growth potential is promising.Compliance with a full range of safety standards represents a guarantee of premium product quality"A power supply may only account for a small portion in the total costs of a medical device but a power supply failure will definitely hinder a medical device's normal operation," noted Rui-Ching Chen, product manager, Meal Well, as he drew an analogy between the human heart and a medical power supply. "There can be no compromise in the quality, safety, reliability and durability of medical power supplies."Mean Well is fully prepared for the foray into the healthcare market. Its manufacturing facilities are ISO13485 certified and its products comply with a complete range of medical equipment standards including IEC60601-1, EN60601-1, ANSI and AAMI ES60601 Edition 3, in addition to rigorous EMC specifications.To guarantee safety, all Mean Well medical power supplies are designed to comply with current leakage, 2XMOPP/2xMOOP isolation level and stress test qualifications for medical devices. "Our medical power supplies are Type BF (Body Floating), meaning they can be used in medical devices that have direct contact with patients," emphasized Chen.A comprehensive product portfolio meets every customer requirementMean Well makes every effort to ensure that all its medical power supplies are safe to use. On top of that, Mean Well provides a complete range of power solutions to suit every requirement of medical devices for all kinds of medical uses, including AC-DC external adapters, encapsulated power supply, modular power supply, PCB type, and DC-DC modules with power ratings in the range from 1W to 1200W.Mean Well plans to showcase multiple flagship medical power supplies at Medical Taiwan, to open on June 27, 2019. The products on exhibit include the NMP650/1K2 (650W/1200 W), MSP-1000 (1000W), MPM /MFM-05~30 (5W~30W), RPS-120S (120W), RPS-500 (500W) and GEM60I (60W) series.The intelligent modular medical power supply NMP650/1K2 series (650W/1200W) offers the configuration flexibility of multiple outputs and various intelligent control functions. Chen further pointed out, "NMP650/1K2 enables flexible adjustments of output voltage to accommodate different voltage requirements by large medical equipment such as the da Vinci Surgical System and computed tomography (CT) scanners." Mean Well's NMP650/1K2 series provides up to six different output voltages.Housed in the same casing as the previous generation MSP-600, the MSP-1000 (1000W) allows customers to boost the power supply from 600W to 1000W with the same footprint, thereby saving costs and efforts. For example, as medical technologies make leaping advances, 600W power supplies may not be enough for biochemical analyzers that come with increasing rotation speeds and thus require more power. In view of such needs, Mean Well offers a way for customers to upgrade their power supply without having to change the casing.Digitization and miniaturization is the future trendFeaturing small size and low energy consumption, the MPM /MFM-05~30 (5W~30W) series high-density miniature on-board power supplies come with a 45.7mm x 25.4mm x 21.5mm dimension and low no load power consumption less than 0.075W to significantly reduce overall system power consumption. Mean Well plans to launch 45W, 65W and 90W models this year, according to Chen.The RPS-120S (120W) is a high-performance compact PCB-type medical power supply with a 3"x 2" footprint. It can operate up to 120W without the need for an external fan. "Compared to other PCB-type power supplies of similar sizes on the market, Mean Well's RPS-120S is only one capable of supplying more than 100W with no need for an external fan. This is achieved by enhancing the efficiency and making use of heat sink," emphasized Chen.The RPS-500 is available in multiple form factors, including bare PCB, fanless covered, as well as chassis mount with built-in fans, to offer a wide range of medical power supply solutions for customers to choose from. It should be noted that Mean Well is only manufacturer on the market capable of providing a 5"x3" medical-grade product offering up to 500W (the fanless model can supply up to 300W). Furthermore, the GEM60I (60W) medical-grade wall-mount type adapter features easy portability, interchangeable AC plugs for operation in the U.S., U.K., Australia and European countries and compliance with IEC60601-1-11 home care standards.Since the foray into the medical power supply segment in 2000, Mean Well has stayed ahead of customer needs and will continue to develop digitized and miniaturized power supply solutions, so that Mean Well can grow with customers to meet the smartization and miniaturization trends of medical devices.The complete range of Mean Well medical power supplies fully meets customer needs

The population in Africa has grown over 1.2 billion and the consumer market is huge. Most of the industries are still in the early stage. In such a vast and fast growing market, establishing a cooperative relationship with the local enterprises is particularly important. Proscend initially focused on SHDSL and VDSL2 P2P equipment and became one of the leading providers in this field.Over the past five years, Proscend has not only developed a complete line of industrial-grade DSL and Long Reach PoE Switch products but also dedicated in developing industrial-grade mobile communications by launching a full range of Industrial LTE Cellular Routers for use in surveillance system, power plants and smart transportation projects. Because of its professional R&D capabilities and technical support strength, Proscend's industrial-grade communications solutions have quickly gained trust and recognitions by its international customers, and successfully deployed to the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland, India, Israel and etc.Proscend has some existing partners which have been cooperating with us in several countries of Africa. To expand business, Proscend is pleased to attend a trade mission for African market organized by TAITRA in this June, and will take this opportunity to promote products which covering Industrial LTE Cellular Router series, Long Reach PoE Switch series, SHDSL series, VDSL 2 series, …, etc. Proscend relies on both professional capabilities and strong support services to international market. For example, an industrial-grade LTE cellular router featuring PoE power supply and Dual-SIM slot design has been integrated into remote monitoring and control applications by an international renowned security cabinet system manufacturer. The VDSL2 SFP series, converts optical equipment into DSL signals via copper cable to reduce the high cost of new wiring. It has been widely used in Europe, the United States, New Zealand and Australia.Proscend is committed in cultivating local markets. Recently, Proscend Communications India Private Limited, a subsidiary of Proscend in the Indian market, participated in the largest smart cities India exhibition. The local customers responded enthusiastically and were highly interested in further cooperation. Proscend has the confidence to carry the experience from Indian market to African market in similar way. Africa is the second largest continent in terms of area and population as well as the booming growth of macro economy. Proscend is in pursuit to build up long-term partnership with local partners.In addition to business promotion, Proscend also cares about the need and desire for digital learning from young generations in Africa. Proscend is a proud sponsor of NTHUpendo Volunteers for Education in Tanzania. NTHUpendo is a volunteer program from "National Tsing-Hua University" that provide PCs and share ICT knowledge to the people in Tanzania. By giving information education training and supporting relevant software and hardware resources, we hope collaboratively improve the lack of education resources in Africa and satisfy the need of local students for digital learning. Through the exchange of cultures, we wish to spread our love and hope to Africa.Proscend industrial LTE PoE cellular router

Fenergo, a leading provider of Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions for financial institutions announced its entry into the Taiwanese market through a partnership with Tung-I Information Services, a Taiwanese provider of solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI) in finance, information security, private cloud implementation and smart retail.As an exclusive CLM partner, Fenergo will provide Tung-I's current and prospective Taiwanese clients access to advanced Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) capabilities, further strengthening the company's offering. To ensure a seamless client experience, Tung-I will provide local support, maintenance and implementation of Fenergo's CLM solutions.The partnership comes in response to recent evaluations by the Asia/Pacific Group (APG) to prevent money laundering related crimes in Asia Pacific. The inter-governmental organisation, which consists of 41 member jurisdictions including Taiwan, reviewed Taiwan's AML practices in November 2018. The results, due to be announced in July 2019, are expected to have a profound impact on the country's ability to handle financial transactions worldwide."Our partnership with Tung-I marks our entry into the Taiwanese market, and further solidifies our expansion into APAC," said Julian Clarke, global head of Partnerships and Alliances. "The Fenergo partnership programme is constantly evolving as we continue to build a strong and trusted network of partners such as Tung-I across the globe and leverage local connections by having a partner with an established reputation in the region.""Our banking clients require a CLM solution that transforms how they manage clients from initial onboarding, KYC/AML compliance, client data management and KYC reviews," said Tseng-Wei Chao, Executive Director at Tung-I. "Fenergo is a leader in this space and for us was the most obvious choice to partner with in helping our clients across Taiwan meet full compliance with risk and regulatory obligations throughout their entire lifecycle.""Regulatory rules are ramping up in APAC with differing requirements between countries. It's important that firms in the region have a solution that fulfils all obligations and eases the pressure off compliance teams," said Kyoka Li, APAC director of Sales, at Fenergo. "It's clear that APAC needs to get moving and this partnership with Tung-I comes at a crucial time ahead of APG checks where financial institutions in Taiwan must ensure they are future proofed and meet regulatory and compliance requirements."

Foxconn Technology Group founder Terry Gou has noted that G2 - the US and China - will replace G20 in a new leadership framework: one world, two systems.Gou made the remarks at the G2 and Beyond forum that Digitimes organized in Taipei on June 22. The forum also featured SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son and Katerra chairman Michael E Marks.Gou expressed optimism in his dialogue with the present writer at the event that the upcoming meeting between US president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping at the 2019 G20 Summit to be held June 28-29 in Osaka, Japan will provide an opportunity for both countries to break stalemates in trade talks,The G2 imposes decisive influences in the global ICT industry development, with the US commanding over 50% of the world's top-10 tech firms and startup unicorns and China taking 25%.Digitimes statistics show that of the world's top-10 tech firms as of June 2019, six come from the US, two from China and one each from Taiwan and Korea. Microsoft leads the list with a market cap of over US$1 trillion, and China's Tencent and Alibaba are also among the 10 most influential tech firms.CB Insights tallies also indicate that there are 360 unicorn startups around the world as of mid-June 2019, with 177 unicorns (49%) coming from the US, followed by China with 90 (25%), the UK with 19 (5%) and India with 16 (4%), indicating the US and China are dominating the world's future tech innovations.Growing influences in emerging sectorsActually, China also shows growing influence in emerging sectors such as electrical vehicles (EV) and 5G. But all these rely on the support of crucial semiconductor components, which are now dominated by US suppliers. Once the US - despite all possible impact - decides to ban US firms from shipping key IC components and technologies to China, then China is likely to become a paper tiger. In this regard, the only concern for the US is how to prevent such prohibitive actions from hitting its domestic businesses too hard and even causing global economic recession.Qualcomm has seen 67% of its chipset shipments destined for China, Broadcom 50%, with Micron, TI and Intel also highly relying on the China market. The Trump administration's ban on Huawei is going to hit hard US suppliers and even Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, and Huawei's revenues could drop by up to US$30 billion in two years.Moreover, once the US decides after the G20 meeting to levy 25% tariffs on the final batch of US$325 billion in Chinese imports, not only Taiwan ODMs of notebooks and handsets will suffer significantly but US consumers will also have to pay much higher prices for the products subject to the high tariffs. Many US tech firms Apple, HP, Dell and Microsoft are likely to face disastrous results.Gou's recipes for minimizing trade lossesTo minimize possible trading losses, Gou said that the best solution is for the US to allow its suppliers to continue shipping components for general commodities such as notebooks, handsets, and TVs, instead of enforcing a blanket ban on all shipments. This way, China will remain both a production base and an export outlet for major US vendors and their supply chains.As to 5G and semiconductor development projects, both countries can negotiate over possible cooperation patterns, under the prerequisite that the US continues to control the 5G construction progress and upstream IC materials and design technologies, according to Gou.As Foxconn maintains major investments in China and the US and handles large-size contract production orders for US vendors, Gou is quite aware of market uncertainties and possible changes arising from the trade war. He said what Taiwan can do now is to ready diverse solutions and develop high-quality products for domestic demand, paving the way for exporting them in the future.Beyond satisfying the demands of the US and China, Taiwan can also extend their industry prowess to Southeast Asia, Gou said, adding that agile Taiwan makers can always find new opportunities and survival space amid volatile market environments, regardless of the development and outcome of the US-China trade conflicts.Foxconn founder Terry Gou (right) in a dialogue with Digitimes president Colley Hwang (left)Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes, June 2019