After US House of Representative speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit, Taiwan has been under intense military threats from China. Its critical role in the global semiconductor supply chain amid its vulnerability in the geopolitical crisis has been regarded as a risk by some. With the US and Europe using CHIPS Act incentives to attract investments to set up their domestic chip supply chain, will Taiwan maintain its shine in the long run? DIGITIMES has an exclusive interview with AmCham Taiwan president Andrew Wylegala to discuss how Taiwan can make itself indispensable.

Toyota Motor plans to keep gas-powered cars as a key part of its lineup, rejecting efforts by rivals to go fully electric amid concerns over how quickly consumers will embrace new technologies.

AiSeed Technology (AiSeed), a newcomer to the commercial drone market, was established in Taiwan right before COVID-19 rampaged across the world. Despite the difficulty, it still survived during the pandemic and continues to gain attention at international air shows with its unmanned airborne vehicles (UAV).

Since the start of the trade war between the US and China in 2018, the global industry has been rethinking the need for globalization and regionalization planning. The pandemic has also seriously challenged the previous forms of global labor division. It has accelerated the reshuffling process of the global supply chain, with short chains and regional production becoming the new indicator.

Much of the news of India's shift to electric vehicles (EV) is limited to passenger and some commercial vehicles. But what often goes unnoticed is that EVs are perfectly suited for several niche markets as well. Agricultural automobiles like tractors and tillers are an example.

With global economic and market prospects full of variables and uncertainties, it has become one of the most important issues for enterprises to rethink how to position themselves in industry supply chains and even industry ecosystems as well as how to sustain growth and development in the volatile environments.

SiFive successfully rolled out a portfolio of automotive CPUs based on the RISC-V standard, and is about to create a new ecosystem of chips, tier-1 auto component providers and OEM partners. DIGITIMES had an exclusive interview with SiFive SVP Jack Kang, who shared what triggered the RISC-V leader's entry into cartech chip IP and the new opportunity SiFive's new portfolio is creating for the supply chain.

RISC-V is becoming a mainstream architecture to share the market with Intel's X86 and Arm. Being an open platform, it is especially attracting extraordinary attention from semiconductor industry participants as well as investors amid rising geopolitical tensions that are putting restrictions on technology innovations. The popularity of RISC-V is reflected in the fact that as soon as news about RISC-V hosting a 2022 RISC-V Taipei Day event on the auspicious occasion of SEMICON Taiwan 2022 went public, the event was fully booked in a day. DIGITIMES hosted an exclusive interview with RISC-V International CEO Calista Redmond, who gave a detailed account of RISC-V and Intel's collaboration, the outlook for RISC-V's business development and the roles it aims to play in the semiconductor industry.

The Indian automotive giant Mahindra & Mahindra recently announced the launch of a series of consumer electric vehicles, joining a rapidly growing market. But even as the Indian EV market gathers momentum, certain supply chain shortage concerns persist, especially with regard to semiconductors and components.

The supply of high-end electronic power semiconductors, such as automotive MOSFETs and IGBTs, continues to be tight with delivery times still at 50 weeks or more. These power components can be produced using mature silicon-based (Si-based) semiconductor manufacturing processes, especially by 8-inch wafer fabs.

Officials from the Information Technology Electronics and Communication (ITE&C) Department of India's Telangana State recently made another trip to Taiwan to woo investment in the southern Indian state including its capital Hyderabad, home of some tech giants' R&D centers.

The fresh US export restrictions on chips to China and Russia seem to have pushed the decoupling of the semiconductor technology a step further. DIGITIMES Asia had an exclusive interview with Abishur Prakash, co-founder and geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future (CIF), on how the fragmented and divided vertical camps of globalization will be a new status quo for geopolitics due to US-China competition.

Technology not only changes the way people live, but also what they eat. As more people consider going on a plant-based diet as part of the personal endeavor to reduce carbon emissions, the quality of non-animal foods is also improving. However, the population of vegetarians or vegans account for only 2% of the world's total population, according to Jen-yu Huang, CEO and founder of Lypid.

Japan's largest display manufacturer Japan Display Inc (JDI) will produce free-shape OLED displays for car uses, and its eLEAP technology brings out higher brightness and longer lifetime than traditional OLED display, according to JDI's AutoTech business unit head Seiichi Fukunaga.

The consumer electronics supply chain is facing mounting inventory levels with many resorting to price reductions trying to maintain market shares. But the supply of power semiconductors such as medium- to high-voltage MOSFETs, IGBTs and SiC power components and modules remain relatively tight, with the delivery lead time for automotive-grade IGBTs still extending to over 50 weeks.