Inventec. Reporter Wu Kangwei / Photography
Chipmaker AMD has announced that it will set up a research and development center in Kaohsiung. Mayor Chen Chi-mai has also confirmed that AMD will settle in the Asia Bay area. Both sides hope to create an exclusive R&D base with packaging, high-speed transmission, and AI applications through expanded development in the local area. As a Taiwanese manufacturer and AMD's partner, Inventec (2356) also showcased its masterpiece of the "VRSTATE" technology, the "Metaverse Platform", in Kaohsiung Asia Bay on the 23rd. Whether the two sides will have more cooperation in Kaohsiung in the future has attracted market attention.
It is reported that the Asia Bay Startup Southern Taiwan Exhibition kicked off in Kaohsiung Asia Bay on the 23rd, attracting a large number of industry representatives. In order to strengthen the development of Taiwan's overall cultural content industry, the Taiwan Cultural Policy Research Institute also invited a total of 8 brand manufacturers, including Inventec (2356), Hon Hai (2317), and ASUS (2357), to gather and share the latest technological achievements. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai also appeared and delivered a speech. When interviewed, he admitted that AMD will build the latest R&D center in the Kaohsiung Asia Bay area, but the specific cooperation projects between the two sides should be explained by AMD.
Due to Taiwan's advantage of having a semiconductor industrial cluster, it has also attracted many AI chipmakers such as NVIDIA and AMD to actively apply to settle and establish R&D centers in Taiwan. The Ministry of Economic Affairs also officially approved AMD's "A+ Global R&D Innovation Partnership Program" in July this year. The total budget of this program is up to NT$8.64 billion, of which the Ministry of Economic Affairs subsidizes approximately NT$3.3 billion. Regarding AMD's entry into Asia Bay, Chen Chi-mai pointed out that AMD hopes to conduct in-depth cooperation with several surrounding universities and related semiconductor and AI manufacturers to develop an important R&D base for packaging, high-speed transmission, and AI applications in the local area.
In fact, among Taiwanese manufacturers' supply chains, Inventec is also one of the partners with the most cooperation with AMD. Including the most popular AMD MI300 series GPU architecture AI server in recent years, the assembly orders for it are all entrusted to Inventec. Currently, after the MI300 series products were mass-produced and shipped in the first quarter of this year, it has also brought continuous new momentum to Inventec's AI server revenue. In addition, the recently acquired US-based ZT by AMD is not only a partner of Inventec but also has a portion of its equity held by Inventec. Therefore, this time AMD's establishment of a factory in Taiwan has also focused the market's attention on Inventec.
As the leader in assembling server motherboards (L6), Inventec not only has profound electronic contract manufacturing experience but also holds manufacturing orders from the four major CSP cloud service providers, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. On the 23rd, Inventec also sent Lin Allen, a senior manager of the Metaverse Technology Department, with the achievements of its "Metaverse Platform" to Kaohsiung Asia Bay to participate and gave a speech on the topic of "Metaverse Virtual Field - Unlimited Imagination for Entertainment" at the annual "Asia Bay Startup Southern Taiwan Exhibition".
In this regard, Inventec, in the "metaverse field", not only focuses on the latest applications of AIGC, digital twin, virtual-real integration, and augmented reality technologies, but also follows the development strategy of "promoting the virtual with the real and driving the real with the virtual". Based on the research of "virtual-real boundary" technology, it has created the digital economic space of VRSTATE. The team also continues to take "upgrading the enterprise metaverse" as the main service goal provided, and gathers resources from all aspects such as industry, government, academia, and research to promote the new business model of the metaverse industry chain and ecosystem. This time, AMD's establishment of a factory in Taiwan and its call for cooperation with Taiwanese manufacturers have drawn much attention to Inventec's subsequent performance.
AMD Chairman and CEO Lisa Su. Reporter Wu Kangwei / Photography
Inventec. Reporter Wu Kangwei / Photography