Heading to SEMICON Taiwan 2024

Richard Brown
2 min readSep 3, 2024

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I’m looking forward to heading out to SEMICON Taiwan 2024 at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center tomorrow. With over 1,100 exhibitors showcasing the latest advances in semiconductor design and manufacturing for an estimated 85,000 visitors, the event is set to shatter all previous records and should provide a useful gauge of industry confidence as it approaches the critical fourth quarter of the year.

Tomorrow’s “AI Chip Fireside Chat” should also provide some additional color on future technology and market trends. This will bring senior executives from TSMC, ASE, Samsung Electronics, and Google together to discuss long-term opportunities and synergies in AI under the moderation of Dr. Tien Wu, CEO of ASE.

There should also be plenty of action in Berlin this week as the buildup to IFA, the world’s largest consumer and electronics show, gathers pace. Probably the most important announcement will be the launch of Intel’s Lunar Lake processors for AI PC laptops later today. Given the struggles the company is facing, a successful roll-out is essential for rebuilding staff, customer, and investor confidence. Let a new round of performance and battery life benchmark battles with AMD and Qualcomm begin!

Unfortunately, the hardware website AnandTech will not be publishing any in-depth reviews of Lunar Lake following its closure on August 30. I still remember meeting its founder Anand Lal Shimpi when he came to Computex for the first time as a teenager accompanied by his mother. Together with Thomas Pabst of Tom’s Hardware fame, Anand played an instrumental role in creating what was then a new form of a technology media that transcended the limitations of traditional print publications such as PC Magazine by providing deep testing and analysis of chips and motherboards that had never been possible before.

It’s a great pity that changes in the web advertising market are making this kind of publishing model less and less financially sustainable. Quality content requires quality revenue to support it.

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Richard Brown

I live in Taiwan and am interested in exploring what ancient Chinese philosophy can tell us about technology and the rise of modern China.