We were reminded of this during our recent visit to Mobile World Congress when we had the chance to visit the Taiwan ITRI Booth.
Why it matters: In all the focus on the big processors and the „AI race“, we often overlook the far less glamorous business of actually building compute systems. We have explored different parts of that (and here), but there is an underlying assumption built into all these conversations – the role of Taiwanese companies upon which the whole ecosystem rests. What will the shift to AI compute mean for the hundreds of companies that make up this critical ecosystem?
We were reminded of this during our recent visit to Mobile World Congress when we had the chance to visit the Taiwan ITRI Booth.
ITRI is a trade organization representing their electronics companies. The booth had a dozen vendors offering various pieces of computing gear. This includes companies like iBase and Nexcom, which make specialty server gear (security and edge), Asrock, which makes motherboards, and Aerotek, which produces all sorts of radio equipment (Wi-Fi, mmWave, etc). These are small companies without the cachet of TSMC or MediaTek, but collectively they serve an important function in the market.
Editor’s Note:
Guest author Jonathan Goldberg is the founder of D2D Advisory, a multi-functional consulting firm. Jonathan has developed growth strategies and alliances for companies in the mobile, networking, gaming, and software industries.
The trouble here is that all of these companies were built on top of Intel. Look through their catalogs – all those specialty servers and motherboards are built on Intel CPUs, often three years (or more) old.
Prior to TSMC’s rise as the flagship of Taiwan’s electronics complex, Taiwanese companies formed the bedrock of modern compute, filling every available niche and spot in the supply chain.
