Intel on December 6 announced cooperation between Intel Labs and the Taiwan government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to undertake research projects, with Intel to provide funds and resources worth US$5 million in total over the next five years and ITRI to match the contribution.
The initial project is set to be development of super-speed and power-efficient memory technology, 3D IC, for ultrabooks and tablet PCs, smartphones as well as mega-data centers for use in cloud computing and once the development becomes mature, the technology will be released to Taiwan IT players.
In the announcement, Intel noted that the 3D IC technology for memories can effectively reduce the space required by hardware, enable faster data transmissions, and expand capacity to meet the emerging trend of thin-and-light consumer electronics devices.
However, PC players in Taiwan are rather conservative about the cooperation and pointed out that actual results will still need more time to observe since Intel's overall investment scale in Taiwan is still rather weak compared to that in South Korea and China, while the negative impressions left by Intel because of its actions over the WiMAX cooperation with Taiwan still puts doubts within the PC industry in Taiwan, according to sources from PC players.
The sources noted that Intel has several technologies and products still relying on support and cooperation from Taiwan-based players and the direction that Intel develops its technologies may not necessarily fit the demands of the market or the future; therefore, Taiwan should not blindly follow and should take a more cautious attitude about cooperation to avoid repeating the incident that happened from the WiMAX cooperation.