Taiwan's Top Ten Recent Technological Inventions

[Martian2]

There are two important implications of Taiwan's record US$6.69 billion September 2017 trade surplus.

Firstly, Taiwan is innovating technologically and expanding its trade surplus. Taiwan has new high-tech goods to sell to the world and this causes Taiwan's trade surplus to hit a new record.

In another thread, I have already mentioned Taiwan ITRI's and Taiwan-based Transcend's USB 3.0 flash memory stick with a maximum capacity of 2 TERABYTES. Transcend has annual sales of slightly over US$600 million (TRANSCEND INFORMATION, INC | 4-traders).

"Transcend Information, Inc. (Chinese: 創見資訊股份有限公司; pinyin: Chuàngjiàn Zīxùn Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī) is a Taiwanese company headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan that manufactures and distributes memory products. Transcend's product portfolio consists of over 2,000 products including memory modules, flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, multimedia products, solid state drives, dashcams, body cameras, personal cloud storage, card readers and accessories.

It has offices in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, China and South Korea. It was the first Taiwanese memory module manufacturer to receive ISO 9001 certification.

According to Gartner Research in 2013, Transcend was the world's No. 3 USB Flash Drive manufacturer, with 20% year-over-year market share growth, and the world's No. 5 Flash Card manufacturer. And, as per Gartner’s analysis of SSD global market share for 2015, Transcend ranked No. 4 in the industrial SSD market."
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The second important inference that we can draw from Taiwan's record trade surplus is that China's trade exports will keep increasing. For the last 40 years, Taiwanese high-tech has migrated to mainland China. We should expect the continuous transfer of current Taiwanese high-technology to mainland China.

Taiwan should be viewed as an R&D center for mainland China. We see the debut of many new technologies in Taiwan first and it eventually ends up as a mainland Chinese export.

So far, I have mentioned three interesting recent Taiwanese technological inventions.

a. ITRI and Transcend USB 3.0 flash memory stick with a maximum capacity of 2 TERABYTES (Taiwan's ITRI and Transcend has teamed up to create a USB 3.0 thumb stick featuring 2 TB of storage | Tom's Hardware).

b. ITRI developed advanced "controller software" for five-axis CNC machine tools (ITRI Founds Machine Tools Technology Center to Promote CNC Industry Cluster | ITRI Today (Summer Issue 2015))

c. Taiwan Delta Electronics developed SCARA and industrial robots.

I will cover another seven recent Taiwanese technological inventions in this thread.

 

[Martian2]

Hiwin "Endoscopic Robotic System" provides high-precision control.

Taiwan's Hiwin has annual sales of US$600 million. Hiwin sells a medical robot that allows a doctor to have precise control of an endoscope.

Taiwan knows Mainland China will build its own SCARA and articulated industrial robots. Thus, Taiwanese companies have moved into medical robots and technology (such as endoscopes).

"hiwincom
Published on Feb 8, 2017

2016 TAIROS HIWIN Robotic Endoscope Holder內視鏡扶持機器手臂"
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Touring Taiwan’s Medtech Sector: Hiwin Enters Medical Space | medGadget (May 11, 2015)

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Taiwan's Adronic builds high-quality Argus Endoscopes.

Touring Taiwan’s Medtech Sector: High Quality Adronic Argus Endoscopes | medGadget (May 12, 2015)

"Now the company is able to produce LED illuminated fiberoptic clinical endoscopes down to 1.9 mm outside diameter. They have been able to do this thanks to the high end CCD cameras that are being employed in their products.

Selling under the brand name Argus, the company offers cart based systems for hospitals, as well as all-in-one portable endoscope systems that can be carried by doctors that do home or clinic visits. There is also an endoscope camera that can be plugged into a computer USB port, offering a cheap solution for many applications."

 

[Martian2]

Lite-Med Kidney Stone Treatment Machine

Taiwan's Lite-Med builds a machine that emits ultrasound to disintegrate kidney stones.

Lite-Med's kidney stone machine received US FDA certification in 2015.
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"Lite-Med ESWL Lithotripter - Auto Tracking & Locking Feature | Unison Healthcare Group友信醫療集團

Unison Healthcare Group
Published on Apr 26, 2015

Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) of the Next Generation

Advantages:

- Real-Time Ultrasound Tracking & Locking (Automatically stop firing when stone is out of focal zone, only firing when the stone at focal zone)
- Treatment table can automatically move to adjust patient' s stone position
- Wide Focal Zone/ High Power Shockwave
- Higher Accuracy
- Fragmentation Efficiency
- Less Tissue Damage
- Patient Safety
- Less Pain
- No Anesthesia
- Less Radiation Exposure

Quality Assurance:
- FDA
- ISO-13485
- G.M.P Medical Device
- Taiwan Design and Manufacture

Real-time Ultrasound Stone Tracking & Locking Systems

The Lite-Med Real-time Ultrasound Stone Image Locking System allows firing of the shockwave whenever the stone enters the focal zone and stops firing of the shockwave whenever the stone moves outside the focal zone. This system can increase the stone hit rate to close to 100% .

The Lite-Med Real-time Ultrasound Stone Image Tracking System records the stone movement trajectory through image capture and computes the required table movement amount. Then the treatment table will be automatically moved ( under computer control) to push the stone back to its original location which is the shockwave focal spot. This achieves the purpose of real-time tracking and increases the stone hit rate from 45% to 86% or more. The result is a reduction of both tissue damage around the stone and process time for the ESWL treatment.

Contact: internationalsales@unison.com.tw "
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Taiwan's Lite-Med kidney stone treatment machine
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Lite Med

 

[Martian2]

Taiwan Andes Technology is Asia's largest and first CPU Core designer and licensor.

Founded in 2005, Taiwan's Andes Technology is Asia's largest and first designer of CPU Cores for license.

Taiwan’s Andes brings processor cores to U.S. | EE Times (March 14, 2013)
"SAN JOSE, Calif.--Taiwan’s Andes Technology will extend support for its processor cores to U.S. semiconductor companies. The move marks a significant acceleration of business plans for the company at a time of consolidation in the processor core sector.

In the last year, Andes expanded its reach beyond Taiwan and China to Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, Imagination Technologies said in December it would acquire MIPS...."

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Andes Technology designs have been sold in 2 billion SoCs (ie. System-on-a-Chip).

Andes Technology Corporation the First Mainstream CPU IP Provider to Adopt RISC-V Expands Product Lineup to offer 64bit Processor IP | Market Wired (May 9, 2017)
"SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - May 09, 2017) - Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based supplier of high performance, low-power, small embedded CPU cores serving 2-billion SoCs...."
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MediaTek has purchased a 15% ownership in Andes Technology, because it provides an alternative to the CPU Core designs from ARM and Imagination Technologies. This means ARM cannot demand unreasonable license fees from MediaTek. Otherwise, MediaTek will switch to Andes Technology CPUs.

Andes Wins CPU Role in MediaTek SoCs | Electronics 360

 

[Martian2]

Taiwanese university unveils submicron precision-lathe machine tool.

Submicron lathe breakthrough made | Taipei Times (December 29, 2012)

 

[Martian2]

Taiwan NCKU developed pioneering spin FET transistor technology.

"An international team headed by Tainan City-based National Cheng Kung University has developed the world’s first functional spin field-effect transistor for information processing.
...
'Compared with Intel’s current-generation 10 nanometer-class chips utilizing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology,' Chen said, 'spin FET is capable of delivering 1,000 times the performance with only one-tenth of power.'

The development, first published online by science journal Nature Nanotechnology Dec. 22, is expected to help NCKU better tap the highly lucrative US$250 billion global IC industry."
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Taiwan Today - NCKU develops pioneering transistor technology (February 6, 2015)

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All-electric all-semiconductor spin field-effect transistors | Nature Nanotechnology (December 22, 2014)