The Taiwanese publication Commercial Times has learned of NVIDIA’s plans to create a division for the development of specialized ASICs. The newspaper report said the US company had chosen Taiwan as the base for its research and development center and was actively poaching skilled workers from large local integrated circuit (IC) design companies, raising concerns among industry executives about a potential brain drain. .
Taiwanese IC firms have seen a surge in bids to poach talent in mid-2024, according to Commercial Times sources. As NVIDIA launches an ASIC R&D center, it could intensify efforts to poach skilled talent, forcing major companies including MediaTek, Alchip Technologies and TSMC subsidiary GUC to retaliate in preparation for the upcoming standoff.
Image source: NVIDIA
As the TrendForce resource noted, technology giants are actively developing alternatives to NVIDIA accelerators in order to reduce their dependence on it. In July 2024, Apple revealed that its AI models for Apple Intelligence were trained on Google TPU. And in December, Apple’s senior director of machine learning and artificial intelligence, Benoit Dupin, said that the company would also use Amazon Trainium2 chips for AI training. And now Apple is working with Broadcom to create its own server-based AI accelerator.
Reacting to this trend, NVIDIA is creating its own ASIC center, expanding the range of its services, writes Commercial Times. According to its publication, the company plans to hire more than a thousand specialists in Taiwan in areas such as chip design, software development, and AI research and development. Given that Taiwanese ASIC companies have played a major role in the development of Microsoft Cobalt and Maia, Google TPUs and AWS custom chips, this makes their specialists ideal targets, Commercial Times noted.