With global datacenter operators showing rampant demand for servers with faster, safer and more power-saving data transmission and processing performances, Taiwan leading IC designers including MediaTek, Realtek Semicoductor and Phison Electronics as well as smaller players are all developing at full throttles related chipset solutions and seeking to join Taiwan's server ODM supply chain to benefit from explosive demand for datacenter servers in the next 5-10 years, according to industry sources.

The sources indicated that Taiwan IC design houses enjoy three short-term advantages that can help them more easily tap the global server chipset market. First, Taiwan boasts a mature upstream and downstream industrial chain for server contract production, making it easier for domestic IC designers to successfully promote their solutions to local contractors. Second is that Taiwan-designed chipsets usually bear high price-performance ratios, a major attraction to cost-minded customers. One more advantage is that China datacenter server customers would rather adopt Taiwan-designed chipsets or farm out ASIC production than relying on US chipmakers, so as to avoid any undesirable trouble.

Asia's largest datacenter in Taiwan

Among Taiwan IC designers, MediaTek has decided to set up Asia's largest high-performance computing and data center for IC design purposes at its new building now under construction at Hsinchu Science Park and slated for official run in mid-2019. The center will house up to 30,000 high-performance computing servers to support the computing needs for cloud datacenter servers and IoT devices, as well as chipset design development.

Moreover, besides teaming up with ARM to roll out server chipset solutions based on ARM architecture CPU IP, MediaTek has also set up two wholly-owned subsidiaries Nephos and VeloceNet, dedicated to developing Ethernet switch ICs and PHY chips needed for datacenter servers.

As to Realtek and Phison, they are zeroing in on the business opportunities for SSD controllers, as new-generation servers are expected to massively adopt SSD solutions. Smaller Taiwan IC designers such as Aspeed Technology and Nuvoton Technology are moving to tap the growing market demand for MCU, a vital component for servers, while VIA Technology and RDC Semiconductor have also emerged as the top choices for new China datacenter operators to supply X86 CPU IP for their servers.

By: DocMemory
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