Nvidia is reportedly looking to build a second R&D facility in Taiwan.
The news comes two years after the company invested $715m in an initial research and development center in the region, focused on the advancement of GPUs and artificial intelligence (AI) chip technology.
That facility currently employs around 400 people, with Nvidia having promised to employ 1,000 workers by 2027.
According to a report in the China Times, Taiwan's Technology Department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs said that Nvidia is “satisfied with the quality of [Taiwan’s] talents” and, as a result, the government believes the company is looking to establish a second R&D facility in the region.
In 2021, Nvidia received a subsidy of 6.7 billion yuan (approximately $205 million) from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to set up the center in Taipei. In addition to AI-focused R&D efforts, the facility also supported the construction of Taiwan’s largest supercomputer, Taipei-1.
Taipei-1 consists of 64 DGX H100 AI systems and 64 OVX systems, with each DGX featuring eight H100 GPUs and two Intel Xeon Platinum 8480C CPUs. The machine is targeted at heavy AI workloads and will be made available on the Nvidia DGX Cloud, allowing enterprises and researchers to try Nvidia products before they buy.
In comments reported by China Times, Qiu Qiuhui, the director of technology at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, said that in addition to a second R&D center, Nvidia’s ongoing investment plan for Taiwan includes sharing supercomputer resources with industry partners in the region and training AI talent at both the National Taiwan University and Tsinghua University.
