Following a report by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting on Taiwan’s push into the big leagues of  artificial intelligence (AI) and big data computing, Premier Su Tseng-chang said that Taiwania 2, Taiwan’s new locally developed supercomputer and AI cloud platform, was especially remarkable for its energy efficiency, ranking 10th among the top 500 most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world, and for its high-speed computing performance, which ranks 20th among the globe’s top 500 performers. The impressive rankings of the machine and the experience of the designers testify to the high-performance computing power capable of being produced domestically. The system also deserves applause as an important achievement within the digital infrastructure initiative of the government’s Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program.

Taiwania 2 embodies the accumulated knowledge and overall prowess of the nation’s AI development industry, Premier Su said, and its high-speed computing capabilities can accelerate applications in many areas, including medicine, disaster prevention, culture, transportation and government services. The influence on human life could be truly limitless.

MOST emphasized that Taiwania 2 is a supercomputer optimized for AI. With its ability to perform massive calculations and provide the computing capabilities necessary for the development of AI, the machine can engage in AI training at a rate of 1.76 million images per second. It can also significantly shorten the time needed to perform some medical diagnostics, such as marking the location of a tumor, testing for disease, and confirming the source of an ailment. In the future, the Taiwania 2 supercomputer may be used by application developers to create value-added AI platforms that will advance the emergence and development of brand new industries.

Date: 2019-05-23
Source: Department of Information Services, Executive Yuan