By Wu Hanzhang, General Manager of ASUS Cloud and Taizhiyun
The precision health industry is essentially a digital application driven by "health big data," requiring an extremely large amount of storage space and computing power to develop competitive solutions and applications. For example, in the application of gene sequencing, the amount of data generated by each person is as high as 300 GB. To store and utilize the genetic data of 100,000 people, it would require almost 100,000 personal computers connected simultaneously to process it.
For example, the development of AI in medical imaging often requires processing tens of thousands of high-quality images, necessitating sufficiently fast computer systems. It could even be argued that without solving the problem of storing and processing health big data, Taiwan, despite possessing world-class medical services and health big data resources, will be unable to produce innovative products and services with international competitiveness.
In recent years, countries around the world have invested in building AI supercomputers to solve the storage and computing power problems required in the AI big data era. For example, in 2020, the UK partnered with Nvidia to build the Cambridge-1 AI supercomputer to support pharmaceutical companies in the research and development of vaccines and drugs. In 2018, Japan also had Fujitsu build the ABCI (AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure) supercomputer to vigorously develop applications such as smart healthcare. Italy, Thailand and other countries have also announced plans to ensure they do not lag behind in this important field.
Building an AI supercomputer is no easy feat. It requires substantial national funding and top-tier integration capabilities in cloud computing and AI hardware and software technologies. It's a testament to a nation's overall technological strength, and Taiwan is proud to have participated. With the support of the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Development Program, in 2018, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) under the Ministry of Science and Technology, in collaboration with ASUS, Quanta, and Taiwan Mobile, built Taiwania 2, an AI supercomputer ranked 20th globally.
Since its commercial launch in 2019, Taiwan's Sugi-2 has supported more than 150 projects, with smart healthcare being the most prevalent. A recent example of a Taiwanese medical AI startup collaborating with a medical institution to publish its findings in a top international journal is a prime example of its application.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a golden opportunity for Taiwan to develop the precision health industry. It is believed that by integrating Taiwan's three major advantages in medical care, ICT and health big data, and by utilizing the Taiwan Sugi-2 AI supercomputer to accelerate innovation and research, it will surely bring more national treasures to Taiwan.
Source of information:Financial News Issue 627