COMPUTEX CPX: AI, IoT and Power Computing Take Center Stage

COMPUTEX 2017, the global ICT show with a complete supply chain, and IoT and startup ecosystems, kicked-off the second day of its three-day CPX Conference, “From Mobility to Intelligence,” as artificial intelligence and IoT took center stage.

Top executives from the world’s tech leaders shared insights into what their companies are doing to win the world of machine intelligence technology, deep learning and the internet of things in addition to its opportunities and challenges. In line with information and communications technology (ICT) industry trends, AI & Robotics is a new theme this year at COMPUTEX, and IoT continues to be a strong focus and theme of the show. The SmarTEX exhibit was introduced last year and continues this year to highlight IoT innovations at COMPUTEX.

As ICT industry leaders weighed in on AI’s future, perhaps the top take-away was that global innovations in the field of artificial intelligence are going to redefine virtually every aspect of our lives.

Jefferey A. Rhoda, general manager of the Greater China Group at IBM commented when asked if artificial intelligence would replace humans, “Even at this point when Watson can see and read better than humans do…our stance continues to be that it will augment what humans do—make our call centers better, help doctors make diagnoses and more.”

Marc Hamilton, vice president of Solution Architecture and Engineering at NVIDIA, talked about the ubiquity of artificial intelligence in the world today, all powered by its GPU computing technology. “Much of the rise of GPU, in the past few years, was thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence,” he noted.

Preparing for the IoT era

As the internet of things drives significant lifestyle transformation, most data will be processed in the cloud. Industry leaders shared insights on the opportunities this dynamic presents as well as how they are meeting the challenges of scaling IoT solutions.

Miller Chang, the vice president of Advantech’s Embedded-IoT Group, said his team was working on creating what he referred to as a much needed common standard for sensing and communication technology to support IoT applications. He further emphasized the importance of partnerships in the new IoT era and “the need to create a value chain dimension for each industry to work better together… The value chain has to be domain focused,” he said.

Dinesh Patel, president of the IoT Services Group at ARM, echoed Chang’s thoughts on forging and maintaining strong partnerships and stressed how crucial that is to a company’s success, saying, “In addition, having an active developer community on your platform is very important.”

New risks in security

Not surprising, security was a common concern. Martyn Humphries, NXP Semiconductors’ vice president and general manager of i.MX Applications Processors for Consumer Markets, noted that as mobile and stationary machines increasingly want full access to cloud-based technology, “faster, more reliable and secure connectivity” would be required.

Patrick Ekdahl, head of Platform Security Research at Ericsson, said developing and scaling 5G technology around the world would not only prompt a new trust model and a new service delivery system, but also call forth new security concerns and an evolving threat landscape. “With the sheer amount of IT devices that will be connected, the threat is going to be much bigger,” remarked Ekdahl stressing the importance of thinking more about security.

Following the forum on IoT+ and the keynotes on AI today, the CPX Conference at COMPUTEX continues with a forum on innovations and startups.