Author: entelechyasia

Entelechy Asia is passionate about technology -- from the home to the enterprise, and telecommunications. We deliver news, views and reviews from Asia from the perspectives of practitioners and followers.

Singapore unveils AI governance framework

S Iswaran: Take AI to the next level

Singapore has released Asia’s first model artificial intelligence (AI) governance framework to provide detailed and readily implementable guidance to private sector organisations deploying AI solutions. 

The age of AI in radiology is here

NVIDIA’s Kimberly Powell speaking at EmTech Asia.

Speaking with a passion of an artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare evangelist, Kimberly Powell declared that the age of AI in radiology is here. And she has earned the right to say that because she has been championing this since she joined NVIDIA 11 years ago.

6th edition of EmTech Asia draws more than 800 participants

Emtech Asia has grown from strength to strength since its inception. The sixth edition of the conference on emerging technologies and their impact is expected to pull in more than 800 participants from around the world. Last year’s event drew more than 700 participants.

IBM and T-Systems team up on mainframe services

Remember the mainframe? It used to rule the world of computing and was presumed by some to be extinct when the advent of Intel-based servers and GPU-powered supercomputers. Presumed is the key word here because the mainframe is still alive and kicking though it does not command the clout that it did in the past.

SenseTime sets up autonomous driving site in Japan

Leading China-based AI company SenseTime has unveiled an autonomous driving park in Joso, Japan.  The testing course will be used to develop autonomous driving technology and conduct road tests of autonomous vehicles.

Finally, an affordable ray tracing GPU from NVIDIA!

When NVIDIA launched on last August the first GeForce RTX GPUs with ray tracing capabilities, fans were excited but taken aback by the the price tag. Costing from US$499, the three cards — the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 and 2070 — were a little higher than most gamers were prepared to fork out.

Creative SXFI Air ready for order

The headphone version of Creative’s Super X-Fi is now available for order in Singapore. The Creative SXFI Air brings holographic audio to iPhones and other smartphones without the 3.5mm jack.

Apple misses Q1 revenue projection

A short queue forming before the opening of the Apple Store in Shanghai’s Nanjing East Road.

Apple has lowered its revenue guidance for Q1 to US$84 billion, down from the earlier projection of between US$89 billion and US$93 billion. 

Gojek goes nation-wide in Singapore

Indonesia-based Gojek is taking its ride-hailing service island-wide in Singapore from today. This follows a successful beta launch in November which covered the southern-central and eastern part of Singapore.

China: Quick adopter, widespread use of technology

By Edward Lim

In the early 2000s, I visited Beijing for the first time and was amazed to see a taxi using a global positioning system (GPS) to get me to my destination. To put things in perspective, this was before the arrival of smartphones and GPS wasn’t even used in Singapore.

Zhao becomes 1st female managing director of Samsung Electronics HK

Zhao helped Samsung smartphones become the leading brand in HK.
Zhao helped Samsung smartphones become the leading brand in HK.

Samsung Electronics HK (SEHK) has appointed Yiyin Zhao as its first female Managing Director. She was previously Vice President & Head of IT and Mobile Communication Business

Making 8K movie editing a reality

8K movie is the next big thing and an announcement by RED and NVIDIA is making editing such movies a reality. The partners have introduced the NVIDIA CUDA-accelerated REDCODE RAW decode SDK that gives software developers and studios a powerful new way to work with 8K video.

China bans some Apple iPhone models

Thei iPhone 6S is banned from sale in China.
Thei iPhone 6S is banned from sale in China.

Qualcomm has dealt a blow to Apple with Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court banning the sale of selected iPhone models in China. The move was for the violation of two Qualcomm patents.

HCL to acquire US$1.8b of IBM software assets

Vijayakumar: Acquired products have tremendous potential
Vijayakumar: Acquired products have tremendous potential

India software firm HCL Technologies has entered into an agreement to acquire a portfolio of IBM software products for US$1.8 billion. The transaction is expected to close by mid-2019 upon completion of applicable regulatory reviews.

NVIDIA unleashes powerful ‘T-Rex’ GPU

The NVIDIA Titan RTX delivers up to 130 terflops of deep learning performance.
The NVIDIA Titan RTX delivers up to 130 terflops of deep learning performance.

It’s no dinosaur but the newly-announced NVIDIA Titan RTX, dubbed T-Rex, is certainly very powerful — to the tune of 130 teraflops of deep learning performance and 11 GigaRays of ray-tracing performance.

Samsung introduces second edition of Frame TV in Hong Kong

The Frame 2.0 is a masterpiece.
The Frame 2.0 is a masterpiece.

Televisions have come a long way since the days when one can be kept for decades and handed down to the next generation. The goggleboxes of old were also centre pieces that were much to be admired and where families and even communities gathered.  

Amazon takes on big guns in machine learning

A new player has entered the machine learning arena. While big players such as Google, Intel and NVIDIA have been slugging it out, Amazon has thrown its hat into the ring with its newly-launched Inferentia chip.

FXGear introduces next-gen virtual fitting solution

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Well, if the clothing doesn’t make you the fairest, just swap to another. That’s what the FXMirror can do — bringing virtual fitting to another level by adding an avatar.

Arcadier to raise US$25m for blockchain e-commerce marketplaces

Singapore headquartered Arcadier, has launched Token Generation Event (TGE) Presale to raise US$25 million by Q3 next year for its Project ArcadierX blockchain-enhanced marketplace platform. A private sale has yielded US$1 million in investment.

NTU achieves highest Linpack score in global supercomputing competition

Teams had to work round-the-clock to tackle real-life challenges.

A six-person team from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has achieved 56.51 teraflops, the highest Linpack score — a measurement of a system’s floating point computing horsepower — in a global supercomputing competition held in conjunction with SC18 in Dallas.

Smartphone and feature phone neck-to-neck in India

The Realme 2 Pro helped Realme to break into the Top 5.

For the first time, the smartphone market is on par with the feature phone market in India, according to IDC. Overall, the India market reached 42.6 million units for a 9.1 percent year-on-year growth in Q3.

Ecozen impresses at inaugural Rabobank Food Loss Challenge

Prateek Singhal, Co-founder and COO of Ecozen Solutions (fourth from right) with Rabobank executives and the panel of judges

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are not usually associated with food and agriculture but five startups have shown that such technologies can play a major role in minimising food loss. Some 1.3 billion tonnes of food are lost worldwide each year.

NVIDIA GPUs power a quarter of Top 500 supercomputers

NVIDIA DGX-2 AI supercomputer
The NVIDIA DGX-2 AI supercomputer powers the 61st placed NVIDIA POD.

The world’s top two supercomputers — – the US Department of Energy’s Summit, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sierra, at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. — pack a combined total of more than 40,000 NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs, according to the latest of the Top 500 list released in conjunction with SC18.

ComfortDelGro to trial autonomous shuttle bus

In a first of its kind move by a transport operator, Singapore-based ComfortDelGro will be trialing an autonomous shuttle bus service
in real traffic conditions in National University of Singapore (NUS) in March 2019.

Hiwonder unveils Qdee programmable robot

Hong Kong-based Hiwonder has launched a micro:bit-based Qdee programmable robot with infinite shapes.  Available on Kickstarter from US$39, the kit is compatible with Lego and designed to teach children about robotics. 

The SXFI Amp: Creative’s 2nd coming?

By Edward Lim

Spending three days manning a booth in an IT show can take a toll on the body and mind. What more a constant repetitive blasting of sound from a booth just across the aisle. The vendor was an up and coming Singapore company called Creative Technology. The product was the Sound Blaster.

Saba Software acquires Lumesse

Talent development solutions provider Saba Software has completed its acquisition of Lumesse, a provider of talent acquisition, talent management, and learning experience technology.

Global smartphone shipment slides 6% in Q3

Smartphone vendors shipped 355.2 million units in Q3, down six percent from the corresponding quarter last year, according to preliminary estimates by IDC. This is the fourth straight quarter of year-on-year decline.

IBM in “game-changer” Red Hat acquisition

IBM has announced its US$34 billion acquisition of open source leader Red Hat.  The move has been dubbed a “game-changer” by Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, who added that it changes everything about the cloud market.

OnePlus deconflicts with Apple launch

UPDATE: Catch the launch live on Youtube at 11pm Singapore time.

OnePlus has brought forward its OnePlus 6T launch to October 29 to avoid a clash with Apple’s iPad Pro and Mac event the next day. The China smartphone maker had been first off the block with the October 30 date but Apple threw a curveball by announcing that its launch event will be on the same day in the same city.

Infineon gives startups a heads up with first Co-Innovation Space

Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Dr Koh Poh Koon (centre) with the German Ambassador to Singapore Dr Ulrich Sante at the Co-Innovation Space.
Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Dr Koh Poh Koon (front row, second from right) with the German Ambassador to Singapore Dr Ulrich Sante (front row, right) at the Co-Innovation Space.

Names such as Ampotech, Plunify, SHADO, and XNERGY may not ring a bell today but with a little help from Infineon, they may well become the successes of tomorrow.

Online marketplace Honestbee launches brick-and-mortar Habitat

It’s interesting how trends keep evolving. In the past decade or two, many supermarkets have opened up online stores to cater to changing consumer demands. On the other side, new companies set up online stores to challenge these traditional players. Yesterday, one of these, Honestbee, took the reverse route by setting up Habitat, its first brick-and-mortar outlet in Pasir Panjang, Singapore.

Huawei ups the ante on AI

Huawei has upped the ante with an ambitious US$140 million investment in developing one million artificial intelligence (AI) talents in three years. Under its AI Developer Enablement Programme, the China telecoms giant will work with universities and research institutions as well as partners and developers to build an ecosystem with AI resources, platforms, courses, and joint solutions to better support AI development.

Goodbye, Google Plus!

Google Plus aka Google+ will be no more — for consumers, at least. The search giant is shutting down its social media service after discovering security lapse that put the data of half a million users at risk.

Newstead goes into liquidation

Singapore IT retailer Newstead Technlogies has gone into liquidation. Established in 1998 with its first outlet at Funan DigitalLife Mall, it was supposed to be the anchor tenant when the redeveloped mall re-opens next year.

The stuff of spy movies

Supermicro has become infamous overnight following an expose by Bloomberg quoting unnamed sources. According to the report, “the attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 US companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain.”

No more paper arrival card filling for visitors to Singapore

Looking for a pen to fill in an arrival card while travelling to Singapore will be a thing of the past when the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) completes its three-month electronic arrival card for foreign visitors next year.

Qualcomm accuses Apple of IP theft

The legal tussle between Qualcomm and Apple has hit another level with the chipmaker accusing the smartphone giant of passing trade secrets to Intel. An earlier court battle, Qualcomm said that Apple breached an agreement for it to audit Apple’s use of Qualcomm’s source code.

Googles turns 20

By Edward Lim

It may have seemed like forever but Google just celebrated its 20th anniversary today. It’s not even an adult yet by human age but the search giant has grown massively over the past two decades.

Singapore launches unified payment QR code

The number of QR codes for payment is akin to the number of credit card offerings in the market — it keeps growing, making it more of a hassle than convenience for merchants and consumers. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has stepped in to solve this problem with the launch of the Singapore Quick Response (SGQR) Code.

The Weather Channel showcases realistic weather simulation

The weather wreaked havoc across the world last week with a number of hurricanes and typhoons. The Weather Channel leveraged the same technology used for computer games to create simulations that brought the impact of such weather into homes.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma walks the talk

By Edward Lim

It’s hard to let go when you’re one of the richest man in the world and leading one, if not the biggest, e-commerce company in the world. But, Jack Ma is a man of his word. A man who knows his time and a man who has shown what resilience is all about.

Facebook to build S$1.4b data centre in Singapore

Hot on the heels of Google’s announcement last month that it will build its third data centre in Singapore is Facebook, which declared today that it will be establishing its first Asia data centre in the country.

China wins battle for AI investments

A battle of sorts is taking place in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). It has been widely reported that China is ramping up its focus on the technology that is expected to transform businesses and industries. Numbers from ABI Research point to a swing in favour of China.

Google Pixel 3 coming on October 9

The Google Pixel 2 is expected to welcome its new sibling soon.

The rumour mills are spinning at top speed as smartphone launch season gets ready to kick off. With Samsung having announced the Note 9, and Apple expected to respond with a new iPhone next month, Google looks to be getting into the act too with the Pixel 3 slated for an October 9 introduction, according to Bloomberg.

NVIDIA AI Conference keynotes: Transforming industries, creating AI infrastructure

The first NVIDIA AI Conference in Sydney on September 4 will kick off with two keynote addresses. Marc Hamilton, Vice President of Solutions Architecture and Engineering, NVIDIA, will talk about Transforming Industries With AI. Jason Humphrey (right), Head of Retail Risk, ANZ Bank, will then share on Creating the Infrastructure to Undertake Deep Learning.

NVIDIA CEO teases at GeForce RTX announcement

It has been two years since NVIDIA’s last major announcement at the gaming front. And NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang decided that the thousands of audience at the auditorium in Cologne and nearly a quarter million who were catching the keynote presentation on Twitch could wait a little longer.

Apple pulls out 25,000 apps from China app store

The ongoing spat between China and the US seem to have claimed another victim. Apple has removed 25,000  gaming-related apps from its China app store. This move follows hard on the heels of the US ban on Huawei and ZTE technology from being used by the US government and government contractors yesterday.