(1) Shih Hsiu-chuan, Taiwan Gets US Visa-Waiver Nomination. Taipei Times, Dec 23, 2011 (available now) http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/ ... 11/12/23/2003521411
("At present, the VWP allows nationals from 36 participating countries to travel to the US for tourism or business ('B' visa purposes only) for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa, the AIT said. * * * If Taiwan is admitted to the VWP, it will become the fifth Asian county to enjoy the privilege, following Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Brunei, [Minister of Foreign Affairs 楊進添 Timothy] Yang said")
My comment:
(a) Grafting 嫁接 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting
(In most cases, one plant is selected for its roots and this is called the stock or rootstock. The other plant is selected for its stems, leaves, flowers, or fruits and is called the scion)
(b) It turns out that many temperate 溫帶 fruits in Taiwan actually come from Japan.
"The [DRAM] industry has been further squeezed by consumers shifting from PCs, which use a lot of standardised D-Ram, to tablets and smartphones, which either use Nand Flash memory, or speciality mobile D-Ram.
"Micron, the only US D-Ram maker and a partner of Nanya, on Wednesday posted a worse-than-expected $187m loss for the quarter ended in November as a result of that weaker demand [of DRAM, resulting from Thai flood that shuttered hard disk manufacturers which in turn shut down computer assembly].
"The new [AMD] chip to be sold starting Jan. 9 on a graphics card for desktop PCs [is] called the Radeon HD 7970
"But the how of AMD’s announcement, in some ways, is more notable than the what. The company traces much of the gains to being the first to exploit a new production process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. that creates circuitry measured at just 28 nanometers
"AMD’s introduction of 28-nanometer technology marks one of few times the company can boast it is delivering tinier circuitry to end users than Intel * * * Not that AMD will be able to gloat about that point for long. Intel in the first half of 2012 is slated to deliver 22-nanometer chips. And TSMC, a foundry that sells production services to many chip designers, is likely to offer similar technology to Nvidia and other chip makers soon.
"A spokesman for Nvidia said AMD claimed to be first to use TSMC’s earlier 40-nanometer process but his company shipped a third more chips using that technology.
My comment:
(a) The "jazz" in "one part of the company is downright jazzed" is a transitive verb (First Known Use 1915) that is defined as
"ENLIVEN —usually used with up" www.m-w.com
(b) 32 nanometer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32_nanometer
(Intel and AMD both produced commercial microchips using the 32 nanometer process in the early 2010s; Intel began selling its 32 nm processors on January 7, 2010, as Core i3, Core i5, and the dual-core mobile Core i7[ The 32nm process is expected to be superseded by commercial 22 nm technology in 2012)
Of course, we now know that Globalfoundries, divested by AMD, has a hard time with 32nm.
(c) The last quotation suggests that Nvidia was not seriously harmed, if ever, by the rumored problems TSMC had with 40-nm process.