The world’s top semiconductor company Intel worked closely with National Taiwan University (Taiwan’s No.1 university) and officially established a research center on machine to machine (M2M) communication technology on January 26th. Intel will invest dozens of researchers, while NTU, on its part, will input its faculty members, plus nearly 80 master level and doctoral students, and hire foreign expert researchers to participate in the center’s research team. It is estimated that the NTU research team will reach one hundred people, and the center will spend five to ten years to explore machine to machine communication technology that our future will be confronted with.

Under the assistance and promotion of the National Science Council, Taiwan finally was able to establish an academia/industry research center with a leading international technology company in a university campus. As far as Taiwan is concerned, through cooperation with a top international company, we can learn valuable lessons and establish an internationally renowned research center quickly. At present Intel and NTU will work together to explore the most promising machine to machine (M2M) technology, which is considered as the key industry technology of the next decade. As the famous Harbor report predicts: “M2M will drive the largest organic growth initiatives in human commercial history.” What M2M or IOT(internet of things) means is that all objects or machines can be linked together to exchange information and to make the right decisions independently. If we look at how people’s lives were changed fully and drastically by the internet which linked people together, then we can imagine how the M2M technology which links all things together will affect the various aspects of Earth that we live on(such as energy efficiency, carbon reduction, intelligent transportation, health care, food supply, disaster and terrorism prevention, smart living space, etc). Significant improvements can be expected in these areas.

Obviously, the number of objects involved in M2M technology is exponentially higher than the number of people involved in the internet connection. So it follows that in the next several decades, researchers in academia and industry will face very serious and unresolved scientific and technical issues. In other words, to make billions of objects interact with one another, even without human intervention, human beings will have to face very serious technical challenges. In view of this, the American enterprise Intel, under the assistance of the National Science Council, jointly established the M2M research center in the campus of NTU with National Taiwan University to explore the new M2M technology that will meet our future needs. Dr. Liang-Gee Chen, as Director of the research center, points out that the special features of the center lie in: (1) combining forward-looking research and industrial applications; (2) interdisciplinary technological integration. In addition, all the R&D topics are carefully assessed by the research personnel from both sides so that the end results can not only be presented in top international conferences, but can naturally have a tremendous impact on the industry. Both Intel and NTU believe that through their cooperation mechanism, they can break the technical barriers for M2M communications very soon, and that by the application of M2M technology, they can promote the next wave growth of the electronic industry of Taiwan and the world, thus improving the lives of mankind as well.