The Asia-Pacific region isn’t just participating in the open hardware movement—it’s increasingly steering it. That was the unmistakable takeaway from the Open Compute Project (OCP) APAC Summit in Taipei on August 5, where industry leaders mapped out a future in which APAC is the growth engine for AI-ready data center infrastructure.
OCP’s APAC Momentum
OCP Chief Innovation Officer Cliff Grossner set the tone early: 30% of OCP’s corporate members now come from APAC, and nearly 40% of its OCP-certified data center facilities are here. Even more telling, 20% of all technical contributions to OCP projects last year originated in the region.
The numbers match the investment climate. IDC forecasts 36% of the $190+ billion OCP-related infrastructure spend over the coming years will come from APAC. The drivers? Government-backed AI programs, hyperscaler data center expansions, and rapid hardware innovation.
Grossner made it official: OCP will return to Taipei in 2026. “It’s because of you that I can make that statement,” he told the audience.
Taiwan: The Hardware Anchor
If Grossner offered the big-picture view, DIGITIMES CEO Colley Hwang drilled into the supply chain specifics. Taiwan, he argued, is no longer simply a supporting player in global tech—it’s an anchor.
Consider the stats:
- 26% of U.S. server imports and 40% of China’s originate from Taiwan (China), even if final assembly happens elsewhere.
- TSMC controls 90%+ of global AI chip production—the beating heart of today’s compute stack.
- Manufacturing makes up 38% of Taiwan’s economy, compared to just 10% in the U.S.
The country’s design muscle is equally formidable, with a design industry ten times the size of South Korea’s despite its smaller population. The top eight Taiwanese server manufacturers operate over 120 production sites worldwide.
“Hardware Will Eat AI”
Hwang challenged the common “AI will eat software” maxim. His take: hardware will eat AI. As AI workloads push memory, bandwidth, and thermal limits, the breakthroughs will depend less on algorithms and more on foundry processes, advanced packaging, and system-level integration.
This isn’t theoretical. Taiwan’s manufacturing ecosystem—foundries, suppliers, equipment makers, and materials providers—already forms a semiconductor market worth over $1 trillion by Hwang’s calculations.
The Next Decade: Taiwan’s Golden Age
Hwang forecast at least ten years of sustained dominance for Taiwan’s tech manufacturing sector, fueled by dense industrial clusters and nearly 100% reinvestment of net profits by giants like TSMC and Foxconn into infrastructure and partnerships.
His advice to the global tech community—and especially OCP members—was simple: “Come to Taiwan more often.”
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