Technology Topics

As we experience more sudden heavy rains, intensifying typhoons and hurricanes, and extended, ever hotter heat waves, climate change is bringing drastic changes to our daily lives. The cause lies in the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, raising global temperatures, and is one of the main reasons why so much attention is being paid to the two-fold electrification of automobiles: first, the transition to electricity to power vehicles, ending reliance on combustion engines that burn gasoline and emit CO2; second, the electrification of on-board systems, power steering and functions to improve their performance efficiency, reliability and safety.

Thailand has been touted as one of Asia’s key manufacturing center for electronics, automotive and machinery. According to the Board of Investment of Thailand, electronic components and equipment are the country’s top export category, which reached USD 31 billion in 2020. The country currently ranks 13th globally as a base for electronic products and parts manufacturing.

The Japanese government’s fall 2020 decision to realize carbon neutrality by 2050 quickly attracted a lot attention, and a lot of public support. A Cabinet Office poll, “Public Opinion Survey on Climate Change,” found that 91.9% of respondents would “like to work on the realization of a carbon-free society.” And this is far from unique to Japan. In the United States, President Biden has made countering climate change one of his most important policies, and announced the goals of decarbonization of the power sector by 2035, and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The UK amended its Climate Change Act in 2019, to stipulate that the country will be carbon neutral by 2050.
2021/8/6

Japan Semiconductor Corporation’s Oita Operations, the facility responsible for Toshiba Group’s semiconductor manufacturing, manufactures semiconductors primarily for use in automobiles, an application that demands particularly high quality products.
2021/02/17

Smartphones, cars, toys. Semiconductor products are used wherever electricity is used. You could say our lives would not be possible without them. Do you know how these semiconductor products are formed, or how they are made?
In this article we will tell you all about the world hidden away in the black plastic of semiconductor packages.
2021/02/10

Here at Toshiba, we offer two in-house awards named after our founding fathers, Hisashige Tanaka and Ichisuke Fujioka. Tanaka, born in 1799, was nicknamed “Karakuri Giemon”, the genius of mechanical wonders. A genius inventor, he created an “unopenable” inkstone box (with a secret lock) at the age of 9, and later invented the “Myriad Year Clock,” an ornate and incredibly complex universal clock designed to work for tens of thousands of years.
2019/11/27

“I’ve loved playing with parts from broken PCs and appliances ever since I was a child. You could say that semiconductors were my toys. I enjoyed finding electronic devices and taking them apart to see what was inside. Of course, I couldn’t tell what semiconductors were used for just by looking, so I did my best to look them up in books, learn more about them, and before I knew it, I was totally obsessed with the subject.”
2019/10/23

Look around. How many electronic devices do you see? The ubiquity of electronic devices means we are surrounded by semiconductors all the time. But, wait—what exactly are semiconductors? What do they do? Many people have heard the word, but few could explain what they actually are.
2019/5/22

Semiconductors—you may never have seen one, but they’re most definitely a part of your life, integral as they are to everything from smartphones, tablets, and computers, to digital appliances like TVs and air conditioners. What you may not be aware of, however, is their growing prevalence in things other than mobile devices and electrical appliances, particularly automobiles, in the form of “automotive semiconductors.”
2019/4/3

Nowadays, semiconductors are everywhere, hidden within the electronic devices that support our everyday lives. Of particular interest, however, are power devices—a type of discrete components. Demand for these is expected to increase in the coming years, in the automobile and industrial machinery sectors, amongst others.
2019/3/6

If you have ever driven, you will almost certainly have been gripped at one time or another by a sudden feeling of apprehension as another vehicle—a car, a motorcycle or even a bicycle—suddenly looms up alongside yours. You ask yourself, “How come I didn’t see it in the side mirror?”
2018/11/28

An image recognition LSI indispensable for cars that don’t crash
Figures from WHO* show that almost 1.25 million people die in car accidents every year. As more cars come onto the world’s roads, it’s a figure that’s likely to grow. But automobile manufacturers are responding, by building increasingly advanced capabilities into their. This includes collision avoidance technology that automatically stops cars to avoid accidents. One country leading the way is Japan, where new technologies are gradually being adopted in cars ranging from budget models to the most luxurious sedans.
2018/11/14

Data is created, copied, stored and consumed at an ever-increasing rate, prompting an explosion in data growth globally. According to a recent IDC Global DataSphere report, the amount of data created and replicated is expected to reach around 180ZB by 2025*1. A super-information society is birthed from the convergence of physical space and internet driving interconnectivity of all web-enabled things, on-demand availability of computer system resources and the emergence of artificial intelligence to enable machines to learn and carry out tasks by replicating human intelligence.
*1 IDC, Worldwide Global DataSphere Forecast, 2021–2025: The World Keeps Creating More Data — Now, What Do We Do with It All?, Doc # US46410421, March 2021
2021/8/31

Storing digisnaps of places visited and meals eaten, archiving documents, sharing conference materials with colleagues; these days it’s becoming second nature to store all sorts of data in the cloud, where it’s safe until needed—or until it’s forgotten. All this is driving a dramatic expansion in all kinds of data, and it all has to be stored somewhere.
2018/4/25

Application engineers have a lot on their plate: understanding customer needs, while keeping an eye on market trends; conceptualizing the kind of products that are needed in society; working with the design and development departments to turn them into reality; and taking customer feedback and incorporating it into the development of future products. They handle all of this and provide one stop solutions to customers who use electronic devices in their products.
2024/03/21

If we are to achieve a sustainable society, the human rights of all people must be respected, and people must be able to feel like they can live their lives true to themselves. Human rights are the rights that all human beings are entitled to from birth. When human rights are respected, people can pursue happiness without endangering their lives or suffering discrimination. Sadly, however, human rights issues such as child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking persist, not only in the world at large, but also in the realm of business.
2024/03/04

Recent years have seen power semiconductors move to center stage in the semiconductor industry, and with good reason: as we set our sights on a carbon-neutral future, we can cut energy consumption by improving their performance through technology. In this article, we talk to Tomohiro Taniguchi, who works on improving power semiconductor manufacturing quality and productivity at Advanced Semiconductor Device Development Center. Read about what lies ahead in the evolution of the power semiconductors that support our infrastructure.
2024/01/23

We have become use to remotely setting our air conditioner with an app, and arriving home to a comfortable temperature. Connecting things like home appliances to the internet opens up possibilities, and enriches our lives. This is the internet of things, IoT, and as the use of sensors to collect data becomes more widespread, its range of application will continue to grow more.
2022/8/29

Remote work has become the new normal due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people use the time freed up from commuting to enrich their private lives, while others use it to study, as an investment in their future selves. The engineer featured in this article said he used the time gained during the COVID-19 pandemic to achieve his long-held goal of getting a motorcycle license. While enjoying riding along the quiet coastline, avoiding crowds, he says that when he looks at the scenery at his destination he thinks about the ideas sparked by the many conversations and new insights he has gained from the numerous engineers around him.

Through their active involvement across many vital industry sectors, Toshiba employees worldwide live out the Essence of Toshiba’s values. With the Toshiba Clip team bringing us to Singapore, we had the opportunity to be up close and personal with our colleague, Ms. Valerie Chin, to hear how the “Essence of Toshiba” has genuinely impacted her.

In 2020, the coronavirus has pushed us into a paradigm shift that is bringing dramatic changes to the world. But there are people who are not just idly standing by and watching this, who know that it’s not only the virus that can change the future—that there is always a future that can be shaped by human hands. Toshiba has many young engineers who will create and live in that future, and in this series we introduce some of them.
2021/04/14

Toshiba employees around the world are living out the shared values of the Essence of Toshiba through their active involvement across many vital industry sectors. Mr. Yuhei Katayama, in charge of sales of semiconductors since joining the company, shares his experience and the values he upholds in carrying out his work responsibilities while working at Toshiba in Japan and Singapore.
2020/11/04

The Toshiba Clip team has been on the road again, travelling the world to speak to our employees. We wanted to find out what the Essence of Toshiba means to you. This time we visited the UK to speak to a 20-year Toshiba veteran: Tom Frawley, a European Business Development Manager at Toshiba Electronics Europe. He’s spent the past two decades living our ‘create together’ ethos with his colleagues and customers.
2020/3/4

For Bastian James, a career with Toshiba was a long-held ambition. Now Regional Product Manager at Toshiba Gulf, Bastian is focused on a future filled with new possibilities, as he balances the demands of around 40 countries across the Middle East and Africa.
2020/2/19