2020-10-30 (MFG)Economic Daily interview: “Ten Years of Deep Cultivation in the Field of Image Algorithms and AI”

Whether it is a factory office located in HSIP, or a residential building in Nanzih District, Kaohsiung City, or even a hidden villa in the alleys of Daya District, Taichung City, only by its outside, it is hard to imagine such a registered capital of 230 million TWD. V5 TECHNOLOGIES, which is little heard of, has been dedicated in the field of image processing technology for many years and has the extraordinary strength in image algorithm and AI technology.

Even already grasping more than 80% of the image processing AI market share based on domestic semiconductor packaging manufacturers, the company did not have an exhibition booth at the International Semiconductor Exhibition in September this year. “Semiconductor customers called and asked why they couldn’t find the exhibition booth of V5 TECHNOLOGIES?” said both the two business directors at V5 TECHNOLOGIES. Low-key, quietly cultivating technology is the impression of this company by the industry, while the academic image processing training and rigorous semiconductor industry management philosophy are built in its genes.

The technical team of V5 TECHNOLOGIES come from outstanding graduates from domestic universities, and the main backbone of its algorithm and AI technology mostly comes from the IEEE fellow led Laboratory of Electrical Engineering Department, National Chiao Tung University. Since 2007, the master and doctoral students in this laboratory have joined the "Excellence Project - Intelligent Imaging Sub-Project" by National Science Council (now the Ministry of Science and Technology, MOST), becoming the first group of locally cultivated R&D personnel on intelligent imaging.

The chairman of V5 TECHNOLOGIES is Dr. Quincy Lin, who receives a high reputation in the semiconductor and solar energy industries. After retiring from TSMC as senior VP and CIO in 2005, Quincy Lin founded Neo Solar Power Corp. and Rafael Microelectronics, Inc. In 2014 he founded V5 TECHNOLOGIES. Chairman Lin built the emphasis on technology R&D and serious management philosophy from TSMC into the DNA of V5 TECHNOLOGIES, leading V5 TECHNOLOGIES to a hidden champion in the field of Taiwan’s semiconductor image processing and AI.

In the field of intelligent manufacturing, V5 TECHNOLOGIES uses one-of-its-kind technology to provide semiconductor customers with upgraded optical microscope solutions of high CP value, and remove the bottleneck for customers that use huge manpower without automation at product optical inspection sites, and help them gain market with the technology and services.

In 2019, V5 TECHNOLOGIES further launched the optical inspection equipment comparable to the products from European, American and Japanese manufacturers, and has won many orders in bidding, becoming the first domestic company that is able to compete with the major European, American and Japanese semiconductor optical equipment manufacturers. V5 TECHNOLOGIES, with many years of cultivated technical advantages in AI, has become one of the few companies in the world capable of providing AI systems for surface defect image processing on semiconductor products, helping customers effectively reduce the number of screened images of possible defects by AOI equipment, as well as greatly lowering the labor cost due to the high overkill rate. Since V5 TECHNOLOGIES entered the semiconductor industry in 2016, most of the top 10 semiconductor packaging and testing companies in Taiwan have become customers of V5 TECHNOLOGIES.

In addition to the field of intelligent manufacturing, V5 TECHNOLOGIES also uses the same core AI technology to develop products in the field of intelligent medical care, and has achieved tremendous success. For example, on October 24 this year, V5 TECHNOLOGIES and Taiwan Lung Cancer Society, Intel Corp and World Peace Industrial Group in Taipei Regent Hotel jointly organized the “2020 Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment and AI Application Seminar”. The event attracted more than one hundred medical and IT professionals and received great response.

With the increasing demand for high-end manufacturing processes, the semiconductor industry values more and more product quality and process stability. The traditional method based on manually inspecting optical image defects, due to the risk of fatigue and misjudgment from visual inspection, has been questioned for its stability and quality, and there is an increasing need for automatic/AI-based image processing. Catalyzed by the severity of the epidemic and the reformation of the global supply chain, with strong expertise in image processing and AI technology, V5 TECHNOLOGIES has obtained a number of patents on image processing technology, and the future development is worthy of anticipation.