Vietnam set to have first chip factory
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Saigon Industry Corporation is seeking approval for a US$200 million project to build a chip manufacturing plant at Saigon Hi-tech Park, a conference heard Thursday.
Speaking at the conference, the company said the plant, which is expected to produce 300 million chips a year, will be the first one of its kind in Vietnam.
The firm said over 500 Vietnamese and foreign engineers, experts and workers would be employed in the initial stage.
Dang Ngoc Hung, the company’s CEO, said the project would play a strategic role in boosting the development of the chip designing sector and meeting the increasing demand for Vietnamese chips.
Hung said the plant would initially focus on designing chips used in smart card products such as SIMs, ID cards, driving licenses, bank cards and insurance cards.
The project would also target other products like radio frequency identification (RFID) chips and those used in home appliances and for national defense purposes, he said.
The project was also aimed to provide a practical environment to aid personnel training in the integrated circuit industry.
The plant would use 180-nanomater technology for its chip production, Hung said.
Explaining why the plant would not employ a more advanced technology, he said there was still a great global demand for chips with a diameter of 180 nanometers.
The 180-nanometer technology is also suitable to produce chips for analog devices, which are also in demand, he said.
Hung also said the plant would fail to achieve its target if a higher technology was used and should practice with an average technology before aiming for higher levels gradually.
Bui Ngoc Chau, director of the Swiss-based Identic Corporation, said the Vietnamese integrated circuit industry was too young to compete with other powerful countries in this field.
He said the market of chip making for specific devices and appliances would be appropriate and affordable to Vietnam.
Ngo Duc Hoang, director of the Integrated Circuit Design Research and Education Center under the Vietnam National University, said the chip factory would enable HCMC to become a national and regional center of the integrated circuit industry.
But Hoang said is seeing a severe lack of qualified people to work in the field.
The experts thus urged the government to encourage the teaching of integrated circuit technology at universities in order to meet this high-tech industry’s demand for human resources.
