Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung on May 10 presided over a seminar on strengthening investment cooperation between Vietnam and the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), with the participation of representatives of the units in the field of semiconductor chips, including the HCM City Hi-tech Park, University of Technology under the Hanoi National University, Viettel, FPT, VNPT and NTQ Solution.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), the event is part of the activities to implement the outcomes of the Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh’s working visit to Belgium late last year.

During the visit in December 2022, Chinh paid a visit to IMEC and talked to the CEO of the center about cooperation in the field of innovation, research and production of semiconductor chips.

Dung said MIC realized that the global semiconductor chip supply chain involves many parties, and Vietnam wants to become part of the supply chain.

Vietnam can join the chain not only in programming and packaging, but also in other work, such as designing, developing and integrating IC into hardware products, especially in the current IoT world.

“The government of Vietnam and MIC commit to give high support to the semiconductor chip industry. In the immediate future, MIC and IMEC need to focus on training programs. I believe this would be a reasonable first step for the parties and schools in Vietnam to implement the strategy and gain results in 2023,” Dung said.

As a world leading research and development (R&D) and innovation center in the field of semiconductor chip technology, IMEC now has more than 5,500 researchers and experts from 90 countries.

Speaking at the seminar, Lode Lauwers, IMEC’s Vice President, stressed that to develop the semiconductor industry, it is necessary to develop human resources.

“We may have many ideas and initiatives, but if we don’t have the human resources with good skills, we won’t be able to successfully deploy the ideas. Therefore, having a good workforce is one of the most important factors,” he said.

According to him, the two parties can consider developing a center to train students in Vietnam. IMEC can run student exchange programs, under which the students of Vietnam’s universities can spend short-term study courses at IMEC’s R&D centers.

Nguyen Thien Nghia, deputy director of the Authority of Information Technology and Communication, when appreciating IMEC’s capability of cooperating with Vietnam in training IC designing, said that the cooperation doesn’t aim at producing IC designing experts, but producing the experts who will create IC designing experts.

Trong Dat