What are the reasons for FPT to decide to develop semiconductor chips?

FPT is developing Make-in-Vietnam – Made-by-FPT chips. One of the reasons is that it is the right time for us to do this. The Covid-19 pandemic led to a serious chip shortage in the world market. The US-China trade war also contributed to the problem.

We have experiences in working with power chips. Therefore, when our clients face difficulties in accessing chip supply sources, unlike large manufacturers, we can specifically design chip products to their orders. This has helped our partners to place orders for chip manufacturing with us.

What is the right path for Make in Vietnam chips?

It is both easy and difficult for Vietnam to make chips. The advantage is that many multinationals want to relocate their production out of China, which may lead to a short chip supply. Therefore, the market needs new chip suppliers.

Many companies would say ‘no’ to using China-made chips or Chinese-sourced chips. Chinese companies also cannot buy chip products from other countries. So, new demand has appeared, which will bring opportunities to Vietnam.

In the world, there are not only 2nm and 3nm chips, but also many other product lines. Vietnam can make the chip lines and therefore have its markets.

What are the challenges and opportunities for Vietnam’s semiconductor industry. What do we need to do to grasp the opportunities?

Vietnam’s chip designing remains very young. The first Vietnamese company designed chips in 1999. As such, the industry in Vietnam is less than 25 years old. There exists a big gap between Vietnam and the world. We cannot compete with other countries and companies in experience and advantages. So, the challenges are great.

However, Vietnam has certain advantages of its own when joining the global chip market. Vietnam won’t have a competitive edge when making common chip product lines, but it will have advantages when specifically designing chips to clients’ orders.

FPT is quite capable of designing power chips with very competitive prices. The chips have performance equal to 90 or nearly 100 percent of the chips made by large corporations in the world, while our chips are much cheaper, just 50-60 percent of foreign made ones.

Many clients will need specific chips for their specific products. However, they cannot persuade large chip manufacturers to design the chips specifically reserved for them. But Vietnamese companies can satisfy their requirements. And that is the market for Vietnam.

The other advantage of Vietnam is that many multinationals are relocating their production lines to Vietnam. This will lead to an increase in the demand for chips.

An unofficial source said about $6 billion worth of chips are imported to Vietnam each year. However, no company in Vietnam is supplying these chips. The locally-made content in Vietnam-made products will be increasing gradually and the demand for Vietnam’s chips will also increase significantly.

What should we do to make it possible for many Vietnamese ICT firms to join the semiconductor market, not just large corporations such as Viettel and FPT?

Vietnam needs a semiconductor ecosystem. We have many chip designing firms, about 40 operational companies. As for packaging and testing, we have foreign invested enterprises such as Intel and Amkor. What Vietnam is still lacking is the part related to chip manufacturing factories.

To make the semiconductor industry develop, Vietnamese enterprises need the government’s support in outlets and an ecosystem of products. Increasing the localization ratio is one of them. This will help Vietnamese companies conquer certain markets. The government should also assign projects to Vietnamese companies to help them develop.

Meanwhile, pioneering companies need to support startups and cooperate for mutual benefit, rather than compete with each other. This will help develop the entire ecosystem.

How can Vietnam develop human resources in the semiconductor industry?

The opportunities are coming. If we are late, the opportunities will be missed. FPT University is joining forces with prestigious universities in the world to use their training curricula in Vietnam. These are 2+2 and 3+1, i.e two or three years of training in Vietnam and one or two years overseas.

Le My