Besides advanced chip manufacturing which, the process of packaging and assembly in the production chain has also caught special attention.

Even the leading chip manufacturers in the world are also talking about demand for developing more advanced chip packaging and stacking technology.

TSMC president Mark Liu said the limited capacity in the field has caused congestion in AI chip supply source. The Taiwanese semiconductor company is now the only producer providing chips used for Nvidia’s powerful AI H100 and A100 microprocessors.

Liu explained that the short supply is not caused by the lack of physical chips, but by the limited capability in advanced chip packaging, a very important step of the production process.

“We don’t lack AI chips. The bottleneck lies in COWOS (Chip on Wafer on Substrate) capability,” Liu said, adding that the demand for COWOS surged unexpectedly by three times just within one year.

Packaging advanced chips has emerged as an important market for the world’s leading chip manufacturers such as Intel, Samsung and TSMC.

Intel has set a goal on increasing the most advanced chip packaging capacity by four times by 2025 as the US’s largest chipmaker is trying to regain its leading position in semiconductor production.

Weather, terrain favourable

LightReading has quoted Maheshwari Bandari, a respected analyst of GlobalData, as saying that with an important geostrategic position, "Vietnam is becoming a key factor in the process of restructuring the global supply chain".

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Vietnam is making every effort to expand semiconductor production, and attract foreign companies to all three major segments – assembling, testing, packaging; foundry and chip design.

An executive officer in the field of semiconductors in the US said Vietnam has great potential to rise up in the fields of chip assembling and designing instead of developing advanced chip foundries.

Vietnam still can find a position in the production chain with factories manufacturing chips at lower costs and less complexity, reserved for large-size microprocessors – the segment that has high demand, such as chips in automobiles.

Vietnam’s biggest opportunity in chip assembling has emerged as the entire semiconductor industry is trying to reduce reliance on Chinese and Taiwanese production capacity, which makes up 60 percent of total global capacity.

Chip designing is a great opportunity for the Vietnamese semiconductor industry, because the process requires less investment capital and fewer specialists.

Human resources 

The lack of high-quality human resources in the semiconductor industry is a challenge for all countries.

In the US, SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association) estimated that the country would lack 67,000 workers by 2030. With the current market development pace, the industry would need 460,000 workers by that time.

Meanwhile, China is trying to lure Taiwanese engineers to build a domestic chip industry. The country is lacking 200,000 skilled workers.

In Vietnam, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung said Vietnam needs 5,000-10,000 engineers a year for the semiconductor industry, and only 20 percent of demand can be met.

Preparing human resources for the chip sector was also a focus of discussion during US President Biden’s visit to Vietnam and Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh’s working visit to the US.  

The US government has committed to give financial support of $2 million to initiatives on developing the workforce for the semiconductor industry and setting up laboratories that serve teaching and practicing related to chip assembling, testing and packaging.

Vu Tu Thanh, head of the Vietnam office of the US-ASEAN Business Council, said that Vietnam has only 5,000-6,000 hardware engineers with chip expertise, while it needs 20,000 in 5 years and 50,000 in one decade.

The temporary solution is to employ foreign engineers. However, when the semiconductor industry develops to a certain level, having enough qualified workers is a must for Vietnam.

Le My