Experts speaking at the recent conference “Human Resource Development Solutions for the New Wave of Semiconductor Investment in Vietnam” stated that Vietnam has numerous opportunities to develop the semiconductor market.
According to experts, the semiconductor chip industry has become extremely hot in the last year or so, particularly since US President Joe Biden visited Vietnam in September 2023 and issued a Joint Statement upgrading the Vietnam-US relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. With this relationship, Vietnam became a major partner in the United States’ semiconductor chip supply chain. Many leaders from large semiconductor corporations in the United States and Europe have chosen to visit Vietnam.
For example, the Chairman of the US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and leaders from leading US semiconductor companies such as Intel, Qualcomm, Ampere, and ARM, as well as the Chairman and General Director of NVIDIA Corporation (USA), visited Vietnam to explore the market. Investors from other countries, such as China, Korea, and Japan, are increasing their business trips to Vietnam to look for investment opportunities in the processing, manufacturing, and high-tech industries. This demonstrates that the strategy for developing the semiconductor chip ecosystem is focusing on Vietnam.
Speaking about Vietnam’s preparations to attract FDI into the semiconductor industry, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Tran Duy Dong said, “With high determination to participate in the global semiconductor value chain, the government The Vietnamese government consistently encourages and creates favorable conditions for semiconductor companies to cooperate with and invest in Vietnam. To capitalize on opportunities and potential for developing the semiconductor industry, Vietnam has gradually perfected its system of policies and laws on investment and business to create favorable conditions for investors, as well as deploying many solutions to assist Vietnamese businesses in participating more deeply in the global semiconductor supply chain.
However, how to seize new opportunities to promote the development of the semiconductor industry, an important pillar industry of the digital economy, particularly in the context of a rapidly changing world, is an impossible and far from simple task. Mr. Vu Chi Thanh, Principal of FPT Polytechnic College, believes that to fully realize Vietnam’s potential, we must focus on developing quality human resources to prepare for the new microchip investment wave in Vietnam.
Mr. Nguyen Phuc Vinh, a member of the Executive Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City Semiconductor Circuit Technology Association, stated that no country is completely autonomous and has a closed supply chain, so Vietnam still has many opportunities to participate. According to Mr. Vinh, the demand for IC design personnel is between 150 and 200 people per quarter, and it takes about three years to be able to design independently (official engineer). Participation in Vietnam’s supply chain is critical, with human resource development playing a central and decisive role. As a result, it is critical to develop innovative mechanisms and policies for developing microchip human resources, particularly high-quality human resources.
Mr. Nguyen Phuc Vinh emphasized the importance of high-quality human resources in the semiconductor chip industry, stating that it takes a group of about 50 people 12 months to design a modern chip for a specific application, 6 months to manufacture, package, and test, and nearly 6 months to test on the application board. With a single minor error, the chip can be discarded, wasting tens of millions of dollars and the efforts of 50 people for nearly two years.
Dr. Nguyen Minh Son, Head of the Department of Computer Engineering, University of Information Technology, Vietnam National University, HCMC, emphasized that semiconductor microchips are rapidly developing and are very different from previous generations, with microchips made entirely of DNA and visible only under a microscope. AI memory chips are making waves due to their fast-processing speed; therefore, when making new investment waves today, we must also determine what is different from before, and leading training and pioneering work must also meet the requirements to solve this development issue.
According to Dr. Nguyen Minh Son, universities in Vietnam have primarily invested in human resources working in the semiconductor chip industry over the last decade through activities such as the establishment of training majors, the improvement of training quality, and business connections. However, universities in Vietnam continue to face significant challenges in training human resources to work in this field due to a lack of investment in practical and laboratory training equipment.
Furthermore, experts say that if you want to quickly build a strong semiconductor workforce, you can provide short-term training to graduates in the electronics and telecommunications industries who have worked in IC and semiconductor design companies. If these human resources are retrained in the semiconductor industry, they will produce high-quality workers with specialized knowledge and practical experience. Retraining engineers who have graduated from semiconductor majors is a quick way to increase the number of human resources the semiconductor industry offers the market.
