Develop human resources, ready to welcome investment waves in the semiconductor chip industry

High-quality human resources play a key role in the development of the semiconductor chip industry. Photo: CTV

Welcoming the investment wave

According to experts, since the last year, the semiconductor chip industry has become very hot, especially after US President Joe Biden visited Vietnam in September 2023 and issued a Joint Statement for upgrading Vietnam-US relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership. With this relationship, Vietnam becomes a major partner in the semiconductor chip supply chain for the United States. Many leaders of large semiconductor corporations from the United States and European countries have chosen to visit Vietnam.

For example, Chairman of the US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and leaders of leading US semiconductor companies such as Intel, Qualcom, Ampere, ARM...; Chairman and General Director of NVIDIA Corporation (US)... came to Vietnam to explore the market. Investors from other countries such as China, South Korea and Japan also increase business trips to Vietnam to seek investment opportunities in the processing, manufacturing, and high-tech industries. This shows that the strategy for developing the semiconductor chip ecosystem is heading towards Vietnam.

Sharing 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 Vietnamese Government always supports and creates conditions for semiconductor businesses to cooperate and invest in Vietnam.

To take advantage of opportunities and potential for developing the semiconductor industry, Vietnam has been gradually perfecting the system of policies and laws on investment and businesses to create favorable conditions for investors; deploying many solutions to support Vietnamese businesses to participate more deeply in the global supply chain in the semiconductor industry.

Sharing at the conference "Human resource development solutions for the new wave of IC investment in Vietnam" held last weekend, experts said that Vietnam has many opportunities to develop the semiconductor chip market.

However, how to seize new opportunities to promote the development of the semiconductor industry, an important pillar industry of the digital economy, especially in the context of a rapidly transforming world, is a problem. According to Mr. Vu Chi Thanh, Principal of FPT Polytechnic College, in order to fully take advantage of the potential that Vietnam has, we need to focus on developing quality human resources to prepare for the new wave of IC investment in Vietnam.

High quality human resources play a key role

Mr. Nguyen Phuc Vinh, Member of the Executive Committee of Ho Chi Minh City Semiconductor Circuit Technology Association, there are still many opportunities for Vietnam to participate in the supply chain because there is any country that have a completely autonomous and closed supply chain. According to Mr. Vinh, the need for IC design personnel is about 150-200 people per quarter and it takes about three years to be able to design independently (official engineer).

Participating in the supply chain in Vietnam is very important, in which human resource development is a central and decisive factor. Therefore, it is necessary to build breakthrough mechanisms and policies for developing microchip human resources, especially high-quality human resources.

Citing the role of high-quality human resources for the semiconductor chip industry, Mr. Nguyen Phuc Vinh said that to design a modern chip for a certain application, a group of about 50 people takes 12 months to design, manufacturing, packaging, testing takes about 6 months and testing on the application board takes nearly another 6 months. With just one small mistake, the chip can be thrown away, tens of millions of dollars and the work of 50 people for nearly 2 years wasted.

Dr. Nguyen Minh Son, Head of the Department of Computer Engineering, University of Information Technology - Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, emphasized that semiconductor microchips are currently developing rapidly and are very different from before, with microchips made of only DNA that can only be seen with a microscope.

With fast processing speed, AI memory chips are very hot in the market. Therefore, in making a new wave of investment today, it must be determined that it is different from before and the leading training and pioneering work must also respond to solve this development problem.

According to Dr. Nguyen Minh Son, human resources working in the semiconductor chip industry in Vietnam have basically been invested in by universities over the past 10 years through activities such as opening training majors and improving quality of training and business connection. However, universities in Vietnam still have many limitations in the process of training human resources to work in this field due to the lack of investment in practical and laboratory equipment in training.

In addition, according to experts, if you want to quickly have a strong semiconductor workforce, it is possible to provide short-term training for graduates in the electronics and telecommunications industry who have experience working in companies related to IC and semiconductor design. If these human resources are retrained in the semiconductor field, they will create high-quality human resources with specialized knowledge and practical experience. Retraining engineers who have graduated from semiconductor majors is a solution to quickly increase the amount of human resources the semiconductor industry provides to the market.