Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam is making strong progress in advancing its standing in the global semiconductor supply chain as many of the world’slargest chip manufacturers have landed in the Southeast Asian nation, insiderssaid.

Statistics released by Custom Market Insights inAugust show that the global semiconductor chip market size was valued at 580 billionUSD in 2022 and it will grow to 634.5 billion USD this year, and 1.12 trillionin 2032.

According to Bloomberg, chip imports from Vietnam tothe US jumped from only 321.7 million USD in February 2022 to 562.5 million USDafter one year to account for an 11.6% market share, only after Malaysia andTaiwan (China).

Aware of Vietnam’s potential in this field, many chipgiants like Intel have poured investments in the Southeast Asian nation.

US-based Intel Corporation has set up a chipassembly, packaging and testing factory in Vietnam, also its biggest projectworldwide, worth over 1 billion USD.

Amkor Technology, oneof the world's largest providers of outsourced semiconductor packaging, design,and test services based in Arizona, the US, will put into operation a 1.6 billion USD factory in the northern province of Bac Ninh this month.

Samsung Group of the Republic of Korea said it plansto make semiconductor parts in Vietnam. Samsung is testing its ball grid arrayproducts and will mass produce them at the tech giant's factory in northernThai Nguyen province later this year.

Tran Dang Hoa, Chairman of FPT IS – a subsidiary oftech giant FPT, who is also Chairman of FPT Semiconductor, said for the long-term, Vietnam would become a silicon valley of Southeast Asia.

He suggested Vietnam step up human resourcesdevelopment, enhance design capacity for domestic companies, gradually participatein the global supply chain, and attract and jointly build semiconductorfactories in the country.

The biggest challenge to the domestic semiconductorindustry lies with the shortage of IT engineers, he pointed out.

Reuters cited an expert in the industry as saying that “the100-million-people country has only 5,000 to 6,000 trained hardware engineersfor the chip sector, against expected demand of 20,000 in five years and 50,000in a decade.”

Training about 30,000 to 50,000 engineers andexperts is part of the Government's project on semiconductor human resourcesdevelopment until 2030.

Hoa said FPT plans to train 10,000 semiconductorengineers in the time ahead, adding FPT Semiconductor will cooperate withforeign educational institutions in this regard.

Synopsys Inc and Vietnam’s National InnovationCentre (NIC) have recently announced their collaboration to advance integratedcircuit (IC) design expertise in Vietnam. This partnership entails Synopsys’ssupport for the establishment of a chip design incubation centre by NIC.

In a joint statement on the Vietnam-US ComprehensiveStrategic Partnership, the two countries noted Vietnam’s sizable potential tobecome a key nation in the semiconductor industry.

The document also mentioned initiatives to develophuman resources in the semiconductor industry, with the US providing a seedfund of 2 million USD first./.