Vietnam is becoming preferred over mainland China as a location for IC design, with
STMicroelectronics proposing a design centre there last week. Renesas has had a Vietnam IC design centre since 2004.
According to Francois Guilbert, ST’s CEO for Asia-Pacific, the company’s Vietnam design centre will focus on satellite TV applications. One reason was this is to enable a local set-top-box industry, because these are currently imported from China.
Renesas intends to have 500 engineers at its Vietnam design centre next year.
“We were the first semiconductor company to establish an R&D centre in Vietnam so we had the luxury of having the pick of the best engineers,” said Satoru Ito, CEO of Renesas.
Ito explained that, initially it was thought that China was the place to set up a design centre. “I thought China would be the key area. Later it seems that China is not going to be a very cost-effective region, and I thought we needed another area which would be cost-effective for a longer time.”
In Renesas’ Vietnam design centre, the focus is on system-on-chip (SoC) design for the worldwide market. “A lot of engineering work is required, for instance in SoC,” said Ito.
STMicroelectronics said it intends to set up training courses for Vietnamese engineers.