Malaysia, which aims to become a “Southeast Asian semiconductor powerhouse,” will join hands with British semiconductor design company Arm to produce its own semiconductors.
According to Reuters and Bloomberg on the 5th, the Malaysian government announced on the same day that it will pay Arm $250 million for 10 years and receive semiconductor design intellectual property rights (IP) for its own semiconductor production.
Prime Minister Mohammad Rafiji Ramli’s Office of Economy explained that it has signed a contract with Arm that includes receiving intellectual property rights, including seven high-tech semiconductor designs, and educating 10,000 semiconductor technicians.
“We have wanted to move from post-processes such as testing to full-processes,” he said. “To this end, we have chosen an ‘accelerative method’ in which we cooperate with Arm.”
Arm is a global semiconductor design company with a 90% stake in SoftBank.
Malaysia aims to produce its own GPUs in the next 5 to 10 years in cooperation with Arm.
Through this, the government expects to create 10 domestic semiconductor companies with annual sales of $1.5 billion to $2 billion.
Malaysia is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of semiconductors and has a market share of about 13% for post-processing such as global semiconductor packaging and assembly and test services. Semiconductors are major industries that account for about 40% of Malaysia’s exports.
Amid the restructuring of supply chains following the semiconductor war between the U.S. and China, Malaysia has attracted a large number of global companies looking for new production bases.
The government has also been pushing for its own semiconductor production by announcing plans to build the largest semiconductor design complex in Southeast Asia last year.
Malaysia plans to increase semiconductor exports to $270 billion by 2030 amid a surge in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers.
JENNIFER KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
