PUTRAJAYA, May 11 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's administration today handed offers to three local firms picked to spearhead the ambitious made-in-Malaysia chip design project, hailing it as a significant step in strengthening the nation’s capabilities in integrated circuit design.
Four tokens, including Arm CSS (Compute Subsystems) and Arm Flexible Access (AFA), were granted to Great Asic Technology Sdn. Bhd., SkyeChip Bhd., and Oppstar Technology Sdn. Bhd.
“Malaysia has long been known for chip assembly, testing, and packaging activities,” Minister of Economy Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir said at the token handing-over ceremony here.
“This strength is important, but the future of the industry cannot stop there. We must move further from back-end to front-end—from merely producing to designing, developing IP, and creating our own technology,” he added.
The programme is part of the strategic partnership between the Malaysian government and Arm Holdings, a UK semiconductor giant with an extensive portfolio of chip design Intellectual Property (IP) that helped build an ecosystem enabling over 350 billion chip-based devices to date.
Akmal said the offer opens access to Arm’s computing platforms and intellectual property (IP) portfolio to accelerate the development of local semiconductor products designed in Malaysia.
The three main goals of the partnership is training 10,000 IC design talents, providing selected Malaysian companies with access to Arm’s computing technology and IP portfolio, and developing local semiconductor products designed in Malaysia.
The tokens handed to the first three companies entails the fulfillment of the three indicators, but Akmal said more companies are expected to join them later on.
“For further consideration, this matter will certainly be brought forward through the existing governance framework,” he told reporters after the ceremony.
“The most critical assessment is in terms of the technical capability itself. Therefore, at the committee levels I mentioned earlier, there are indeed companies currently being evaluated.”
Malaysia is an intergral part of the global chip supply chain but only at the assembly level. The Anwar administration had said it wants to turn the country into a leading chip designer as well.
The electrical and electronics sector remains as key exports. Last year, E&E exports recorded their highest value at RM711.61 billion, accounting for 44.3 per cent of the country’s total exports.
Exports of electronic integrated circuits increased by 24.3 per cent to RM389.15 billion in the same period, driven by the demand for high-tech chips, AI, automation, and digitalisation.
“Under the National Semiconductor Strategy we aim for the development of 10 local semiconductor companies with revenues between RM1 billion and RM4.7 billion,” Akmal said.
