Nvidia and the Outlook for Vietnam’s AI and Semiconductor Industries

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia in a black leather jacket cuts a strong impression and message. One that we could say contrasts with the more casual approach of the late Steve Jobs in his signature black turtleneck and jeans.

In December 2023, Huang made an official visit to Vietnam. He received an enthusiastic welcome from CEOs of major Vietnamese corporations and unicorn companies as well as the prime minister and other politicians, game fans who love GeForce game GPUs, and college students as well.

Huang’s popularity in Vietnam stems not only from his Asian background but also from being part of the generation that experienced a turbulent 30 years in IT, known as the "Internet-mobile-AI" transformation. It also reflects the longing of Vietnam's leaders, from businesspeople to politicians, to see their country flourish in the realms of the fourth industrial revolution and semiconductors.

Vietnam is currently working to achieve growth in semiconductor design and manufacturing to a level that meets global standards. This is evident in the construction of Intel’s largest CPU manufacturing facility (The Saigon Hi-Tech Park in District 9 of Ho Chi Minh City) and a Broadcom factory (Bac Ninh, a province in the north of Vietnam).

Reuters reported that this visit allowed the Nvidia CEO (Jensen Huang) to meet with representatives from the Vietnamese government and business communities to discuss strategies for promoting “Vietnam’s semiconductor industry,” building a “potential cooperative relationship” between Nvidia and Vietnam for technology development.

Nvidia, a leading manufacturer of AI chips and graphic processors, plans to team up with some of Vietnam’s largest technology companies, including Viettel, Vingroup, FPT, CMC, and VNG, with the aim of disseminating AI across the cloud technology, automobile, and healthcare industries.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX (Source: CafeBiz)

The event in Hanoi, Vietnam, on December 9th, where people had the opportunity to meet Huang, came as quite a surprise. The party was held in Hoang Mai, a district of Hanoi, for gamers who are fans of Nvidia’s GeForce graphic processors. The news quickly reached young people in Vietnam via Facebook, Instagram, Zalo, and other social media platforms. 

| So What’s the Real Reason Nvidia’s CEO Came to Vietnam? 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (Source: Vietnambiz.vn)

 

Prime Minister Chinh said that, as of 2023, around 6,000 semiconductor engineers were working in and outside of the country and that Vietnam would nurture 50,000 high-level semiconductor engineers and semiconductor circuit designers by 2030.

He also outlined Vietnam’s three-stage strategies for the semiconductor industry to Huang and requested long-term cooperation, partnership, and support from the US to develop Vietnam’s semiconductor ecosystem.

The abovementioned three stages are as follows.

1)     Designing semiconductor chip factories

2)     Constructing semiconductor chips

3)     Testing and manufacturing semiconductors

This is very similar to the way in which the Vietnamese government actively imported Samsung Electronics’s mobile phone technology and started manufacturing and exporting phones as a strategic, national business.

The IT industry is predicted to give greater importance to designing high-performance, computing-based semiconductors, and AI technology. Vietnam expects that this shift will play a critical role in the country's transition from the third to the fourth industrial revolution.

It is similar to the context in the past when Vietnam’s Prime Minister requested Samsung CEO Jae-yong Lee to build a semiconductor factory in Vietnam.

 

| AI and Training Partnership with Viettel

Viettel CEO Thang has proposed a partnership with Nvidia to jointly establish, invest in, operate, and manage a supercomputer infrastructure employing 1,000 GPUs by 2025, starting immediately.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (Right), Viettel Group CEO Tao Duc Thang (Source: Viettel website)

 

Viettel also suggested collaborating with Nvidia to establish AI training centers, fostering the training of human resources, building an ecosystem, and promoting AI innovations in natural language processing and robotics for all parties involved.

Thang also discussed the establishment of these training centers, mentioning that Nvidia would provide design and support, while Viettel would prepare the training infrastructure.

| FPT Corporation Accelerates Its Semiconductor Ambitions

The meeting between Nvidia and FPT, Vietnam’s leading IT company, held significant importance for the semiconductor and AI businesses of both companies.

Semiconductors and AI hold a pivotal role in FPT Group's IT strategy, aimed at aligning with the technological advancements of developed nations and expanding their global supply chain. In 2022, the company announced the initiation of semiconductor production through its subsidiary, FPT Semiconductor, and aims to produce 70 million chips on order by 2025.

Semiconductors manufactured by FPT (Source: SPUNIK Vietnam)

 

Additionally, starting in 2024, FPT plans to introduce a semiconductor program for undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled at FPT University.

Having already formed partnerships for semiconductor technology with US companies such as Silvaco and TreSemi, FPT's recent collaboration with Nvidia is anticipated to mark a significant turning point for FPT Semiconductors.

In addition, AI and ML (Machine Learning) companies can now purchase A10 and A100 as well as the GPU cloud service offered by FPT Cloud and Nvidia.

FPT plans to use its semiconductor and AI partnership with Nvidia as an opportunity to expand its cloud, data, IoT, healthcare, and self-driving car businesses.

 

| VNG Corporation Concentrates Its Efforts on GPU Cloud

VNG Corporation, Vietnam’s first unicorn company, has promptly initiated a GPU cloud project with Nvidia.

The company serves users of VNGGames, leveraging Nvidia’s GeForce technology alongside world-leading, high-performance GPUs. Additionally, it has introduced Nvidia’s GPU cloud as a strategic breakthrough for VNG Cloud, a business initiated in 2018.

This GPU cloud targets not only game companies but also any companies that wish to utilize AI cost-effectively. While some public cloud platforms, such as AWS, GCP, and AZURE, have also launched GPU cloud products, the demanding specifications and high cost have prevented them from being widely adopted.

 

Nvidia GPU cloud products offered by VNG Cloud (Source: Greennode)

VNG Cloud is scheduled to commence Nvidia H100 GPU cloud at data centers in Vietnam and Thailand within the first half of 2024, with plans to expand the service to Indonesian data centers in the future. 

Nvidia's meetings with major telecommunications and cloud companies in Vietnam were significant. This may be the final piece of the puzzle for the earnest desire of the Vietnamese government and corporations—the development of Vietnam's fourth industrial revolution through the adoption of AI technology, fostering talent, and semiconductor manufacturing.

Vietnam views this as a stepping stone to move beyond software outsourcing, the primary focus of most major IT companies in the country, and to venture into more advanced IT industries, including cloud computing, AI, ML (Machine Learning), self-driving cars, healthcare, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

 

Vietnam IT Blogger | Doyeon (Patrick) Kim | go2hanoi (KakaoTalk),  goodserver1@gmail.com

** The copyright for this post is owned by Patrick Kim. This content is intended for publication, and individuals seeking to quote or reproduce it must obtain prior permission.

 Jan. 01,2024・Translated and Published by Uptempo Global