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You mentioned 'Inari'. The success of Inari Amertron is because it is not a Malaysian government race-based project. The company was started by the ethnic Chinese, and is still being run by the ethnic Chinese. It stays profitable because it has a strong connection to Broadcom Inc. of USA, in which the CEO is another ethnic Chinese from Malaysia.
@@clocktower1164 The Broadcom CEO is Hock Tan. As someone who seen some of his work and how he makes decisions, the guy is ingenious. Each company that he bought he was able to completely turn them around from mediocre to world class in less than 3years. He is one of the most respected CEOs in the semiconductor industry. He loves Malaysia and has been trying to do more there with expanding engineering opportunities there for Broadcom.
@@tliew3846 I know Mr. Tan. I've met him in Malaysia, in Singapore and also in USA where I used to live, and yes, he is one of the smartest person I've met.
As an American semiconductor engineer, I've worked with many Malaysian colleagues for over 25yrs and got to visit twice. Always great workers. Thanks for the good overview!
Malaysia has factories from Intel, NXP, ON, Micron, STMicroelectronics, Intel, Texas Intruments, Infineon etc. They are producing chips for cars too to ease the shortage. My brother has a diploma in automation and helps produce these chips.
As a Malaysian, I’m extremely impressed at how much research you’ve done to understand the intricacies of our race-based policies and its effects on the economy
@@davidbyck just because someone mispronounced something, doesn’t invalidate their work. Everybody mispronounces words not originally in their language, namely those from Asian languages. Tsunami in Japanese isn’t pronounced soo-na-mi. Huawei isn’t pronounced wah-way. Heck. English doesn’t even pronounce words with French or Germanic origins properly. What matters is the idea they want to convey, and he’s done it well.
Favoring any 1 particular race is a disaster for any country especially if the minority are the backbone of the country. Take south africa for example although their situation is slightly different. Minorities in malaysia never lead Malaysia. They just work hard minding their own biz but yet they get pawned by malay leaders to gain support from the majority malays
@@davidbyck Hi, Penang is just the westernized pronunciation of Pinang, which is the original native Malay name and pronunciation. It is named after the Pinang Palm aka as Areca Nut Palm, Betel Nut Palm, Areca Catechu and so on. The original name of the island is Pulau Pinang (Pinang Island: Poo Lah-w Pee Nah-ng). It is analogous to how Malacca is Melaka and Peking is Beijing. They are just westernized pronunciations of a Malay name for a type of palm tree that grows abundantly there. In Malay culture and history, it is quite common to name places after things or plants that are abundant in that area. Melaka was also named after another plant species, Pokok Melaka (Indian Goosebery, Amla, Malacca Tree, Phyllantus emblica etc). In Singapore, you also have an entire town and area in the east near Changi, named after the Tempinis tree: Tampines (Streblus oblongatus). Changi is said to also be named after another tree Chengal or Chengai (Neobalanocarpus, in some Malay dialects, you change the L to I at the end of words). It was also formerly known as Tanjung Rusa (Cape of Deers). In fact many place names on Pinang that predate Francis Light are in Malay like: Jelutong (a suburb in George Town, inhabited for a long time since before the arrival of Francis Light in 1786, named after the tree: Dyera Costula). Tanjung which means Cape, in reference to George Town before it was renamed. Bagan which means jetty, quay or frame of a house, in reference to Butterworth before it was renamed. Many Malay place names tend to employ typical formulas. At the front is the name of the key feature of the place: Alor, Bukit, Charok, Ulu, Simpang, Kota, Seberang, Padang, Pasir, Teluk, Tanjung, Kuala, Sungai, Kampung, Pengkalan, Batu, Ayer, Bagan, Permatang, Guar, Kubang, Batang, Titi, Klian, Wang, Gong, Lembah, Kok, Kuak, Parit, Kangkar, Chegar, Behor, Solok, Banggol, Paloh, Lata etc
This is a good piece of information regarding Malaysia's journey in the semiconductor industry. I hope foreign investors will look forward to making Malaysia their best choice location for the advanced microchip manufacturing platform. Malaysia is away from conflict zone such as in the Taiwan Strait. As a Malaysian, I hope the policy of our government pursuing the zone of peace, freedom, and neutrality for southeast Asia will augur well for prosperity.
Foreign companies will only be willing to invest if we have an intelligent govt that is able to formulate intelligent policies. Do we have that right now?
@@mayfoo02 You have made a general statement on this. Are you an investor, May Foo? I hope you are. Usually, investors are very smart in evaluating their investment proposals.
Possible but first vote out this Melayu Idle government. Don't vote for PAS again and vote for politicians that care for the nations progress regardless of race or religion. In the end all humans are the same. Allah created us equally and no one is above another. Inshallah then we'll progress.
Do you know that Malaysia is rank 5 th in the world for producing microchips. 13% of assembilng and testing is done here. 7% global microchips trade pass thru Malaysia. 35% of Malaysia's export is E n E, while petroleum ang gas only 14%. We are doing well. Taiwan has ask us to hell out on the microchips shortage. We have factories from Intel, Texas, NXP, ON, Infineon etc.
@@jasonbourne6531 That fella is selfish, arrogant and destroyed the country. He is still stubborn to push his son up. A lot of Malaysians still refuse to face the fact that he is the source of the country's collapse because Malaysian has nobody else to turn to. No matter which party wins, all the politicians are betraying their own people.
This video conclusion truly emphasises what Malaysia's Semiconductor Industry faced. Anyway, Khazanah Berhad has sold Silterra to Dagang NeXchange Bhd (DNeX) and a Chinese firm for RM273mil (66m USD). Yet this sells off deemed too cheap with current high semiconductor demand and billions of Ringgit spend to Silterra over a decade. Well, Malaysia's may stay in the IDM market for the next decade. The will, money and politics, just doesn't align to Malaysia to build and become cutting edge pure foundry.
@UC41FEu0g_oDGCY9TCCbctOA And that's just being racist. The problem with "everything about Malay is wrong" is because Malays are the majority. Of course the bad apples seemed to be in a larger quantity when compared to other races. But when you see the statistics, other races as well have bad apples. With the corruption, back stabbing, social problems, etc. Not sure if you're from outside Malaysia but if you're not aware, in Malaysian politics even the Chinese, Indians, Bumiputeras aside from Malay there are corruption. Amongst Malays we have Malays that are brought up with western culture, Malaysian culture. Malays from the country side and urban areas. There are many hard working and sincere Malays that got cast aside because of corruption. There are also hard working Malays that couldn't apply a job because they can't speak Mandarin even though the job scope doesn't require the person to speak Mandarin. It is more of a problem with governance rather than "race". There are successful Malays from various company CEOs working together with other races. That also reach global scale. Even small to medium businesses we have more than we can count. Just because they are not acquisitive to enter international markets, doesn't make them brain drain. If Malays that makes up most of the workforce are truly problematic, Malaysia wouldn't even become a developing country. It will stay as a third world country or even become worse. I know a lot of my Malay friends who don't deserve to be called such. I have Malay friends that even went to Oxford, work alongside Chinese firms. I myself worked in a Chinese company. There are hard working Chinese and Indians and even Indians from India and Chinese from China. There are also bad ones, but I won't even label them. I would say most of them are very nice and hard working. Come on man, do you not read the business news? Unless you're saying that it is okay to be corrupt, manipulative, dishonest as long as you're not Malay. If you're a Malaysian, you should get to know more Malays & even Chinese, Indians and other Bumputeras to know that it is not black & white.
I got the opportunity to join a session with the CEO of DNeX and studied the companies (DNeX & Silterra) with an experienced accountant. Some of the things I take is that Silterra was facing a large amount of debt. Even if the sell off is cheap, it is quite a challenge for them to find the money within a year to pay off the company's debt. The CEO is a not only a good person (my friend that gets to meet him affirms this too), but he has a lot of experience and has the influence. As a semiconductor fan and a proud Malaysian, I personally hope he gets to turnaround Silterra.
I have visited several Packaging plants in Malaysia between 2008-2010 and met many hard working intelligent people there. I was told engineering students at the time were somewhat hindered due to Malay language being prioritized over English at university in the 2000s. When intel expanded its packaging operations in the 2010s, it went to Vietnam. Interest to note Fairchild has packaging in both Penang and Tijuana Mexico.
You got it wrong. Most Malaysian Universities use English as medium of instruction. Malaysia is now the top 6 country producing microchips, 13% of testing and assembling done here and involve 7% of global trade. We have factories from Intel, ON, Texas, NXP and Infineon etc.
@@marinaau8551 I think what Nick meant was the degradation of command of English started in 2000s over the preference of Malay. The engineers could only communicate in Malay. This is not far from the truth due to the quality of education in local university, where students couldn't even communicate in English despite a 12 years learning of the subject. So MY losing its advantage of the destination of FDI is very real. VN, ID and Thai took all those misopportunities.
@@marinaau8551 Officially in universities it is English. But s strange thing happened almost a decade back where Malay was the medium and STEM subjects (whereby it was English before) This caused a transition issue for many students going into tertiery education. And for many government universities, many lectures were taught in english but explained in Malay as a result. Hence, this caused a gap between actually mastering the subject and knowing how to recite it.
Yeah the Philippines was slightly ahead of Malaysia in semiconductors at the turn of the millennium. The former was probably even in the top 5 of all IC exporters 20 years ago.
@@edwuave You are right, but not accurate. 1960 - English medium 1970 - Malay medium 2000 - English but only used in STEM subjects as medium 2010 - Malay in all subjects
As a Malaysian, I can't thank you enough for making this video. This is certainly a breathtaking information about my coutry. There are tons of problem that were undisclosed due to some save face political censorship. Now we know our pain point of the problem that need to be solved in the future.
Intel has been on hiring spree for chip engineer here in Malaysia. A lot of my friend who has not yet finish their education have been offered jobs by Intel. Intel also hired a lot of engineers from silterra. This come out as a surprise for me bcs I always though semiconductor industry in Malaysia sucks
Not to mention, AMD are expanding into Malaysia , setting up design center same as intel. Besides that, AT&S are investing €1.7 billion in Kulim, Kedah. Semicon industry in Malaysia is actually doing good. Malaysian semicon engineers are on par with oversea engineers, only that the low payments makes these local talents moving out from Malaysia.
Malaysia is the 5 th largest exporter of microchips. 13% of global assembly and testing done here and 7% of world trade. 35% of Malaysia's export are in E & E sectors while only 14% in oil and gas.
If not for the pendemic, nobody would know the importance of Malaysia as a global player in the microchips industry. My brother is a technician and help produce microchips for export use for cars, covid ventilators and PS5.
At 10.40s, there is a little bit confusion. MIMOS Berhad is not the founder or origin of Silterra. Wafer Technology (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. is totally different company than MIMOS Berhad. MIMOS setup her own IC design and fabrication known as MIMOS Semiconductor Sdn. Bhd. It can only fabricate at 0.5um and later at 0.35um while Silterra Malaysia was found to be able to fabricate starting at 250nm. I worked as a design consultant at MIMOS Semiconductor Berhad from 2000 to 2001 while still being a lecturer. I have several IC design patents now and currently planning to setup my own fabless design company. Those who want to collaborate or invest in my new company can contact me personally. I am still working at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia as a Senior Lecturer. We are the best in IC design among Malaysia universities. But, we don't do fabrication since it involves a lot of money. Intel have a special Master program to up skills their engineers with us for more than ten years which other universities fail to deliver.
@@YOU-ot9ep , Afghanistan used to have the largest Buddhist statues in the world, for over one thousand years, until Taliban bomb them into rubble. You will be forgiven, as many intelligent foresights were viewed as stupidity at first.
As a Malaysian, I thank you for giving a fair and objective discussion on this topic. Too often us Malaysians are hard on ourselves and we're too quick to criticise policy failures rather than examining the problem. From your videos, it's enlightening how challenging this industry can be and other nations have also tried and end up in the same boat. Frankly, it's uncanny how much your videos on Taiwan resonate to many of the problems we're facing but at much earlier phases of development. I think one of the problems could also be attributed to a mixed message about local labour or talent. On one hand, development agencies will market how competitive labour costs are. Making labour cost a USP sends a wrong message when you're trying to compete for skilled workers. It's funny to see some employers expect an Ivy League quality hire with $14-16k annual pay package. While many employers are bumping wages to remedy this, it's still nowhere near as competitive and talent retention continues to be a problem. Also, what's less spoken of is the setting of "convoluted priorities" especially when problems have snowballed. You've already noted some evidence of this with the choice for local appointments for Silterra than finding qualified, experienced executives for leadership positions. Coupled with the talent bidding/retention issue as mentioned, it may be the case that red tape and socioeconomic KPIs could have led to interventions on business decisions at the (unintended?) expense of building a viable enterprise. It happens too often problems snowball and Khazanah ends up in a position of trying to fix a leaky ship while juggling pressures to retain jobs, industry capacity etc. It's really unfortunate because Khazanah, as a strategic investor, spends a lot of their capital and brain trust fixing problems which could have otherwise be spent seeding or supporting new growth opportunities.
"a long one" at 18 minutes. and now many of your videos top half-an-hour, yet the quality of content remains very high. Even more than that, I appreciate seeing things, at least partially, through another perspective. This is among the most rewarding patreon channels I patronize.
As a Malaysian i will say this, as long as we have the real intent and drive to find a way, there will always be a niche we can good at. There is no single country that can be the best at everything and there are so many niches in this world that can be a real growth driver. All that is needed is intent and drive.
@@aiman9088 that is because there is no drive. TSMC was not a guaranteed success. There are always risks in charting new paths, but if the whole nation is willing to bear the risks then there is at least a chance. However, when politics, interest groups and corruption goes in, everything turns sour.
I remember the semiconductor factories in the Free Trade Zone in Penang back in the late 1970s. Companies such as National Semiconductor (NS), AMD, Intel, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Bosch, Hitachi, etc... I also visited SilTerra back in early 2010s. Wow, this video brought back lots of memories! Thank you!
@@johantaharin491 That was exactly the problem as mentioned in the video. There was practically no technology transfer to Malaysia. These companies were only interested in the cheap labor, nothing else. Malaysia was screwed! :((
@@bluestar2253 Chip making is not that profitable and the profit margin is very low, unless monopoly by Intel. There are technology transfer from Intel, Texas Instrument, etc. to Malaysia in the form of chip assembly and packaging. Chip assembly and packaging is quite challenging for those 7nm, 5nm , 3nm, 1 nm nodes chip made by TSMC. So Malaysia should just focus on chip assembly and packaging since cannot compete on computer and smartphone chips fabrication. There are a lot of good paying jobs to be created from chip assembly and packaging. Malaysia should just concentrate on chip fabrication for autochips which is low end chips. Problem with Silterra losing money is the quality of their chip design is not that good and unable to meet car maker customers demand.
funnily enough, i am planning to apply for internship in some of malaysia's semiconductor company next year. then i got recommended this video. mainly silterra and mimos
I literally just binge watch all your semiconductor series yesterday from TSMC to China and wondering what was the industry like in Malaysia. Then boom you answered my question! Thank you so much for this, it was so well researched on a quite niche topic.
Malaysia has so much potential. It is a gifted child, blessed with natural resources, strategic location, beautiful and diverse people. Instead of capitalising on the cultural diversity, it has become the stumbling block of the country's progress.
Couple of corrections - Penang is pronounced as "pee neng" instead of "pee nang", my hometown. :) - bumiputra is not a "race" but rather a cluster of different ethnic groups that are deemed as "natives" to the country, making up over 50% of the population, notably excluding Chinese & Indian who has ancestors from China & India even though they're born in Malaysia. Great video with very informative overview of what happened. Hope our country gets out of this current rut soon enough.
I do not know why some people are so bitter about race policy in Malaysia when i admit, it is totally true, it is bad... but in reality it does not prohibit someone intellegent, enterpreneural person to set up own semiconductor industry...? See Malaysia's rubber glove industry? It's thriving. So, where are those deprived, non-favored people who are so smart, where are your successful semicon factory? Or you also wait for government help & subsidy like the Malays too before you can succeed?
i think the recent selloff is a big let down since there are chip shortage which increases demand and pricing. A person who can managed it well surely will take this opportunity to bring in more business to the company.
Semiconductor fabs are expensive to run, lots of rare poisonous gases, materials are needed. Hard to imagine even if labor is cheaper in Malaysia but the materials and consumables required to run a fab 24x7 and the amount of support needed isnt cheap. Malaysia will need 5+ more fabs to really enjoy larger support companies to justify investments to directly support the fab, otherwise its really middle-man small scale support companies that isnt as good and efficient.
Malaysia does not need to compete in high end computer chips. Malaysia should just focus on low end autochips and consumer electronics. This is good enough. Let Intel, TSMC, SMIC, Samsung, AMD,e etc. do all the high end computer and autochips. I am sure this can be done. No need to go for high end high capital intensive chip fab and aim for high profit margin. Important thing is to get the knowhow and be relevant and also create good paying jobs for Malaysia over supplied engineers.
@@zenlei8258 Yes but is it feasible in the long term future we eventually evolved to higher end fabrication. We fear even lower cost countries such as Thailand or Vietnam may one day venture into the semicon industry and surpass Malaysia due to their lower labor cost.
The video talks about Morris Chang (American) and Richard Chang. Should highlight that the senior leadership of SilTerra from 1999 to early 2007 was dominated by Americans - and not just the CEO but SVPs and VPs. The first CEO was Cy Hannon, former EVP of LSI Logic, while the the COO and third CEO was the great Bruce Gray, formerly from National Semiconductor. So there were international semiconductor experts running the firm and knowledge transfer to locals taking place. The issue has always been a dearth of capital and consistent investment for growth - and as such, SilTerra has never managed to achieve escape velocity (i.e. achieve sufficient economies of scale). Compared to its peers, SilTerra has been operating on a shoe-string budget for more than 15 years... It's amazing the company is still around and still selling chips to Tier 1 players around the world.
a good leader needs to be from technical background, at least someone who gets their hand dirty and rise from the bottom to know all the operation in technical ways. Hiring someone from mature environment is a big no no as most of the time those operation already covered by talent and the ceo or coo don't even needs the details. Both Morris Chang (American) and Richard Chang work their way from bottom from technical side to top. Same goes for the legendary Lisa Su who turnaround AMD, she is from technical field and rise from bottom.
As someone who worked in the industry in two of the major MNCs in Penang, for past 10 years, I agree that our growth had slowed down over the years. Even the university had put in major efforts to align with the industry only recently when they realise all their graduates hardly met the industry standards. The i4.0 and HRC plans with efforts from HRDF, MITI, and other major industry collaborators really escalate the growth of human capital. At least better than nothing but how I wish, we started these efforts way earlier. It is easier to upscale the Front End by bringing new tech but it is exceptional hard to handle Back End assembly. Human are variables that hard to control and human errors/behaviour often a big challenge. Brain drain is definitely another issue with many real talents find better life abroad Malaysia. For the longest time, the political rhetoric in Malaysia had been discouraging local talents to stay. I've lost count how many of my university mates who courageous enough to leave for better life in our neighbors like Singapore of Taiwan.
Basically, money. A lot Talented Malaysian immigrate to get better salary and life. Yes, politic have it's issue but it doesn't impacting much the industry progress. It come boil down to which place provide more incentive and better payment. The same reason why some company whom already established in Malaysia for long time relocated to Vietnam, cheaper worker.
whatever industries it is. Malaysia was destined to fail due to one thing. The nation is gorverned not by meritocracy. I'm glad that global market to teach Malaysia the lesson of not being able to complete the best and washed out by the market. Until they realize meritocracy it outplay of racism and self contentment.
Malaysia has the best electronic industry.plenty of land,water and smart hardworking people.i doubt the amount of capital they can pour into and high labour costs.
*Malaysian people's have a lot off expensive in Semiconductors Chip industry, maybe a million already have experience work in the industry , clean room eco system so all company around the world can come invest in Malaysia 🇲🇾*
If all the Malaysian government policies are failures, those western companies would have left Malaysia long long long time ago. Then again, these companies are still here in 2021. Duhh!
I notice that most videos focus on the manufacturing of semiconductors only. Either on the front end, or on the back end. Sure, there is profit to be made in those segments of the industry. But the real profit is to be made in designing the chips and holding the rights to those designs. Unfortunately is a country like Malaysia not able to focus on that segment of the industry.
@@Asianometry Great response, thank you for the laugh. I'm looking forward to your future videos. I used to work in the semiconductor industry and am curious about your analysis.
@@Asianometry With these "lah's"in the comment you must be Malaysian. I am too. You helped me with my work today. I am an Investment Officer based in NYC working for MIDA writing a report on the opportunities Malaysia presents to the USA
Fabulous insightful research into the Malaysia semiconductor industry. They really, really missed the boat, imagine if they could have been what TSMC is, but most definitely politics got in the way, you were very kind not to stick that knife in!
What boat? PMalaysia is the 5 th largest chip producer now. 13% global testing and packaging here as well as 7% global microchips trading. My small town have ON and NXP factories. Malacca have infineon and Texas Instrument, Penang has Intel etc. E & E make up 35% of our export while oil and gas only 14%
In the late 1970s I was using blank wafers as front-face mirrors for laser effects using helium-neon laser tubes. At the time chip wafers were only around 4 inches across. Amazing to see how large they grow the silicon crystals now.
I worked for Intel Costa Rica. They closed their assembly plant over here in part because of cost and took it to Malaysia. I remember people talking about how cheap compared to CR Malaysia was, and how many jobs they were taking, but also I saw with my own eyes the outstanding error rates compared to Costa Rica. Intel came back, AMD, TSMC and other are looking to set shop here. You should talk about that.
I was born and raised near these manufacturing plants in Penang. Since young my parents told me to be an E&E Engineer and get into Intel. I did take the degree, but it's sufferable. It's just so effing boring programming Intel 4040 and the internship totally ruined it for me, didn't like a bit of what seemed like a mindless atmosphere on the production floor. Joined the internet industry eventually.
I'm Nigerian and I'm impressed with Malaysia. My folks remember when Nigeria was richer than most Asian countries. India is going to space and Nigeria is STILL trying to learn how to refine IT'S OWN OIL!
It is norm in malaysia all government related Agencies are not making money. People in position always trying to grab their shares instead of putting efforts for sake of the country. Race based hiring contribute to another main reason why Malaysia hard to becoming a developed country.
Very interesting 18 minute video looking at Malaysia's attempts to move up the value chain into semiconductor fabrication. Speaking of Malaysia, I was very surprised to learn how many large and relatively complex appliances (like fridges and air conditioners) are manufactured in South East Asia: Samsung fridges are made in Malaysia, and Mitsubishi Air Conditioners are made in Thailand. Thailand also manufactures mechanical hard drives (eg, Western Digital HDDs). I'm still not sure why the bigger South Korean and Japanese firms chose to outsource to South East Asia over China, but it's great that consumers have a cost competitive alternative from different regions when they decide what to purchase!
@@Deguile could be....even if a SE Asia company gets the IP they won’t be able to scale up selling the same product globally as easily as a Chinese company.
@@johnl.7754 yep. agreed. today arrived in china, 2 days later you'll see the "improved" version in shenzhen.. 😅 next thing you know, it'll be around the world in 1-2 months. crazy fast
It's kind of sad really, Our country had all of the advantages in the begining but it was all squandered off by cronyism. But on the bright side at least we do have some home grown companies popping up despite of that.
Some truths to that but it is time to move forward.the days of cronyism are over,its all online commerce wheren production and transfer of wealth are not up to cronys.
It's partly due to cronism, and partly due to institutional racism. Intel and AMD, HP etc established in Penang in the 70s, but the federal didn't take the opportunity to grow the industry in Penang, this is because Penang is ethnic Chinese majority. I remember it's hard for me to get a master degree in Penang, even at that time USM moved its engineering campus to Ipoh, (only after year 2000.moved back to Penang) , Mimos in KL, Siltera in Kulim. The federal government is killing a goose that laying the golden eggs.
You know what else is not mentioned? Most bright Malaysians prefer to work in Singapore or somewhere else. Better money, better conditions, looks better in the resume. They have decent education, speak both English and sometimes Mandarin, and are very motivated to compete. They're somewhat wasted in Malaysia.
From what I know, most Malaysians left for Singapore only for better currency, yet they are still doing low skills jobs , some even work at fast food restaurants.
I'm one of them lol. I prefer Singapore for work but I would always call Malaysia home. Thats the problem. Its too much of a complacent country as a relaxed home than having to deal with threats. Malaysians are too spoiled.
@@kimothemo I'm not sure about that, if you have a few sources that would help. But for me, we were hired for specific positions being competitive with local talent as well.
was a 5dx support engineer back then, was ready to be offered a contract and pathway to permanent residency. Then 2008 happens, things were meant to be in a different way
Awesome video. I am wondering if you do study about the O&G & petrochemical industries globally as well as on the Malaysia/Singapore area? Would love to see your analysis in these fields.
Malaysia has many smart, hard working people and they do well in packaging. That said semi's is hard to break into. The capital costs are huge, and you have China attacking market with huge subsidies and huge scale. It would be good to diversify away from Taiwan, but we also need geographic diversity.
Malaysia'a government needs to support the industry more so that the local semicon industry can reach newer heights. Even TSMC had support from the Taiwanese government during their early days.
Last year and this year, there are more Semiconductor companies started operation in Malaysia, increase investment or expanding such as Intel and AMD and they increase the starting salary for fresh graduate to RM5,000 early this year.
A lot has happened between since this video came out. We're now a hub for front-end design that's at the highest point of the value chain, and the two largest design houses Oppstar and SkyeChip are fully Malaysian owned. SkyeChip is an IP company that delivers patentable technology at the cutting edge, which is at the same speed the design houses in Silicon Valley are bringing-up, hence the RM5k starting salary. In the broader scheme of things 5k is the starting salary for front-end design engineers are paid in the rest of the world, a fresh grad EE in the US is paid in the ballpark of 5000 USD when he's hired as a pre-silicon design engineer at Intel, and Singaporean chip designer working for AMD as his first job is paid around 5000 SGD. What SkyeChip has done is created an environment for Malaysian engineers to work on high value-add projects that command the same salaries elsewhere. Because of this, there are efforts at other companies in the same townhood to raise their salaries to parity with SkyeChip's 5k, there is senior management at AMD that is actively trying to raise the salaries for engineers hired into their Graduate Trainee program. The mainland Chinese fabless company Starfive recently set up design house that's also less than 5 minutes away from SkyeChip, and they're paying their interns RM2000. Over all that's happening in the industry, we may move into the front end of the manufacturing process if Silterra becomes able to compete with the Singaporean fabs, but we've already dug our feet into the forefront of the value chain, and it will be how our companies in this sector continue to grow that determine if we're going to continue to be a regional semiconductor hub in the coming decades.
do another video on HOW Bumiputra drove the economy to the ground in the first place...those same NEP policy.. if left alone, the private sector in Malaysia would be the South Korea story.
Your info on malaysia semiconductor is spot on.theres shin etsu handotai that prepares from ingots to wafers in hulu klang free trade zone.that is pretty front end.
the country has too many on its plate now. with many locals heading for overseas pay makes even more gaps in between spaces. so how do you resolve that endless gap
In modern world, professional workers or semi-professional workers are open for any migration to other countries. In Malaysia, statistically, there are more Malays migrating to overseas compared to other races!
To Malaysian commenting about race... I think we should stop blamming racism. There is a huge problem with our lecturers and education system. I worked with a lot of designers from US and Europe. The masters student there can start designing circuits on their 1st day of work. They are as capable as a malaysian with 10years circuit design experience. I also interviewed a lecturer looking for a part time placement in our R&D department. Sadly to say, he only knows basic theory & my subordinate has better pratical skills than him.
It is depend on which university you are talking about. In Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, our IC design syllabuses are among the top of the world class. Our graduates can immediately do their own IC design work provided you look those who do final year project related to IC design. Altera was one of our primary customers to hire fresh graduates even beating Intel starting salary. By the way, Altera Quartus II was designed by our fresh graduates instead of Altera USA. All of our master or PhD graduates immediately got a job even before they went for their viva! By the way, our record for PhD graduate is RM10,000 starting salary in Intel in 2014 without any experience! We can produce more if industries are willing to sponsor more graduate students. We also have several IC design patents which of course our university don't know how to market them :) We are also conducting special master program with Intel for the past and more than 10 years already to up skill Intel Engineers even though we are the most southern part of peninsular Malaysia. Intel failed to collaborate with other local universities for their master program. You were dealing with the wrong people.
Can do like the steps in semicon processes. Like who makes the silicon ingots, to lithography (taiwan of course) to testing, packaging. This would be very interesting in the semicon supply chain.
as Indonesians, we must admit, we are far behind in R&D and the semiconductor chip/IC industry, we have to learn a lot from malaysia about how to attract investors & develop human resources in this field, malaysia has many semiconductor companies standing in their country while in indonesia there is only 1 that is infineon, that's all ☹
Very good and well-made video covering most of the stuff on Malaysia's semiconductor industry. I'm also impressed you covered the big OSATs and Vitrox. Pretty sure to develop an industry successfully you need co-operation between the public and private sectors. Sadly the government and people don't care about moving up the value chain or whatever. They prefer to play race/religion politics and let the politicians continue plundering the country while talented Malaysians go abroad because they are more valued there.
Here let me correct that for you "Sadly the malay-sian government and the malay-sian people dont care about moving up the value chain or whatever".. There. You are welcome.
Due to Umno-Pas politicians this country can't move forward. Always Melayu Isle. Such a shallow and stupid rhectoric. No wonder I now even hate myself. Man my mental health might one day deteriorate if this goes on.
The problem is not just wages but opportunities: the problem talent finds in these countries is that theres no budget for big cutting edge stuff like abroad so even if you increase the pay many will still leave to work on bigger stuff
6:10 Wait, what? The average hourly wage in Japan was higher than in the US in 1973? (The equivalent of 13 ringgit in Japan, 12 in the US, and 1.43 in Malaysia, according to the video). Is this for this specific industry, or in manufacturing in general, or in the economy in general? Is this Purchasing Power Parity or nominal? If this is nominal, I just find it hard to believe. I can accept it if PPP. Edit: I just did a couple of quick Google searches and some calculations and got a median household income in 1973 of about $12,000 in the US and $6,600 in Japan. This seems reasonably realistic.
If you are reading this. I was just wondering on your opinion regarding the new Infineon wafer fab investments in Malaysia. Is this a good move? There is also announcement by Foxconn to join venture with Dnex & they planned to start producing chips as well. Do u think the Foxconn-Dnex joint venture will be a good thing for Malaysia? Hope you read my comment 😁
Working too hard to learn anything... Yeah, kept busy to learn anything else unless you work 24/7. Most these employers like to say shit like that but deny they not expecting you to slave your entire life to the company while complaining you come in on time and not 1 hours earlier and complain you leave on time and not 2 hours later. They practically want you to work a total of 10 hours plus and only notice if you do less (which is the standard 8 hours).
Silterra china investors has invested in fab before and they are quite successful.they may bring their team to kulim and maybe fabricate chips for automobiles.that works with just 2b transistors..shld be enough.
The mindset of "should be good enough" is a problem. Semiconductor is a very competitive business, the ones that are still around spend every day improving because that's the requirement to survive.
Prior to 2007, Brazil was supposed to be the "next boom" as they were buying 8" machines like crazy. Malaysia would be a ideal, but there are too many obsticles and baracades in the way.
If a group of people is waiting to die and go to heaven and another group wanted heaven on earth, which one do you think will become rich and successful on earth? It's all about the mindset, culture and lifestyle chosen. Fun fact: Some of SilTerra's top management had been arrested for corruption. One of the main reason why it fail, like MAS and other GLCs.
Please be civil in the comments. If you are interested in this topic, check out the Global Semiconductor playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLKtxx9TnH76QEYXdJx6KyycNGHePJQwWW.html
And if you enjoy what this channel does, consider subscribing. Appreciate it.
You mentioned 'Inari'. The success of Inari Amertron is because it is not a Malaysian government race-based project.
The company was started by the ethnic Chinese, and is still being run by the ethnic Chinese. It stays profitable because it has a strong connection to Broadcom Inc. of USA, in which the CEO is another ethnic Chinese from Malaysia.
@@clocktower1164 The Broadcom CEO is Hock Tan. As someone who seen some of his work and how he makes decisions, the guy is ingenious. Each company that he bought he was able to completely turn them around from mediocre to world class in less than 3years. He is one of the most respected CEOs in the semiconductor industry. He loves Malaysia and has been trying to do more there with expanding engineering opportunities there for Broadcom.
@@tliew3846 I know Mr. Tan. I've met him in Malaysia, in Singapore and also in USA where I used to live, and yes, he is one of the smartest person I've met.
Your presentation is amazing. Hope the leaders of malaysia can learn a thing or 2 from you.
60 years of doing this and still stuck at the bottom of the value chain
As an American semiconductor engineer, I've worked with many Malaysian colleagues for over 25yrs and got to visit twice. Always great workers. Thanks for the good overview!
Malaysia has factories from Intel, NXP, ON, Micron, STMicroelectronics, Intel, Texas Intruments, Infineon etc. They are producing chips for cars too to ease the shortage. My brother has a diploma in automation and helps produce these chips.
Thank you for sharing
Yes, good workers…. See what’s the problem?
@@Testforexcellence13579 they are the slow mo type haha good for the job.
As a Malaysian, I’m extremely impressed at how much research you’ve done to understand the intricacies of our race-based policies and its effects on the economy
If he did so much, "research" how is it he mispronounces, Penang?
@@davidbyck just because someone mispronounced something, doesn’t invalidate their work. Everybody mispronounces words not originally in their language, namely those from Asian languages. Tsunami in Japanese isn’t pronounced soo-na-mi. Huawei isn’t pronounced wah-way. Heck. English doesn’t even pronounce words with French or Germanic origins properly.
What matters is the idea they want to convey, and he’s done it well.
Favoring any 1 particular race is a disaster for any country especially if the minority are the backbone of the country. Take south africa for example although their situation is slightly different. Minorities in malaysia never lead Malaysia. They just work hard minding their own biz but yet they get pawned by malay leaders to gain support from the majority malays
@@davidbyck Hi, Penang is just the westernized pronunciation of Pinang, which is the original native Malay name and pronunciation. It is named after the Pinang Palm aka as Areca Nut Palm, Betel Nut Palm, Areca Catechu and so on. The original name of the island is Pulau Pinang (Pinang Island: Poo Lah-w Pee Nah-ng). It is analogous to how Malacca is Melaka and Peking is Beijing. They are just westernized pronunciations of a Malay name for a type of palm tree that grows abundantly there.
In Malay culture and history, it is quite common to name places after things or plants that are abundant in that area. Melaka was also named after another plant species, Pokok Melaka (Indian Goosebery, Amla, Malacca Tree, Phyllantus emblica etc).
In Singapore, you also have an entire town and area in the east near Changi, named after the Tempinis tree: Tampines (Streblus oblongatus). Changi is said to also be named after another tree Chengal or Chengai (Neobalanocarpus, in some Malay dialects, you change the L to I at the end of words). It was also formerly known as Tanjung Rusa (Cape of Deers).
In fact many place names on Pinang that predate Francis Light are in Malay like:
Jelutong (a suburb in George Town, inhabited for a long time since before the arrival of Francis Light in 1786, named after the tree: Dyera Costula).
Tanjung which means Cape, in reference to George Town before it was renamed.
Bagan which means jetty, quay or frame of a house, in reference to Butterworth before it was renamed.
Many Malay place names tend to employ typical formulas. At the front is the name of the key feature of the place:
Alor, Bukit, Charok, Ulu, Simpang, Kota, Seberang, Padang, Pasir, Teluk, Tanjung, Kuala, Sungai, Kampung, Pengkalan, Batu, Ayer, Bagan, Permatang, Guar, Kubang, Batang, Titi, Klian, Wang, Gong, Lembah, Kok, Kuak, Parit, Kangkar, Chegar, Behor, Solok, Banggol, Paloh, Lata etc
Peace no hate.
This is a good piece of information regarding Malaysia's journey in the semiconductor industry. I hope foreign investors will look forward to making Malaysia their best choice location for the advanced microchip manufacturing platform. Malaysia is away from conflict zone such as in the Taiwan Strait. As a Malaysian, I hope the policy of our government pursuing the zone of peace, freedom, and neutrality for southeast Asia will augur well for prosperity.
Foreign companies will only be willing to invest if we have an intelligent govt that is able to formulate intelligent policies. Do we have that right now?
@@mayfoo02 You have made a general statement on this. Are you an investor, May Foo? I hope you are. Usually, investors are very smart in evaluating their investment proposals.
It will not come to Malaysia due to lack of talent.. probably will go Vietnam or thailand
Possible but first vote out this Melayu Idle government. Don't vote for PAS again and vote for politicians that care for the nations progress regardless of race or religion. In the end all humans are the same. Allah created us equally and no one is above another. Inshallah then we'll progress.
Do you know that Malaysia is rank 5 th in the world for producing microchips. 13% of assembilng and testing is done here. 7% global microchips trade pass thru Malaysia. 35% of Malaysia's export is E n E, while petroleum ang gas only 14%. We are doing well. Taiwan has ask us to hell out on the microchips shortage. We have factories from Intel, Texas, NXP, ON, Infineon etc.
You're quickly becoming one of my favorite channels now!
Don't underestimate the destructive power of the local politicians
In Malaysia, you must prove yourself to be a raving racist before you are allowed to climb up the political ladder.
@@clocktower1164 Hey are you a Malasyian? Heard that Mahattir was a great President though
@@anishadamane4179 Same kind of racist attitude that serves no purpose。
@@anishadamane4179 that mamak is one of the many reasons this country went down hill
@@jasonbourne6531 That fella is selfish, arrogant and destroyed the country. He is still stubborn to push his son up. A lot of Malaysians still refuse to face the fact that he is the source of the country's collapse because Malaysian has nobody else to turn to. No matter which party wins, all the politicians are betraying their own people.
This video conclusion truly emphasises what Malaysia's Semiconductor Industry faced.
Anyway, Khazanah Berhad has sold Silterra to Dagang NeXchange Bhd (DNeX) and a Chinese firm for RM273mil (66m USD). Yet this sells off deemed too cheap with current high semiconductor demand and billions of Ringgit spend to Silterra over a decade.
Well, Malaysia's may stay in the IDM market for the next decade.
The will, money and politics, just doesn't align to Malaysia to build and become cutting edge pure foundry.
well Malaysia didn't appreciate enough of its own people's talent
Malay government hasnt built anything successful. Proton failed, MAS failed, Semiconductor failed...anymore?
@@drewh3224 u blind? Petronas? Plus?
@UC41FEu0g_oDGCY9TCCbctOA And that's just being racist.
The problem with "everything about Malay is wrong" is because Malays are the majority. Of course the bad apples seemed to be in a larger quantity when compared to other races.
But when you see the statistics, other races as well have bad apples. With the corruption, back stabbing, social problems, etc.
Not sure if you're from outside Malaysia but if you're not aware, in Malaysian politics even the Chinese, Indians, Bumiputeras aside from Malay there are corruption.
Amongst Malays we have Malays that are brought up with western culture, Malaysian culture. Malays from the country side and urban areas.
There are many hard working and sincere Malays that got cast aside because of corruption. There are also hard working Malays that couldn't apply a job because they can't speak Mandarin even though the job scope doesn't require the person to speak Mandarin.
It is more of a problem with governance rather than "race".
There are successful Malays from various company CEOs working together with other races. That also reach global scale. Even small to medium businesses we have more than we can count. Just because they are not acquisitive to enter international markets, doesn't make them brain drain.
If Malays that makes up most of the workforce are truly problematic, Malaysia wouldn't even become a developing country. It will stay as a third world country or even become worse. I know a lot of my Malay friends who don't deserve to be called such. I have Malay friends that even went to Oxford, work alongside Chinese firms.
I myself worked in a Chinese company. There are hard working Chinese and Indians and even Indians from India and Chinese from China. There are also bad ones, but I won't even label them. I would say most of them are very nice and hard working.
Come on man, do you not read the business news? Unless you're saying that it is okay to be corrupt, manipulative, dishonest as long as you're not Malay.
If you're a Malaysian, you should get to know more Malays & even Chinese, Indians and other Bumputeras to know that it is not black & white.
I got the opportunity to join a session with the CEO of DNeX and studied the companies (DNeX & Silterra) with an experienced accountant.
Some of the things I take is that Silterra was facing a large amount of debt. Even if the sell off is cheap, it is quite a challenge for them to find the money within a year to pay off the company's debt.
The CEO is a not only a good person (my friend that gets to meet him affirms this too), but he has a lot of experience and has the influence. As a semiconductor fan and a proud Malaysian, I personally hope he gets to turnaround Silterra.
I have visited several Packaging plants in Malaysia between 2008-2010 and met many hard working intelligent people there. I was told engineering students at the time were somewhat hindered due to Malay language being prioritized over English at university in the 2000s. When intel expanded its packaging operations in the 2010s, it went to Vietnam. Interest to note Fairchild has packaging in both Penang and Tijuana Mexico.
You got it wrong. Most Malaysian Universities use English as medium of instruction. Malaysia is now the top 6 country producing microchips, 13% of testing and assembling done here and involve 7% of global trade. We have factories from Intel, ON, Texas, NXP and Infineon etc.
@@marinaau8551 I think what Nick meant was the degradation of command of English started in 2000s over the preference of Malay. The engineers could only communicate in Malay. This is not far from the truth due to the quality of education in local university, where students couldn't even communicate in English despite a 12 years learning of the subject. So MY losing its advantage of the destination of FDI is very real. VN, ID and Thai took all those misopportunities.
@@marinaau8551 Officially in universities it is English. But s strange thing happened almost a decade back where Malay was the medium and STEM subjects (whereby it was English before) This caused a transition issue for many students going into tertiery education. And for many government universities, many lectures were taught in english but explained in Malay as a result.
Hence, this caused a gap between actually mastering the subject and knowing how to recite it.
Yeah the Philippines was slightly ahead of Malaysia in semiconductors at the turn of the millennium. The former was probably even in the top 5 of all IC exporters 20 years ago.
@@edwuave You are right, but not accurate.
1960 - English medium
1970 - Malay medium
2000 - English but only used in STEM subjects as medium
2010 - Malay in all subjects
As a Malaysian, I can't thank you enough for making this video. This is certainly a breathtaking information about my coutry. There are tons of problem that were undisclosed due to some save face political censorship. Now we know our pain point of the problem that need to be solved in the future.
The majority will dare enough to make the change and move to meritocracy policy, or we will lose the game to neighboring countries.
Intel has been on hiring spree for chip engineer here in Malaysia. A lot of my friend who has not yet finish their education have been offered jobs by Intel. Intel also hired a lot of engineers from silterra. This come out as a surprise for me bcs I always though semiconductor industry in Malaysia sucks
Not to mention, AMD are expanding into Malaysia , setting up design center same as intel. Besides that, AT&S are investing €1.7 billion in Kulim, Kedah. Semicon industry in Malaysia is actually doing good. Malaysian semicon engineers are on par with oversea engineers, only that the low payments makes these local talents moving out from Malaysia.
Malaysia is the 5 th largest exporter of microchips. 13% of global assembly and testing done here and 7% of world trade. 35% of Malaysia's export are in E & E sectors while only 14% in oil and gas.
If not for the pendemic, nobody would know the importance of Malaysia as a global player in the microchips industry. My brother is a technician and help produce microchips for export use for cars, covid ventilators and PS5.
Now, Intel will invest 7 billion USD on a new factory.
Remember Asian persons quite smart when they got oppertunities.
At 10.40s, there is a little bit confusion. MIMOS Berhad is not the founder or origin of Silterra. Wafer Technology (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. is totally different company than MIMOS Berhad. MIMOS setup her own IC design and fabrication known as MIMOS Semiconductor Sdn. Bhd. It can only fabricate at 0.5um and later at 0.35um while Silterra Malaysia was found to be able to fabricate starting at 250nm. I worked as a design consultant at MIMOS Semiconductor Berhad from 2000 to 2001 while still being a lecturer. I have several IC design patents now and currently planning to setup my own fabless design company. Those who want to collaborate or invest in my new company can contact me personally. I am still working at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia as a Senior Lecturer. We are the best in IC design among Malaysia universities. But, we don't do fabrication since it involves a lot of money. Intel have a special Master program to up skills their engineers with us for more than ten years which other universities fail to deliver.
Malaysia has a lot of potential but that potential is destroyed by its politics including race politics.
Most of Malaysia's potential have moved elsewhere.
Me included.
The worse is yet to come. Brace for religious extremism.
@@YOU-ot9ep , Afghanistan used to have the largest Buddhist statues in the world, for over one thousand years, until Taliban bomb them into rubble.
You will be forgiven, as many intelligent foresights were viewed as stupidity at first.
the politicians here are really bad
@@esphilee *for 2000 years.
Hi form Malaysia!
Looks like there's a lot of Malaysia viewers here
As a Malaysian, I thank you for giving a fair and objective discussion on this topic. Too often us Malaysians are hard on ourselves and we're too quick to criticise policy failures rather than examining the problem. From your videos, it's enlightening how challenging this industry can be and other nations have also tried and end up in the same boat. Frankly, it's uncanny how much your videos on Taiwan resonate to many of the problems we're facing but at much earlier phases of development.
I think one of the problems could also be attributed to a mixed message about local labour or talent. On one hand, development agencies will market how competitive labour costs are. Making labour cost a USP sends a wrong message when you're trying to compete for skilled workers. It's funny to see some employers expect an Ivy League quality hire with $14-16k annual pay package. While many employers are bumping wages to remedy this, it's still nowhere near as competitive and talent retention continues to be a problem.
Also, what's less spoken of is the setting of "convoluted priorities" especially when problems have snowballed. You've already noted some evidence of this with the choice for local appointments for Silterra than finding qualified, experienced executives for leadership positions. Coupled with the talent bidding/retention issue as mentioned, it may be the case that red tape and socioeconomic KPIs could have led to interventions on business decisions at the (unintended?) expense of building a viable enterprise. It happens too often problems snowball and Khazanah ends up in a position of trying to fix a leaky ship while juggling pressures to retain jobs, industry capacity etc. It's really unfortunate because Khazanah, as a strategic investor, spends a lot of their capital and brain trust fixing problems which could have otherwise be spent seeding or supporting new growth opportunities.
I've learned so much from you! I'm going to give you 6 dollars and watch the rest of your videos
Thankyou for this historical & insightful piece. Good Job!
"a long one" at 18 minutes. and now many of your videos top half-an-hour, yet the quality of content remains very high. Even more than that, I appreciate seeing things, at least partially, through another perspective. This is among the most rewarding patreon channels I patronize.
There is a Malaysia company named Frontken have subsidiary Ares Green Technology Corp in Taiwan that provide ultra cleaning for TSMC
Is the technology from Malaysia?
@@dogymal7260 no
In 2021 its not a question of whether you're semi conductor industry can compete... Just HAVING a semiconductor industry by itself is a huge deal
As a Malaysian i will say this, as long as we have the real intent and drive to find a way, there will always be a niche we can good at. There is no single country that can be the best at everything and there are so many niches in this world that can be a real growth driver. All that is needed is intent and drive.
Exactly, but what saddens me is that even if we start early in any niche field and getting better. We always ended losing to others.
Hope new gen can overturn old corrupt politician and old thinking
@@aiman9088 that is because there is no drive. TSMC was not a guaranteed success. There are always risks in charting new paths, but if the whole nation is willing to bear the risks then there is at least a chance. However, when politics, interest groups and corruption goes in, everything turns sour.
You don’t have an efficient government
As long as it is politics/race/religion first, country development second, there will not be enough drive to compete in the international market.
Wow. Fantastic summary. Subbed!
hello from Penang! appreciate the effort that went into this episode, I learned a lot 😇
I remember the semiconductor factories in the Free Trade Zone in Penang back in the late 1970s. Companies such as National Semiconductor (NS), AMD, Intel, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Bosch, Hitachi, etc... I also visited SilTerra back in early 2010s. Wow, this video brought back lots of memories! Thank you!
I was offered in intel in 1984 but only assembly and packaging of 8088 chips.would have taken the jobs if it was fabrication.
@@johantaharin491 That was exactly the problem as mentioned in the video. There was practically no technology transfer to Malaysia. These companies were only interested in the cheap labor, nothing else. Malaysia was screwed! :((
@@bluestar2253 Chip making is not that profitable and the profit margin is very low, unless monopoly by Intel. There are technology transfer from Intel, Texas Instrument, etc. to Malaysia in the form of chip assembly and packaging.
Chip assembly and packaging is quite challenging for those 7nm, 5nm , 3nm, 1 nm nodes chip made by TSMC.
So Malaysia should just focus on chip assembly and packaging since cannot compete on computer and smartphone chips fabrication. There are a lot of good paying jobs to be created from chip assembly and packaging.
Malaysia should just concentrate on chip fabrication for autochips which is low end chips.
Problem with Silterra losing money is the quality of their chip design is not that good and unable to meet car maker customers demand.
Seremban once had motorola chip factory. Now seremban has 2 chip factories, NXP and ON.
Malacca has infineon and Texas Instrument
funnily enough, i am planning to apply for internship in some of malaysia's semiconductor company next year. then i got recommended this video. mainly silterra and mimos
I literally just binge watch all your semiconductor series yesterday from TSMC to China and wondering what was the industry like in Malaysia. Then boom you answered my question!
Thank you so much for this, it was so well researched on a quite niche topic.
Malaysia has 3 infineon factories. Others inlclude ON and NXP in seremban, intel in Penang, Texas instrument in Malacca
Malaysia has so much potential. It is a gifted child, blessed with natural resources, strategic location, beautiful and diverse people. Instead of capitalising on the cultural diversity, it has become the stumbling block of the country's progress.
agreed, no more
Your neighbour Sg is better.ha ha !
@@peterlee6148 The top 6 producing microchips in the world are, Taiwan, S Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia and USA.
@@peterlee6148 Intel will invest 7 billion USD while AT & S 8 billion USD.
Couple of corrections
- Penang is pronounced as "pee neng" instead of "pee nang", my hometown. :)
- bumiputra is not a "race" but rather a cluster of different ethnic groups that are deemed as "natives" to the country, making up over 50% of the population, notably excluding Chinese & Indian who has ancestors from China & India even though they're born in Malaysia.
Great video with very informative overview of what happened. Hope our country gets out of this current rut soon enough.
"Pee nang" is correct, the name derived from the pinang tree which in Malay is pronounced correctly. "Pee neng" is corruptibly Anglicised
Pee nang is korek lah. Penang is anglicised. Bravo to this youtuber for reading it in Malay language,
Maybe because even Malaysians are used to 2 different pronunciations:
1) Pulau Pinang (Pea Nung)
2) Penang (Pea Neng)
Chill everyone. Don't need to go overboard with a mere pronounciation :)
@@megaxasjlvz How about "Klang" or "Klang" 😂
I do not know why some people are so bitter about race policy in Malaysia when i admit, it is totally true, it is bad... but in reality it does not prohibit someone intellegent, enterpreneural person to set up own semiconductor industry...? See Malaysia's rubber glove industry? It's thriving. So, where are those deprived, non-favored people who are so smart, where are your successful semicon factory? Or you also wait for government help & subsidy like the Malays too before you can succeed?
i think the recent selloff is a big let down since there are chip shortage which increases demand and pricing. A person who can managed it well surely will take this opportunity to bring in more business to the company.
Dude, honestly, id be cool with a video about African soda pop in the 1970s from you as long as you found it interesting, keep up the great work.
This brings back old memories; deja Vu. Of a time when all front end assembly equipment spares support at Intel Pg and Kulim was under my purview!
John it was long but entertaining from start to finish. Thanks for the video.
Semiconductor fabs are expensive to run, lots of rare poisonous gases, materials are needed. Hard to imagine even if labor is cheaper in Malaysia but the materials and consumables required to run a fab 24x7 and the amount of support needed isnt cheap. Malaysia will need 5+ more fabs to really enjoy larger support companies to justify investments to directly support the fab, otherwise its really middle-man small scale support companies that isnt as good and efficient.
Malaysia does not need to compete in high end computer chips. Malaysia should just focus on low end autochips and consumer electronics. This is good enough. Let Intel, TSMC, SMIC, Samsung, AMD,e etc. do all the high end computer and autochips.
I am sure this can be done. No need to go for high end high capital intensive chip fab and aim for high profit margin. Important thing is to get the knowhow and be relevant and also create good paying jobs for Malaysia over supplied engineers.
@@zenlei8258 Yes but is it feasible in the long term future we eventually evolved to higher end fabrication. We fear even lower cost countries such as Thailand or Vietnam may one day venture into the semicon industry and surpass Malaysia due to their lower labor cost.
@@zenlei8258是的 我認為你是正確的 台灣以前電子公司 利潤3-4% 被台灣人民譏笑 我們的htc倒閉了 BENQ入主德國的 西門子公司 也失敗了 品牌之路 我們做不贏 韓國 日本 以前台灣的報紙 甚至報導一支蘋果手機 美國蘋果公司賺最多 再來就是韓國在記憶體 螢幕顯示器 及CPU 賺的次多 台灣只在富士康的組裝 及可成鋁外殼 賺最少 感到很丟人 從來沒有想到 台積電後來居上 居然擊敗了三星 奪得蘋果訂單 任何未來的事 很難遇料 最重要是 台灣老人講的話 一步一腳印 有做有機會 當年 台積電差點賣給了中國
Hi there, I'm from Penang and it's amazing to see Penang get featured.
Fun fact : AMD and Intel factories are exactly opposite each other.
Tsmc control the mobile chip industry.
Silterra should focus on less transistor chips
Seremban has NXP and ON while Malacca has Infineon and Texas Instrument
@@johantaharin491 my brother makes chips for PS5
The video talks about Morris Chang (American) and Richard Chang. Should highlight that the senior leadership of SilTerra from 1999 to early 2007 was dominated by Americans - and not just the CEO but SVPs and VPs. The first CEO was Cy Hannon, former EVP of LSI Logic, while the the COO and third CEO was the great Bruce Gray, formerly from National Semiconductor. So there were international semiconductor experts running the firm and knowledge transfer to locals taking place. The issue has always been a dearth of capital and consistent investment for growth - and as such, SilTerra has never managed to achieve escape velocity (i.e. achieve sufficient economies of scale). Compared to its peers, SilTerra has been operating on a shoe-string budget for more than 15 years... It's amazing the company is still around and still selling chips to Tier 1 players around the world.
Talents were then lured to Infineon kulim and Singapore's established fabs..
a good leader needs to be from technical background, at least someone who gets their hand dirty and rise from the bottom to know all the operation in technical ways. Hiring someone from mature environment is a big no no as most of the time those operation already covered by talent and the ceo or coo don't even needs the details. Both Morris Chang (American) and Richard Chang work their way from bottom from technical side to top. Same goes for the legendary Lisa Su who turnaround AMD, she is from technical field and rise from bottom.
I recall one of my intel processor i bought almost 20years ago was made in malaysia
Yeay..it has 150,000 transistors🤣😍🇲🇾
Intel is still in Malaysia. We now have NXP, Infineon, ON and Texas Instrument too.
pray for the best to malaysia....salam from indonesia
Malaysia definitely has a lot of potential and not short of talents. A lot of high ranking veteran in semiconductor arena are Malaysians.
Yes I met many Malaysians in high positions in suzhiu singapore industrial park.mostly in samsung Foxconn and Hyundai
Correction, *_were Malaysians_* , not are.
Top talents have brains, and brainy people won't tolerate the unending racist taunts from the authority.
@@clocktower1164 most of them now work abroad in china Singapore and australia
Impressed by the accuracy!
This channel is packed with useful information! The best UA-cam juice so far.
As someone who worked in the industry in two of the major MNCs in Penang, for past 10 years, I agree that our growth had slowed down over the years. Even the university had put in major efforts to align with the industry only recently when they realise all their graduates hardly met the industry standards.
The i4.0 and HRC plans with efforts from HRDF, MITI, and other major industry collaborators really escalate the growth of human capital. At least better than nothing but how I wish, we started these efforts way earlier.
It is easier to upscale the Front End by bringing new tech but it is exceptional hard to handle Back End assembly. Human are variables that hard to control and human errors/behaviour often a big challenge.
Brain drain is definitely another issue with many real talents find better life abroad Malaysia. For the longest time, the political rhetoric in Malaysia had been discouraging local talents to stay. I've lost count how many of my university mates who courageous enough to leave for better life in our neighbors like Singapore of Taiwan.
Basically, money. A lot Talented Malaysian immigrate to get better salary and life. Yes, politic have it's issue but it doesn't impacting much the industry progress. It come boil down to which place provide more incentive and better payment. The same reason why some company whom already established in Malaysia for long time relocated to Vietnam, cheaper worker.
Slowed down? We are no 5, next to singapore.
whatever industries it is. Malaysia was destined to fail due to one thing. The nation is gorverned not by meritocracy. I'm glad that global market to teach Malaysia the lesson of not being able to complete the best and washed out by the market. Until they realize meritocracy it outplay of racism and self contentment.
ive hearing that..malaysia is not failing
@@hijazzains yeah, no 5 producing microchips.
Good channel run by an intelligent man.
Soo much potential this country has. But politics always messes it up.
Dont worry we are no 5 producing microchips and Taiwan wants us to help them. Cheers
Malaysia has the best electronic industry.plenty of land,water and smart hardworking people.i doubt the amount of capital they can pour into and high labour costs.
Great content. Thanks for making this
Nice analysis
I love hearing about tech industry creation success stories outside the established players. Thanks for these!
*Malaysian people's have a lot off expensive in Semiconductors Chip industry, maybe a million already have experience work in the industry , clean room eco system so all company around the world can come invest in Malaysia 🇲🇾*
If all the Malaysian government policies are failures, those western companies would have left Malaysia long long long time ago. Then again, these companies are still here in 2021. Duhh!
Yeah, and many more are coming while the existing ones are expanding.
I notice that most videos focus on the manufacturing of semiconductors only. Either on the front end, or on the back end. Sure, there is profit to be made in those segments of the industry. But the real profit is to be made in designing the chips and holding the rights to those designs. Unfortunately is a country like Malaysia not able to focus on that segment of the industry.
Semiconductor industry big, lah. I’m just one guy, lah.
@@Asianometry Great response, thank you for the laugh. I'm looking forward to your future videos. I used to work in the semiconductor industry and am curious about your analysis.
still at the bottom of value chain.. even Fab in SG gain better value..
@@Asianometry With these "lah's"in the comment you must be Malaysian. I am too. You helped me with my work today. I am an Investment Officer based in NYC working for MIDA writing a report on the opportunities Malaysia presents to the USA
Fabulous insightful research into the Malaysia semiconductor industry. They really, really missed the boat, imagine if they could have been what TSMC is, but most definitely politics got in the way, you were very kind not to stick that knife in!
What boat? PMalaysia is the 5 th largest chip producer now. 13% global testing and packaging here as well as 7% global microchips trading. My small town have ON and NXP factories. Malacca have infineon and Texas Instrument, Penang has Intel etc. E & E make up 35% of our export while oil and gas only 14%
Now Taiwan wants us to help them ease the shortage.
In the late 1970s I was using blank wafers as front-face mirrors for laser effects using helium-neon laser tubes. At the time chip wafers were only around 4 inches across. Amazing to see how large they grow the silicon crystals now.
I worked for Intel Costa Rica. They closed their assembly plant over here in part because of cost and took it to Malaysia.
I remember people talking about how cheap compared to CR Malaysia was, and how many jobs they were taking, but also I saw with my own eyes the outstanding error rates compared to Costa Rica.
Intel came back, AMD, TSMC and other are looking to set shop here. You should talk about that.
I was born and raised near these manufacturing plants in Penang. Since young my parents told me to be an E&E Engineer and get into Intel. I did take the degree, but it's sufferable. It's just so effing boring programming Intel 4040 and the internship totally ruined it for me, didn't like a bit of what seemed like a mindless atmosphere on the production floor. Joined the internet industry eventually.
that plane that missing in 2014 have 4 Malaysian semicond copyright on it
The 5th one didn't board the plane,
I'm Nigerian and I'm impressed with Malaysia. My folks remember when Nigeria was richer than most Asian countries.
India is going to space and Nigeria is STILL trying to learn how to refine IT'S OWN OIL!
35% of Malaysia's export is Electric and Electronics. Only 14% is oil and gas. 13% of global assembling and testing microchips is done here.
In the 60s Asia was the poorest continent.
It is norm in malaysia all government related Agencies are not making money. People in position always trying to grab their shares instead of putting efforts for sake of the country. Race based hiring contribute to another main reason why Malaysia hard to becoming a developed country.
Very interesting 18 minute video looking at Malaysia's attempts to move up the value chain into semiconductor fabrication.
Speaking of Malaysia, I was very surprised to learn how many large and relatively complex appliances (like fridges and air conditioners) are manufactured in South East Asia: Samsung fridges are made in Malaysia, and Mitsubishi Air Conditioners are made in Thailand. Thailand also manufactures mechanical hard drives (eg, Western Digital HDDs).
I'm still not sure why the bigger South Korean and Japanese firms chose to outsource to South East Asia over China, but it's great that consumers have a cost competitive alternative from different regions when they decide what to purchase!
Sometimes there’s hostile nationalism flare ups in China affecting international companies also might be more afraid of losing technology.
guess its about IP protection?
@@Deguile could be....even if a SE Asia company gets the IP they won’t be able to scale up selling the same product globally as easily as a Chinese company.
@@johnl.7754 yep. agreed. today arrived in china, 2 days later you'll see the "improved" version in shenzhen.. 😅 next thing you know, it'll be around the world in 1-2 months. crazy fast
Outsource to south east Asia.most of aircons sre manufactured in china
Fast forward and many semiconductors and tech company established here.
I love every video you make! ❤
Whether it’s about the Soviet Union, Britain or Asia, everything you make holds my attention
It's kind of sad really, Our country had all of the advantages in the begining but it was all squandered off by cronyism. But on the bright side at least we do have some home grown companies popping up despite of that.
Some truths to that but it is time to move forward.the days of cronyism are over,its all online commerce wheren production and transfer of wealth are not up to cronys.
It's partly due to cronism, and partly due to institutional racism. Intel and AMD, HP etc established in Penang in the 70s, but the federal didn't take the opportunity to grow the industry in Penang, this is because Penang is ethnic Chinese majority. I remember it's hard for me to get a master degree in Penang, even at that time USM moved its engineering campus to Ipoh, (only after year 2000.moved back to Penang) , Mimos in KL, Siltera in Kulim. The federal government is killing a goose that laying the golden eggs.
islam is the problem
@@fwefhwe4232 nope its not. Greed and jealousy is the problem.
@@mayfoo02 Agree and both greed and jealousy are sins in Islam itself
A lot of people in Msia experts in Semiconductor Industry
already one of the biggest in the world
Very interesting video. Good info.
You're doing great job thanks
You know what else is not mentioned?
Most bright Malaysians prefer to work in Singapore or somewhere else. Better money, better conditions, looks better in the resume. They have decent education, speak both English and sometimes Mandarin, and are very motivated to compete. They're somewhat wasted in Malaysia.
From what I know, most Malaysians left for Singapore only for better currency, yet they are still doing low skills jobs , some even work at fast food restaurants.
Well the % of singaporean who left Singapore is higher than malaysia. So your point being?
I'm one of them lol. I prefer Singapore for work but I would always call Malaysia home.
Thats the problem. Its too much of a complacent country as a relaxed home than having to deal with threats. Malaysians are too spoiled.
@@kimothemo I'm not sure about that, if you have a few sources that would help.
But for me, we were hired for specific positions being competitive with local talent as well.
@@tengkualiff Malaysia is rank 5th producing microchips. 13% global testing and assembling is done here
Thank you so much for this.
This is what happen when you don’t invest and nurture the best talents
Malaysia is the top 6 producing microchips and 13% of global testing and assembilng. Ok what?
@@marinaau8551 how about try being number 1 instead of number 6? Malaysia’s neighbor Singapore have TSMC the world’s number 1 company.
@@dl7311 I got this feeling some chips exported thru Singapore also comes from Malaysia, then we are actually could be no 1?
@@dl7311 Malaysia also has no 2 intel and 3 NXP producing microchips, also ON, Texas Instrument and Infineon.
@Asianometry Given all the new developments, would you be able to make an update and future outlook for Malaysia's semiconductor industry?
Nice video, thanks. There is some tools manufacturing for semicon in Malaysia. Would you cover that too?
You should do a video about malaysia rubber glove industry
was a 5dx support engineer back then, was ready to be offered a contract and pathway to permanent residency. Then 2008 happens, things were meant to be in a different way
Awesome video. I am wondering if you do study about the O&G & petrochemical industries globally as well as on the Malaysia/Singapore area? Would love to see your analysis in these fields.
Malaysia has many smart, hard working people and they do well in packaging. That said semi's is hard to break into.
The capital costs are huge, and you have China attacking market with huge subsidies and huge scale.
It would be good to diversify away from Taiwan, but we also need geographic diversity.
I really see intel falling into that role given, they have a head start beyond that of China or anyone else other than tsmc really.
Malaysia'a government needs to support the industry more so that the local semicon industry can reach newer heights. Even TSMC had support from the Taiwanese government during their early days.
Thank you ...... We Indian men already invest few semiconductor company in Malaysia and we have confidence in it...
Last year and this year, there are more Semiconductor companies started operation in Malaysia, increase investment or expanding such as Intel and AMD and they increase the starting salary for fresh graduate to RM5,000 early this year.
Fresh grad engineer rm5k?
@@pessiescobar4707 yes!
A lot has happened between since this video came out. We're now a hub for front-end design that's at the highest point of the value chain, and the two largest design houses Oppstar and SkyeChip are fully Malaysian owned. SkyeChip is an IP company that delivers patentable technology at the cutting edge, which is at the same speed the design houses in Silicon Valley are bringing-up, hence the RM5k starting salary.
In the broader scheme of things 5k is the starting salary for front-end design engineers are paid in the rest of the world, a fresh grad EE in the US is paid in the ballpark of 5000 USD when he's hired as a pre-silicon design engineer at Intel, and Singaporean chip designer working for AMD as his first job is paid around 5000 SGD.
What SkyeChip has done is created an environment for Malaysian engineers to work on high value-add projects that command the same salaries elsewhere. Because of this, there are efforts at other companies in the same townhood to raise their salaries to parity with SkyeChip's 5k, there is senior management at AMD that is actively trying to raise the salaries for engineers hired into their Graduate Trainee program. The mainland Chinese fabless company Starfive recently set up design house that's also less than 5 minutes away from SkyeChip, and they're paying their interns RM2000.
Over all that's happening in the industry, we may move into the front end of the manufacturing process if Silterra becomes able to compete with the Singaporean fabs, but we've already dug our feet into the forefront of the value chain, and it will be how our companies in this sector continue to grow that determine if we're going to continue to be a regional semiconductor hub in the coming decades.
do another video on HOW Bumiputra drove the economy to the ground in the first place...those same NEP policy..
if left alone, the private sector in Malaysia would be the South Korea story.
Your info on malaysia semiconductor is spot on.theres shin etsu handotai that prepares from ingots to wafers in hulu klang free trade zone.that is pretty front end.
Still low value. High value starts after the wafer enters the fab.
My brother a technician in a microchip factory in Malaysia makes chips for cars, PS5 and covid ventilators
Thank you for the content
the country has too many on its plate now. with many locals heading for overseas pay makes even more gaps in between spaces. so how do you resolve that endless gap
In modern world, professional workers or semi-professional workers are open for any migration to other countries. In Malaysia, statistically, there are more Malays migrating to overseas compared to other races!
To Malaysian commenting about race... I think we should stop blamming racism. There is a huge problem with our lecturers and education system.
I worked with a lot of designers from US and Europe. The masters student there can start designing circuits on their 1st day of work. They are as capable as a malaysian with 10years circuit design experience.
I also interviewed a lecturer looking for a part time placement in our R&D department. Sadly to say, he only knows basic theory & my subordinate has better pratical skills than him.
Exactly. The education in Malaysia in both basic and higher education have always been literally years behind the world.
It is depend on which university you are talking about. In Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, our IC design syllabuses are among the top of the world class. Our graduates can immediately do their own IC design work provided you look those who do final year project related to IC design. Altera was one of our primary customers to hire fresh graduates even beating Intel starting salary. By the way, Altera Quartus II was designed by our fresh graduates instead of Altera USA. All of our master or PhD graduates immediately got a job even before they went for their viva! By the way, our record for PhD graduate is RM10,000 starting salary in Intel in 2014 without any experience! We can produce more if industries are willing to sponsor more graduate students. We also have several IC design patents which of course our university don't know how to market them :) We are also conducting special master program with Intel for the past and more than 10 years already to up skill Intel Engineers even though we are the most southern part of peninsular Malaysia. Intel failed to collaborate with other local universities for their master program. You were dealing with the wrong people.
How can i create a company to help these semiconductor companies here the the U.S.!
Please contact me to collaborate. I am planning to setup a new Fabless IC design house in Johor, Malaysia.
Thank you for the video. Great work on tis 👍 👍👍
Can do like the steps in semicon processes. Like who makes the silicon ingots, to lithography (taiwan of course) to testing, packaging. This would be very interesting in the semicon supply chain.
as Indonesians, we must admit, we are far behind in R&D and the semiconductor chip/IC industry, we have to learn a lot from malaysia about how to attract investors & develop human resources in this field, malaysia has many semiconductor companies standing in their country while in indonesia there is only 1 that is infineon, that's all ☹
Didn't elon musk want to invest in Indonesia if I'm not mistaken he met with your president jokowi
Philippines and Malaysia got you beat
Very good and well-made video covering most of the stuff on Malaysia's semiconductor industry. I'm also impressed you covered the big OSATs and Vitrox.
Pretty sure to develop an industry successfully you need co-operation between the public and private sectors. Sadly the government and people don't care about moving up the value chain or whatever. They prefer to play race/religion politics and let the politicians continue plundering the country while talented Malaysians go abroad because they are more valued there.
Here let me correct that for you
"Sadly the malay-sian government and the malay-sian people dont care about moving up the value chain or whatever"..
There. You are welcome.
Due to Umno-Pas politicians this country can't move forward. Always Melayu Isle. Such a shallow and stupid rhectoric. No wonder I now even hate myself. Man my mental health might one day deteriorate if this goes on.
@@akifiskandar4186 Malaysia is rank 5, producing microchips .... not bad what accounts for 13% testing and assembling
Great quality content Jon. Would you consider indexing and linking your sources in the description? Thanks.
The problem is not just wages but opportunities: the problem talent finds in these countries is that theres no budget for big cutting edge stuff like abroad so even if you increase the pay many will still leave to work on bigger stuff
Hi, can you provide the link to the resources you used to research this topic in particular?
@Asianotometry done. Took yr number. You may delete the comment if you want 😬
6:10 Wait, what? The average hourly wage in Japan was higher than in the US in 1973? (The equivalent of 13 ringgit in Japan, 12 in the US, and 1.43 in Malaysia, according to the video).
Is this for this specific industry, or in manufacturing in general, or in the economy in general?
Is this Purchasing Power Parity or nominal? If this is nominal, I just find it hard to believe. I can accept it if PPP.
Edit: I just did a couple of quick Google searches and some calculations and got a median household income in 1973 of about $12,000 in the US and $6,600 in Japan. This seems reasonably realistic.
If you are reading this. I was just wondering on your opinion regarding the new Infineon wafer fab investments in Malaysia. Is this a good move? There is also announcement by Foxconn to join venture with Dnex & they planned to start producing chips as well. Do u think the Foxconn-Dnex joint venture will be a good thing for Malaysia? Hope you read my comment 😁
Long one, but a very good one Thanks
60 years of doing this and still stuck at the bottom of the value chain
It is not even 50 years. How do you calculate to get 60 years?
Working too hard to learn anything... Yeah, kept busy to learn anything else unless you work 24/7. Most these employers like to say shit like that but deny they not expecting you to slave your entire life to the company while complaining you come in on time and not 1 hours earlier and complain you leave on time and not 2 hours later. They practically want you to work a total of 10 hours plus and only notice if you do less (which is the standard 8 hours).
Silterra china investors has invested in fab before and they are quite successful.they may bring their team to kulim and maybe fabricate chips for automobiles.that works with just 2b transistors..shld be enough.
The mindset of "should be good enough" is a problem. Semiconductor is a very competitive business, the ones that are still around spend every day improving because that's the requirement to survive.
FTZ untuk China boleh export ke Amerika /Australia
Great info
Prior to 2007, Brazil was supposed to be the "next boom" as they were buying 8" machines like crazy. Malaysia would be a ideal, but there are too many obsticles and baracades in the way.
Malaysia is still at the for front. Rank 5 producing microchips.
If a group of people is waiting to die and go to heaven and another group wanted heaven on earth, which one do you think will become rich and successful on earth? It's all about the mindset, culture and lifestyle chosen.
Fun fact: Some of SilTerra's top management had been arrested for corruption. One of the main reason why it fail, like MAS and other GLCs.