Since 2013, Mr. Nguyen Bao Anh, Technical Director cum Head of a representative office of the US Synopsys Company in Da Nang, has aspired to promote the development of the semiconductor industry in Da Nang and Central Viet Nam as a whole in order for himself and future students to create international technology products without having to go far.

Secretary of the Da Nang Party Committee Nguyen Van Quang visits the representative office of the US Synopsys Company in Da Nang. Photo: NGOC HA

Da Nang engineer's great efforts

Quite modest when talking about his work, but what Nguyen Bao Anh has done is a persistent effort during nearly 20 years of working in the semiconductor field.

Born in 1983 in Da Nang, Nguyen Bao Anh graduated from the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications of the Da Nang University of Science and Technology in the 2002-2007 academic year.

At that time, the semiconductor industry just began to develop and operate mainly in Ho Chi Minh City. As fate would have it, he approached and worked at a branch of a Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered technology company in Da Nang.

One year later, the Da Nang man was sent by the company to attend a postgraduate course in South Korea about Analog and mixed signal (AMS) which is one of the high-speed circuit design fields, completely new compared to previous memory arrays.

After returning to Da Nang, Bao Anh set up a working group specialising in the field. The group started from simple products to more complex ones. Gradually, the level of design that the group did was no less than other groups in Viet Nam at that time.

Since 2015, the group has been making multidie products, which at that time were not yet popular in the world.

During his meetings with American partners, he realised the future trend of this technology, so he directed the team to continue focusing on deeper research and development.

In 2019, the company Bao Anh was working for was acquired by the Synopsys Group. In the new company, the team had more resources to continue to grow quickly. Within only 3 years, the number of jobs tripled.

According to Bao Anh's share, the IC design segment is quite unique and does not stand still because chip demand increases rapidly each year and technology changes continuously. In addition, this is a technology industry that requires a lot of practical experience because the price to pay for errors is huge.

For example, in the IT industry, when a software error occurs, it can be quickly fixed. But chip design, errors will cost many millions of dollars and the time to fix is measured in units of years.

But according to Mr. Bao Anh, that difficulty is also an advantage for circuit engineers. The more experience a person in the IC design profession, the higher his or her positioning value is.

“After nearly 20 years of working in the semiconductor industry, I am very happy with what I have done. I believe that Vietnamese people's intelligence is qualified enough to enter the high-level technology playground as long as we are confident, make efforts and focus on developing and upgrading ourselves and our team every day" Mr. Bao Anh noted.

Nguyen Bao Anh, Technical Director cum Head of the representative office of the US Synopsys Company in Da Nang sharing about the professional with students from the city's University of Science and Technology. Photo: NGOC HA

Vietnamese intelligence is affirmed

When asked about his feelings about the image of CEO of Intel Corporation (USA) Pat Gelsinger launching the first 3nm chip model using multi-die connection technology designed by the Synopsys Vietnam team, Nguyen Bao Anh said he was very proud to see his product being accepted by the world. Even more special when this is an important product of future chip design trends with very complex multi-die connection technology such as high-speed UCIe that no one in the world has ever announced other than Synopsys.

“Previously, each chip had a nail-sized die that could contain billions of components, but the size of the components when reaching the molecular limit could not be any smaller, leading to the addition of more components on a die is no longer feasible while the chip market's need for functionality and performance does not stop. Therefore, the need for a new technology that allows dozens of dies to connect together in the same chip, thereby creating a larger processing space to help increase the capacity and speed of the chip many times is an inevitable trend” Mr. Bao Anh emphasised.

According to Mr. Nguyen Bao Anh, the AMS Synopsys Vietnam team is proud to be assigned by the US Synopsys Corporation to be responsible for creating, designing and developing the IP core product line for multi-die PHY IP. Therefore, the Vietnamese team has worked well with other support teams around the world to try to ensure the company's leading position in this field in the general development trend of the global semiconductor industry.

Currently, his AMS group has nearly 200 employees working in three major cities, namely Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Noi and Da Nang, of which the team in Da Nang has about 100 employees. Team members in Da Nang mainly graduated from the city's University of Science and Technology.

In the future, Bao Anh hopes to build a strong force for the semiconductor industry in Da Nang, who can develop high-quality products and master difficult technologies.

​Reporting by NGOC HA - Translating by M.DUNG