{"id":38697,"date":"2024-08-20T21:38:47","date_gmt":"2024-08-20T13:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/malaysias-heritage-island-goes-big-on-chips\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T11:08:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T03:08:12","slug":"malaysias-heritage-island-goes-big-on-chips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/malaysias-heritage-island-goes-big-on-chips\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia\u2019s Heritage Island Goes Big on Chips"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Malaysia\u2019s Heritage Island Goes Big on Chips<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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20 August 2024<\/p>\n

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George Town, Penang, Malaysia. Photographer: Samsul Said\/Bloomberg<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Malaysia aspires to turn an island best known for its heritage sites into a global chipmaking hub. But first…<\/p>\n

Surging ambition<\/h3>\n

The scenic island of Penang is best known for its well preserved colonial-style mansions, shophouses and traditional Chinese temples that date back to the 19th century.<\/p>\n

But only a stone\u2019s throw away from its historic architecture and tourist hotspots \u2014 on the southeastern part of an island that\u2019s less than half the size of Singapore \u2014 hides one of the world\u2019s busiest semiconductor manufacturing clusters.<\/p>\n

The density of chip factories here is a rare find anywhere on Earth. Intel Corp.\u2019s facility is large enough to require a skybridge connection, and if you walk two blocks down from it, you\u2019ll come upon memory chipmaker Western Digital Corp.\u2019s huge plant. At peak hours, cars of employees jam the nearby roads bumper to bumper.<\/p>\n

From time to time, you\u2019ll see a 14-wheeler delivering cargo containers into the campus of an Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Micron Technology Inc., Infineon Technologies AG or Lam Research Corp. All have had a presence in Penang for years, some decades.<\/p>\n

Now the Malaysians want more, a bigger and stronger role in the global chip supply chain to fire up the local economy and expand geopolitical influence. The secret ingredient, in the words of Prime Minister\u00a0Anwar Ibrahim, is to push into the more lucrative areas from chip design to advanced packaging. The 77-year-old\u2019s government has announced a\u00a0500 billion ringgit<\/a>\u00a0($113 billion) moonshot effort for the semiconductor industry.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no easy task, even when you factor in that Malaysia is already the world\u2019s\u00a0sixth-largest<\/a>\u00a0chips exporter and a testing and assembly powerhouse. Its chip design industry is in its infancy, at best. The US, Taiwan and Japan are building the most advanced chipmaking plants. Local universities are struggling to mint the engineering talent required to close the gap on those leaders. The challenge goes on.<\/p>\n

But in Penang, I was immersed in an atmosphere of optimism and determination. From senior executives at chip plants to industry experts, people genuinely believe that the government support plus geopolitical tensions around the Taiwan Strait are going to offer Malaysia a once-in-a-generation opportunity to climb up the supply chain ladder.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no stranger to such excitement. When I was covering the industry in China over the past decade, local chip projects easily secured eye-watering sums of government investment. Some of them went on to fail spectacularly, and the reasons were a mix of insufficient long-term planning, research getting bogged down and a helping hand from US sanctions.<\/p>\n

In Penang\u2019s case, things seem different. The most important distinction is that the place is already a solid and valued part of the global supply chain. Malaysia isn\u2019t starting from scratch, many of the companies whose business it\u2019s trying to attract are already here, and it\u2019s aiming to evolve and upgrade rather than start something entirely new.<\/p>\n

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The growth also appears organic. The biggest chipmaking projects here are led by foreign giants such as Intel and Infineon, which have a more long-term vision for the plants. Towering cranes are piecing together the last parts of Intel\u2019s new advanced packaging plant on the island.In Infineon\u2019s\u00a0freshly built<\/a>\u00a0silicon carbide\u00a0<\/em>factory in Kulim \u2014 Penang\u2019s neighbor \u2014 workers in jumpsuits are making the next-generation power management chips for electric cars and AI data centers.<\/p>\n

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The government\u2019s job is now simple: Attract more big-time overseas players, train more engineers and support more local suppliers. For Penang, the chip dream that\u2019s been 50 years in the making is only just beginning.<\/p>\n

Source: Bloomberg<\/a><\/p>\n

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August \u201824<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":5119,"featured_media":31840,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[],"news_year":[295],"news_month":[226],"local_insights_alphabet":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38704,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38697\/revisions\/38704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38697"},{"taxonomy":"news_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_year?post=38697"},{"taxonomy":"news_month","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_month?post=38697"},{"taxonomy":"local_insights_alphabet","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investpenang.gov.my\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/local_insights_alphabet?post=38697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}