KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s partnership with the United Kingdom-based Arm Limited will zoom in on the ecosystem perspective and aims to uplift local players in the semiconductor industry, says Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli.
The Economy Minister said the comprehensive ecosystem partnership also aims to develop complex design companies with Arm’s intellectual property (IP) expertise, develop 10,000 talents for the pipeline and design based on the Arm Compute Subsystem (CSS).
“For each of the CSS, we are looking to build a complete supply chain in advanced industries such as AI data servers, autonomous vehicles, IoT (Internet of Things), robotics and others.
“An ecosystem perspective also means that we will prioritise local players as the first resort for every part of the supply chain,” he said in his speech at the launch ceremony of strategic collaborations in the semiconductor industry here yesterday.
He added that the partnership with Arm is not a one-off endeavour, but instead, ambitious and farsighted.
Rafizi said a collaboration structure with advanced foreign firms has also been put in place alongside proposed technology transfer and localisation requirements to uplift local players in a realistic and holistic manner.
According to Rafizi, the next few months will see the launching of the 10-year vision blueprint, announcements of CSS token recipients, highlighting collaborations with local players and showcasing technology prototypes at the next KL20 Summit (the last was held in April 2024).
He said there were always questions as to why Arm, the world’s largest chip architecture designer, would choose Malaysia.
“Time and again, we were convinced that this is indeed the right time, right place, and the right people coming together.
“A collaboration with Arm is a show of confidence in what we could do.
“Malaysians owe it to ourselves to have faith in our abilities and aspirations, and to say that we are ready, and will be ready to follow the path of history,” said Rafizi.
Arm chief executive officer Rene Haas applauded Malaysia’s ambition and vision.
“We know Malaysia has decades of experience in the semiconductor industry since back in the 1970s.
“This means a rich ecosystem has been born here around advanced packaging, assembling, and manufacturing.
“By taking this rich knowledge of how the ecosystem works and partnering with Arm, we believe this partnership is very well poised for success and a huge transformation,” he said in his speech.
