Why did you establish a semiconductor design company in Vietnam?

Sato: One of the core operations of Renesas is a system solution business focused on three markets: automobiles, mobile products and PC/AV devices. To be successful in this business we need a development staff that can integrate LSI hardware design with suitable software design. Japan’s working population has started to decline and will continue to do so. That will make it very difficult to hire enough talented engineers within the country.

Recognizing this situation and being committed to expanding our system solution business, Renesas management determined that it was necessary to find ways to address three challenges:
1. Respond to a predicted absolute shortage of talented human resources
2. Become more efficient at developing system LSI devices, even as the chips grow increasingly complex
3. Invent improved techniques for creating system LSI chips.

Our solution was to establish the new company, Renesas Design Viet Nam Co., Ltd. (RVC). RVC recognizes that resolving these challenges is its major commitment.

Why did you choose Vietnam for the design center?

Sato: The major reason for choosing Vietnam is the people. Generally speaking, the Vietnamese people are as earnest and hard working as the Japanese. We believe that RVC's engineers should be "assertive, ambitious and attentive" and Vietnam can provide personnel with these traits. In addition, the nation offers the following advantages:
1. A high level of education, as evidenced by the country's high literacy rate, over 90 percent
2. A labor population with many younger people
3. A stable social foundation supported since the 1990s by the Doi Moi policy
4. A government-led core investment policy for the high-tech industry

Considering these factors, we concluded that Vietnam has enormous potential to develop its intellectual industry in the future.

What are RVC’s corporate policy and strategies, and what specific role is the company taking within the overall operations of Renesas?

Sato: With "Accuracy, Quality and Innovation" as our corporate policy, we will expand our businesses by engaging principally in logical design and verification, based on the latest design tools and the accurate design techniques demonstrated by our Vietnamese engineers. We believe that RVC will be able to support the overall development of Renesas' system solutions in the future and will take on a major role in the expansion of our global design operations.

Which fields are RVC focused on? And what is the organizational structure of the new company?

Sato: We are primarily focused on the design of SoC products for three markets: digital consumer goods, mobile telephones and vehicles. However, we are also considering partially including the design and development of product lines such as microcomputers and mixed-signal (MSIG) semiconductor devices.

RVC's design department is the core of our organization and we will assign many workers to both hardware and software design activities. Additionally, we want to set up both a business planning group and an IT infrastructure development group that will prepare us for future technological innovations.

As for our organizational structure, we want to develop a human resource training plan so that our design operations can be performed as soon as possible, primarily by Vietnamese employees rather than by Japanese loan employees. Consequently, we will be able to establish a corporate culture that reflects the local culture.

What are your ambitions and your goal for RVC?

Sato: RVC is the first company specializing in semiconductor design in Vietnam. To recruit many talented Vietnamese engineers, we are working with major colleges and universities in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi to open courses that will be sponsored by Renesas. We are also proposing training programs that are focused on the future. For example, we collaborated with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, headed by President (Insert name in English) and located in Ho Chi Minh City, to establish a special design course for the SuperH product family. Through these and other activities, RVC aims to go beyond the boundaries of Renesas and nurture semiconductor design as one of Vietnam’s core industries.

As for our goal, RVC is aiming for zero-defect design. Based on the three-year plan formulated to achieve this goal, we want to build a comprehensive structure for system LSI design from a global perspective.