Throughout this year, the Malaysian government has been focusing a lot on developing our own semiconductor chip design and production ecosystem. Various projects have been introduced, and collaborations with industry giants have been signed for this purpose.
Recently, it was reported that Malaysia has its first processing chip, called MARS1000, produced by local semiconductor chip design company, SkyeChip Sdn Bhd.
SkyeChip CEO, Fong Swee Kiang said that the MARS1000 processing chip is built using a 7nm process, not too far from what other companies such as AMD, Intel and NVIDIA use for their own AI processing chips.
MARS1000 functions as an edge AI processing chip which means that any AI inference processes and so on are performed directly on the equipment that will use this AI processing chip, and are not sent to a cloud server machine for processing.
With this, technically any company data that may be sent is safe because it will not leave the local network. He further said that this processing chip can be used in industries such as unmanned robotics, smart video analysis systems, smart cities, industrial segments and also generative AI.
The launch of the MARS1000 chip also comes with the announcement of EdgeMind, an edge AI system developed together with another automation company, Elliance Sdn Bhd. EdgeMind is seen as an AI automation system that can be used in the manufacturing and agricultural industries.
Both the MARS1000 processing chip and the EdgeMind system are a collaboration between four companies, namely Skyechip, Elliance, Kaltech and Estek Automation. SkyeChip alone is the owner of more than 90 technology patents over the past five years, while Elliance is responsible for developing EdgeMind without requiring in-depth programming knowledge.
Previously, Malaysia was known as the global semiconductor chip testing and packaging center, where 10 percent of the global supply of processing chips was packaged and tested in this country. With MARS1000, the country is seen taking a new step into the semiconductor chip design and production industry, which it is hoped can rival countries such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.