One Ho Chi Minh City-based university has partnered with a local technological corporation in an ambitious effort to create their own 5G integrated circuits, or 5G chipsets.

The University of Technology (UT) under the Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City signed a collaboration agreement with Viettel High Technology Industries Corporation (VHT) —  the key research and production unit of military-run telecoms giant Viettel — for researching and developing integrated circuits used for 5th-generation mobile networks.

Under the agreement, the two sides will collaborate closely on electronics and telecommunications, including the research and development of integrated circuits for 5G, training and developing human resources, and putting the new technological solutions into operation.

Both sides promised to share experience and industrial knowledge regularly and jointly deal with potential issues in training, scientific research, and technology transfer.

As the first part of the collaboration agreement, two sides signed a contract under which UT would provide VHT with consultation services and the design for the 5G transceiver chip in a 14-month period.

VHT, in turn, hopes to accelerate scientific research into technology at the university through the collaboration agreement by commercializing the fruit from its research results.

According to Nguyen Trung Kien, director of the  VHT's Viettel IC Design Center, the company decided to partner with UT because of its research team whose members are excellent at developing integrated circuits.

"The university's team of engineers have got many outstanding achievements for the last many years, including some of their best products such as DVB-T — a terrestrial digital TV channel receiver chip — the power amplifier IC, the low noise amplifier (LNA), and mmWave bands, among others relating to integrated circuits," Kien said.

Kien also expressed his expectation that VHT would have a long-term collaborative relation with UT in order to not only work on the 5G chipsets but also expand the scope of their cooperation to other sectors of 5G technology, the Internet of things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI).

Designing and producing integrated circuits for the 5G network are considered an important step for Viettel in its strategy to fully master the technologies of the 5G wireless network system, according to VHT general director Nguyen Vu Ha.

Viettel has set a goal of creating a 'made in Vietnam' 5G chipset with decisiveness and commitment, he stressed.

To realize the goal, apart from connecting with international companies for technology transfers, Viettel also plans to form their own domestic pool of experts in chip manufacturing and scientists from Vietnamese universities.

Hanoi-based Viettel Group is the largest telecommunication service provider in Vietnam, operated by the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense.

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