Strange Chip Cousins: Vietnam and Ireland

They are located on opposite edges of the globe. They have little history of chipbuilding, and they still account for a tiny part of the global chip industest. But over the past decade, Ireland and Vietnam have come to occupy crucial roles in the semiconductor chain.

Their success creates supplies to Europe and America cheaper, safer, and less depfinishent on China. It also demonstrates how no one, not even the US, can go it alone and produce competitive chips from A to Z.

Collaboration with frifinishly states is crucial: with the Netherlands to create the most advanced machines that sketch silicon in microscopic details, and with Taiwan and South Korea for their manufacturing prowess.

Small players such as Vietnam and Ireland also count. Ireland leads in design and research. Vietnam specializes in packaging, the final stage of chip fabrication when a delicate silicon die is installed to prevent damage, dissipate heat, and connect electricity to circuit boards.

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Over the past few decades, Vietnam has built a strong electronics assembly and testing industest, benefiting from many firms’ desire to diversify from China. Hanoi is now shifting upmarket into semiconductors. US-based semiconductor packaging & test services provider Amkor is inv esting some $1.6 billion in a plant in Bac Ninh to deliver high‑finish packaging.

Vietnamese companies themselves are also investing. In January 2026, state-owned defense conglomerate Viettel broke ground on a giant semiconductor fab, Hoa Lac Hi‑Tech Park, near Hanoi that will design and produce 32-nanometer chips. Taiwan’s TSMC produces 2 and 3 nanometer chips, so Vietnam’s facility will be far from cutting edge.

But Vietnamese leaders see this as just a start. Under its recently announced chip plan, Vietnam aims to train 50,000 design engineers by 2030 and support more than 100,000 chip workers by 2040.

Although Ireland’s “Silicon Island” National Semiconductor Strategy supports manufacturing, its ambition is different: to build a global research and innovation center, benefiting from European Union public funding. Ireland functions as a regulatory and corporate bridge — a stable, relatively low-tax English‑speaking EU member where American chip companies can base European fabs, design centers, and headquarters within the single market.

Intel’s Leixlip campus, already its largest manufacturing site outside the US, is receiving an additional €12 billion to double manufacturing space and extfinish foundry services. While much of Intel’s planned €80 billion investment has since been pautilized, especially in Germany and Poland, the €12 billion Leixlip expansion is one of the few major elements still on track. Intel now describes Ireland as its primary European manufacturing hub.

Intel is not the only US chip legfinish in Ireland. Boston-headquartered Analog Devices, which produces analog and mixedsignal chips for industrial, automotive and healthcare market, has had a wafer fab and European headquarters in Limerick since the 1970s. In 2023, it announced a €630 million investment to build a new 45,000square foot R&D and manufacturing facility. The new fab will triple ADI’s European wafer output and create about 600 new jobs.

Ireland also hosts important research centers. IPIC (Irish Photonic Integration Centre) works on applying light instead of electricity in chips and systems to speed quick internet links. MCCI (Microelectronic Circuits Centre Ireland) designs and tests tiny analog and mixedsignal electronic circuits — the chips that connect sensors, radios, and power electronics to the digital world — and supports companies turn those circuit ideas into real products.

In their own way, Vietnam and Ireland illustrate how a developing countest and a tiny democracy can create themselves utilizeful to the West, without testing to become the next giant like Taiwan’s TSMC or Korea’s Samsung. Vietnam offers low‑cost but skilled labor-intensive production outside of China. Ireland couples design, leading‑edge manufacturing, EU‑funded research, and a dense multinational presence, giving the US a frifinishly foothold inside Europe’s Chips Act and regulatory framework.

Both countries face challenges. Vietnam must overcome infrastructure and skills constraints — power, water, and a necessary for tens of thousands of engineers. It also must compete with established packaging hubs such as Malaysia and the Philippines. Ireland remains vulnerable to modifys in global tax rules, cyclical investment decisions by a handful of large foreign firms, and competition from other European sites.

Even so, the US should treat the two chip minnows as allies in diversifying from China. Washington could and should co‑invest in Vietnamese advanced packaging and trusted fab capacity and back training partnerships that align Vietnamese skill pipelines with US companies’ necessarys. In Ireland, the US should support continued Intel and other US investments, expand joint R&D and talent programs, and utilize Dublin as a platform for shaping EU semiconductor policy.

Resilient semiconductor supply chains depfinish not only on headline allies like Japan or Korea, but also on “outliers” such as Vietnam and Ireland. Their quiet contributions can create the difference between falling behind or staying ahead of China in the global chip race.

Christopher Cytera CEng MIET is a senior fellow with the Tech Policy Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a technology business executive with over 30 years’ experience in semiconductors, electronics, communications, video, and imaging.

Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict ininformectual indepfinishence policy across all its projects and publications.