(Petaling Jaya, 25 January 2021) Key ASIC announced today that it has inked a contract valued at RM21,000,000 for first part of the project with Canvas Technology to provide product, technology and design IP development strategy, planning and implementation for a wafer fab. The project is planned to have multiple parts and contracts of subsequent parts are expected to follow in the near future.

To date, the market capitalization of semiconductors has exceeded USD4 trillion, powered by the digitalization of economy globally. In the past two years, there is a surge on the construction new fabs or repurpose of existing wafer fabs. Reported by SEMI in August 2019, 33 new wafer fabs were under construction and over 50 of the existing fabs are repurposed for the current technologies to meet the market trend. Expectedly, leading this wave of development is China with spending of USD24B followed by Taiwan with spending of $13B and Europe and Mideast with spending of USD11B. This created a strong demand for licensing of technologies and Design IPs so that these expensive fabs can churn out chips at the soonest, reducing the time to revenue.

KeyWare™, the Standard Cell libraries that are ultra-low power or high performance is uniquely giving the wafer fabs a strong competitive advantage. Chips that are designed using the libraries of ultra-low power will be able to reduce power consumption by about 30% on the same process technology and chips that are designed using the Standard Cell libraries of high performance will be able to increase the speed of the chip by about 30% on the same process technology enabling the chip designers to develop highly competitive products in the market.

In addition to KeyWare™, the Company has a rich pool of silicon proven and standard compliant IPs such as USB2.0, USB3.0, PCi-e 1.2, PCi-e 2.0 and Ethernet, memory blocks, I/Os, a full spectrum of ADC, DAC and AFEs, total of more than 100 IP blocks that are commonly used in the design of SoCs. These IPs are essential for the design of SoCs in IOT, AI, smart home, industry 4.0, consumer and communication.

“The steep growth of new wafer fabs in the past two years has created strong demand for technologies and silicon proven SoC platform-based IP. With the rapid development of IOT and AI coupled with the severe shortage of chips and capacity across the board, the demand for technologies and Design IPs will continue to grow in the foreseeable future,” said Mr. Eg Kah Yee, Chairman and CEO of Key ASIC.

About Key ASIC:

About Key ASIC:Key ASIC Berhad (Stock Code: 0143) is a public listed company on Mainboard of Bursa Malaysia. It specializes design and manufacturing of IOT chips and system, connecting any electronics and non-electronic items to the Internet. MCard and MDrive are the IOT products currently shipping in the market. It also offers turnkey ASIC design service and SoC design and manufacturing. Its customers are largely in the US, Europe and Asia. It has offices in Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore.

(Petaling Jaya, 14 December, 2020) Key ASIC sees chips that go into medical equipment and other pandemic related or accelerated products are currently booked for production till July 2021 amid third wave of the pandemic and rapid growth of 5G.

The market is predicting that the price of chips is likely to increase by 30-40% in 2021 due to strong demand overall.  Key ASIC is a leading-edge technology company that design and market ASIC chips to customers in Asia, US and Europe.

The Company specializes in Artificial Intelligence systems and Internet of Things (IoT) chip with multiple patents awarded in U.S., China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia and many more patents are pending approval.  Millions of units of these chips have been shipped.

“Other than strong demand from the health industry, we see strong demand also from other industries.  The market is demanding for devices, equipment or things to be connected so that they can be remotely controlled and managed for online services,” said Eg Kah Yee, Chairman and CEO of Key ASIC.  “5G is driving very strong growth in the IOT and Artificial Intelligent market rapidly,” he added.

To date, over 71 million of infected cases and more than 1.6M death are recorded worldwide with nearly 700,000 new cases each day.  The United States and Western Europe are experiencing higher infection in the third wave and the virus is spreading to the developing countries and the pandemic is expected to continue well into 2021.

Due to the unpredictability of the pandemic, companies are making longer production plans in managing unexpected disruption of the supply chain due to sudden surge of the virus. 63% of the companies have reported some form of supply chain shortage during the pandemic.

According to a study done by Global Semiconductor Association, the chips business that are growing rapidly at this time are in the applications of 5G, Internet of Things (IOT), and Artificial Intelligence.

Companies are constantly reviewing their business plan to adapt to the new normal by increasing the investment in the areas of automation, cloud and connectivity enabling not only more online business activities but also the services to be delivered online.

In addition to the continuous strong demand of chips for ventilators, there is a surging demand for the Internet of Medical Things (IOMT) technologies to get medical equipment in the hospitals or clinics to be connected.  Hospitals are also providing home wireless Internet of Medical Thing devices such as blood pressure monitor, oxymeter, glucose meter and ECG device to manage patients at home.

Impacted by the virus, companies are investing into technologies to transform their businesses to adapt to the pandemic and post pandemic era by going online minimizing the people’s contacts.

About Key ASIC:

Key ASIC Berhad (Stock Code: keyasic 0143) is a public listed company on Mainboard of Bursa Malaysia. It specializes design and manufacturing of IOT chips and system, connecting any electronics and non-electronic items to the Internet. MCard and MDrive are the IOT products currently shipping in the market. It also offers turnkey ASIC design service and SoC design and manufacturing. Its customers are largely in the US, Europe and Asia. It has offices in Malaysia and Taiwan.