ELAN Microelectronics Corporation is an IC designer and provider of 8-bit microcontrollers and PC Peripheral ICs. Situated at the Hsinchu Science Park, the Silicon Valley of Taiwan  (http://www.emc.com.tw)

Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) is a manufacturer of semiconductors, founded in 1984. Its focus is on system-level solutions built around flashmicrocontrollers. Its products include microcontrollers (including 8051 derivatives and AT91SAM and AT91CAP ARM-based micros), and its own Atmel AVR and AVR32 architectures, radio frequency (RF) devices, EEPROM and Flash memory devices (including DataFlash-based memory), and a number of application-specific products. Atmel supplies its devices as standard products, ASICs, or ASSPs depending on the requirements of its customers. In some cases it is able to offer system on chip solutions.

Starting with AT89C51 by using assembly language to understand how the MCU works, that’s the way all student in Vietnam opens the door of the Embedded world!

As said above, you can understand how popular the Atmel chip is in Vietnam. Asking me? Yes, of course I used to start by the same way.

Some recent years, there’s some change on the position of Atmel in Vietnam, because of the fake products and the long lead-time, however, it is still a most popular chip in Vietnam.

I’m familiar with AT89C51 and AVR ATmega, however, ATTiny is the first one we used in the large number (some ten of thousands).

Known Atmel Singapore via Arrow, this would be the good chance to open the relationship with the most popular chip in Vietnam.

NXP Semiconductors N.V. (Nasdaq: NXPI) provides High Performance Mixed Signal and Standard Product solutions that leverage its leading RF, Analog, Power Management, Interface, Security and Digital Processing expertise. These innovations are used in a wide range of automotive, identification, wireless infrastructure, lighting, industrial, mobile, consumer and computing applications.

Using NXP’s MCU from the second year when studying at the University of Technology with the introduction from Mr. Kiem Huynh (Lecturer – the well-known coach in the Robot contest).

It would be the very good beginning, I quickly understood 8 bits MCU (LPC922, LPC932, P89V51Rx2), ARM7  MCU (LPC2000) and used them in some application when still being a student.

I connected Philips Semiconductors (Vietnam’s representative office) from 2004 and actually provided many support for them in the MCU contest 2nd and 3rd, with many useful information in my personal website.

I got their Certificated in the MCU contest 2005 and the Award for the contribution to the contest.

The interesting thing is, in the meeting with NXP’s team in June, 2010, I met Mr. Tan – Sales Director, who participated in the Celeration 5 years ago to give me the Award!  He was very supprised, and ofcourse, I was, too. The world is not big enough, huh?

We are now the good partner, not only with the NXP’s Singapore , but also the Vietnam office.

Doing business is just for doing business, but friends are the friends, aren’t you?

WIZnet (http://www.wiznet.co.kr) provides Hardwired TCP/IP chips, embedded Internet modules, external devices, and serial device servers in wired and wireless environments.

Sometime the business is going very well, just after some email from the unknown people, that’s the case I met with WIZnet, the company in Korea.

Meeting with Mr. Kit Wan in Shenzhen, China (2009) and WIZnet team (Mr. Jace Sohn, Mr. Kit Wan,..) in Dongguan, China (2010), there’s many stories to tell.

Keeping the good relation ship, my friends!

UPDATE: Picture taken with WIZnet Hong Kong team at IIC 2012.

I usually talk with the young people about the technology, about the creativity, about how to use the tool to describe the idea, expand freedom of the human intelligence. Talk with them whenever having chance, in university or even in the coffee shop.

One of the most important factor to become the successful person in technology field is the creativity, and young people, with full of the creative power, would be the main force for that developing…

Young man, motherland needs you to become the powerful country…

The business trip 2009 in HK was the first time I go oversea, many feelings for the first time saw the difference: the culture, the lifestyle, the infrastructure, traffic…

There’s many things to tell, about my thought, about my feeling…

Vietnam Fan Joint Stock company (http://www.asia-fan.com/), one of the biggest fan factory in Vietnam- is more than the close partner, they are actually the good friend.

The below picture was token with Khai –  the Production Assistant Manager of AF, my friend.

Young Bill’s (William Hones) gift shop opens in the middle of May, 2009 in Huynh Van Banh street, Hochiminh city.

Congrats him, the owner of  Innovatoys, open the Giftshop would be the good step for him in Vietnam.

Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. is an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was one of the first semiconductor companies in the world, having started as a division of Motorola in Phoenix, Arizona in 1949.

Meeting with Freescale and Arrow (distributor) in the beginning of September, 2010. This would be the great chance to know the future of Freescale and its plan to extend the Vietnam market.

Start with the DEMO9S08LL16 to understand how to use Freescale chip.