Awarding the 1st Circuit Design Competition for Smart Cities
On May 18, Ho Chi Minh City Hi-Tech Park Management Board organized the final round and awarded the "1st Circuit Design Competition for Smart Cities", thereby aiming to nurture creative ideas and contribute to promoting the development of human resources in the city's semiconductor chip industry. This is also an event in a series of activities to celebrate Vietnam Science and Technology Day.
The competition was launched in November 2023, with the goal of finding products, solutions, and IC design ideas to solve problems in the context of the city focusing on investment in development and construction of the smart cities. Accordingly, the microchip industry plays an increasingly important role in the digital transformation revolution, green transformation, and knowledge economy, contributing to the development and depth of the economies of Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam.
After 6 months, the organization Board received a total of 39 projects participating in the competition, going through the preliminary round, there were 5 excellent projects entering the final round, meeting all 3 criteria, such as innovative creativity, efficiency and ability to nurture development. Some projects have quite new IC design ideas, highly appreciated by IC experts and businesses for their potential for practical application, commercialization to the market and registration of intellectual property titles.

The organization Board awarded prizes to projects
The organization Board awarded the first prize to the project: Design of a low-noise Analog Front-end chip to reconfigure the application of receiving signals from sensors on 180nm CMOS technology (University of Natural Sciences).
Second prize belongs to the project: Design of hardware to remove fog in smart camera images (Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education).
Third prize belongs to the project: Designing a high-performance SAR ADC circuit to apply digital conversion of signals from sensors for IoT systems (University of Natural Sciences).
In addition, the jury awarded 4 additional consolation prizes and 6 promising prizes to a number of project groups that were highly appreciated for their ability to apply and develop in the future. Projects that reach the final round will receive a total prize of more than 100 million VND, and will receive intensive training and incubation by experts at Ho Chi Minh City High-Tech Park.