One of the major highlights from the KL20 Summit yesterday was Datuk Pua Khein Seng of Taiwan-based Phison Electronics Corporation’s announcement of a new venture based in Selangor, called Malaysia AI Storage (MaiStorage).

According to Pua, the startup aiming to push Malaysia towards the generative artificial intelligence (AI) era would be backed by his company, withe the deal including a technology transfer worth over RM1 billion and bringing home 200 experienced engineers — in what has been described as a “reverse brain drain” for the country.

Technology news site SoyaCincau reported that MaiStorage would be offering new designers wages starting from RM6,000, and targeting to launch its initial public offering (IPO) in the next few years.

Phison was also announced as one of the four partners in Selangor Information Technology and Digital Economy Corporation’s (Sidec) Malaysia Semiconductor Accelerator and Integrated Circuit (IC) Design Park, which was touted by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as South-east Asia’s biggest.

Yesterday, Pua had set KL20’s tone with a speech titled “Malaysia’s Time is Now”, followed by joining a roundtable titled “A Trillion Dollar Industry: Meeting the Growing Demand for Semiconductors”.

Today, Pua will join a panel titled “IC Design: Is Malaysia Ready for Disruption?”, along with other guests from chip giant Intel, Taiwan-based silicon intellectual property firm InPsytech Inc, and Bayan Lepas-based IC designer SkyeChip Sdn Bhd.

Also known as KS Pua, the technologist is widely regarded as “the father of USB drives”. Malay Mail charts Pua’s rise and contribution to storage solutions which has changed the way we store, transfer and access digital data:

Born in 1974, Pua worked his way up from humble roots in Sekinchan, Selangor, to the top of his field as the founder of Phison in Taiwan.

According to a report by local startup and SME-centred media platform, WargaBiz, Pua was educated at Pin Hwa High School in Klang.

He was then accepted to the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan where he majored in Electrical and Control Engineering.

After graduating, Pua ventured into the field of semiconductor technology, as he saw the immense potential of emerging technologies like flash memory.

In 2000, at the age of 27, he founded Phison Electronics Corporation in Taiwan, together with four other partners.

Phison penetrated Taiwan’s tech market with the vision of harnessing the power of flash memory to create a new generation of storage solutions.

The company’s groundbreaking innovation eventually pushed out the then go-to storage system, the floppy disc, due to its impracticality and limited storage capacity.

Phison became a prominent player in the semiconductor industry, providing controller integrated circuits for solid-state drives (SSDs), universal serial bus (USB) flash drives, memory cards, and other storage devices.

According to a MyStarJob report, Pua invented the first single-chip USB flash storage device, which was an improvement over the older and more laborious multi-chip designs, despite the fact that USB storage devices had already been investigated and produced in Israel and the United States.

The new product, called the “pendrive,” was not only cheaper to make than previous storage devices, but also smaller and more capable of holding larger amounts of data.

Over the years, the storage solutions company has grown to employ over 3,800 employees globally with more than 75 per cent of them being engineers.

Under Pua’s leadership, the group has emerged as a trailblazer in the NAND flash controller technology.

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/202...y-phison/130038

Phison liquidate their company before in 2020.

This new here from last year say the founder himself not optimistic of the investment here in Malaysia.

one time proud father of pendrive was caught for cooking the books

btw, dont say he's the father of usb drive. a few ppl oso have this claim. if father of pendrive maybe yes

beside pendrive that less ppl seem to be using now, wat other products phison offer?

What is this AI Storage about? Another fancy name for AI focused data center?

If he invent a super usb that can store 100TB of stuff for the price of RM120 I will kneel and hail him as god in my lifetime.

AI have become a buzzword, non AI stuff also being labelled as AI.
Maybe I should called my jamban as AI-Jamban.

LOL

I hate to say this but this venture will fail, again.

He said it himself, our nation is a bunch of salarymen, kais pagi, makan pagi type. All this hi-tech stuff needs boldness, initiative and hard work.

We need to focus on things we're good at, low tech, agri, trading.

And why is this park not in cybertakjaya?

ini sebab effort from Madanon and politicaly stable they come and invest la...

why so negative minded one?

Pendrive no moar....


The end of his era

Now cum back do what?

didnt know he is phison boss

there is another bigger boss, a penang lang in US.

Soon there will be AI mamak stall.

Until the talk is walked, is only lip service.

If politic stable then why Madanon still try so hard to appease the green voters? Even let samseng like Akmal ride on them.

Unless Madanon is actually greener than PuAS in nature, they are doing it voluntarily

Cyberjaya is the brainchild of Atuk. You think AI wants to see it to be berjaya?

p/s AI as in Anwar Ibrahim

because all those green voters no brains want... never think of the future of the country always think of themselves....
so of course need to appease them la many still support them also brainless.. msia full of brainless ppl never think make rash decision based on emotions etc...

Cyberjaya and malaysia mentality doomed from the start

prefer sandforce

sure onot dare to come back??? not scare later kena boycott how???

Dulu jual ikan di pantai Sekinchan?

they oredi use AI. the robot serving food to ur table is AI

integration with computer company. Chips they build inside your motherboard, PC and laptops. but mostly china's brand computer. .

i used to hear the conspiracy that the latest technology ppl use today is always the outdated technology used by the US intelligence some 20 yrs back. can anybody confirm?

SSDs and its controllers

Many big brands actually use phison as a conrtoller for their SSD. If not directly using an available controller, they get a controller design from them. They are considered experts in this area.

They also do white-label OEM SSDs. Basically when companies like samsung produce too many NAND chips than they actually want to use to sell (or maybe didnt pass QC). Phison buys the extra stock to be sold as SSD for other brands. So if you see some cheaper CCP brand that you never heard before, likely the product was made by phison.

thx bro

Plenty, mainly flash controller and the related designs.
There are many SSDs in the market contain their controller, heck they brought the first PCI-E 5.0 SSD controller to the table.

This post has been edited by kingkingyyk: Apr 23 2024, 05:01 PM

AI datasets & models require massive amount of storage.
AI can also be used in storage controller to identifying cold/hot data by learning usage patterns, performing predictive caching, so your data can be obtained faster.

On exact business nature of this startup.... no idea.

This post has been edited by kingkingyyk: Apr 23 2024, 05:06 PM

U hit the nail on the head. I'm reminded of formulaman's recent statement that the government wants to attract unicorn startups, after the only homegrown unicorn startup that was able to go international, up and left for our neighbour. makes me think that all this talk is as useful as the countless MOUs signed last year by PMX.

I think my Sabrent and Kingston SSDs are using Phison chipset.