KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 21): Oppstar Bhd (KL:OPPSTAR) said on Friday it has received a conditional offer to access UK-based semiconductor giant Arm Holdings plc’s Compute Subsystem (CSS) technology for telecommunications and data centre applications.
This confirms a report by The Edge Malaysia's Aug 17-23 edition, which quoted sources as saying that the Penang-based integrated circuit design company was set to gain access to the more production-ready Neoverse compute subsystem technology under the strategic cooperation programme between the Malaysian government and Arm.
In a bourse filing, Oppstar said its wholly owned unit Oppstar Technology Sdn Bhd received a letter of offer dated Aug 3 from the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) detailing the conditional approval for the allocation of an Arm CSS access token.
The latest approval marks Oppstar’s second access to Arm’s advanced chip design technologies.
In May, the company said Mida had granted it access to an Arm Flexible Access (AFA) Token — Entry Tier, which provides engineering design and software tools for semiconductor development.
Oppstar said it is currently reviewing the terms, conditions and operational parameters of the latest offer.
The company said further details will be announced once the relevant documentation has been finalised and executed.
Shares of Oppstar rose 5.5 sen, or 8.3%, to 72 sen at Friday’s midday break, giving the company a market capitalisation of RM465.5 million.
In a separate statement on Friday, the Economy Ministry said drone manufacturer Alphaswift Industries Sdn Bhd had also been offered access to an AFA token.
The latest offers bring the number of Arm technology access packages offered to Malaysian companies to eight, comprising four Arm CSS packages and four AFA tokens, Economy Minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir said.
Five local companies have received the offers to date, he said.
Akmal Nasrullah also said the government is expanding efforts to build a pipeline of semiconductor talent, with 1,530 participants having completed the Arm OnDemand Training so far, against a target of 10,000 participants over four years.
An agreement involving 12 universities, supported by government ministries, agencies and industry players, will help structure the delivery of the Arm training programme, he said.
GreatAsic Technology Sdn Bhd and SkyeChip Bhd (KL:SKYECHIP), alongside Oppstar, are among the earliest recipients of conditional offers for both AFA and CSS token access.
AFA provides companies with early, lower-cost access to Arm's chip designs, enabling them to experiment, develop and test products without paying full licensing fees upfront. CSS, meanwhile, comprises pre-designed processor building blocks that enable companies to accelerate chip development.