Wales Manufacturing, Education Stephen Farrell

Cardiff's Compound Semiconductor Centre, a joint venture between Cardiff University and IQE, has been awarded a £1.1m project to develop a high-speed platform for use in communications devices.

The SUPER8 project will develop a new ultra-high speed transceiver platform to service optical data communications in hyper-scale Cloud datacentres.

Transceivers combine a transmitter and receiver in a single electronic package and are used across wireless communications devices like mobile phones, cordless phones sets and two-way radios.

The research and development project has been awarded through Innovate UK's emerging and enabling technologies call.

The centre will collaborate with Glasgow's Compound Semiconductor Technologies Ltd (CST) and the UK manufacturing base of California-headquartered KAIAM Corporation. It aims to translate the science into high-volume manufacturing in 30 months.

Project lead Dr Wyn Meredith said: "The adoption of cloud services, video on demand and emerging 'Internet of Things' services are driving a massively expanding global data bandwidth demand.

"This project will deliver an 'all UK' developed and manufactured solution which leverages world-class compound semiconductor materials and device expertise at the Centre and CST with KAIAM's highly innovative photonic integrated circuit technology."