News: Optoelectronics
10 December 2025
UK and Canada collaborate on optical engine for faster, more efficient and more sustainable AI data centers
A new UK-Canada technology partnership is building an advanced optical engine designed to make the world’s AI data centers faster, more efficient and more sustainable.
The project is the first major technical collaboration to emerge from the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed earlier this year between:
- the UK’s Compound Semiconductor Applications (CSA) Catapult (a not-for-profit center of excellence established in 2018, specializing in the measurement, characterization, integration and validation of compound semiconductor technology spanning power electronics, advanced packaging, radio frequency and microwave, and photonics applications);
- the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC, Canada’s only pure-play indium phosphide wafer fab, which specializes in custom photonics components and photonic integrated circuits); and
- the Centre de Collaboration MiQro Innovation (C2MI, a Canadian, global center for MEMS manufacturing, advanced semiconductor assembly and printable electronics).
In July, CSA Catapult, C2MI and the NRC signed an MoU to strengthen UK–Canada collaboration in photonic devices and compound semiconductor technologies.
The teams in both countries are now engineering new technology solutions, sharing expertise and building a new end-to-end supply chain for photonics applications.
Funded with £400,000 from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Technology Missions Fund, delivered by government agency Innovate UK, the organizations will develop a co-packaged optical engine – technology that integrates multiple optical components into a single package to handle extreme data loads with far lower power consumption.
Tackling the energy cost of AI
Training and running AI systems requires huge amounts of electricity, and data-center energy use is rising quickly. The new optical engine aims to support higher bandwidth, lower latency and reduced power consumption – laying the foundations for more sustainable, high-performance AI systems.
Making a global mark
CSA Catapult’s recent visit to Canada highlighted how the UK supply chain can fill critical gaps and where Canadian expertise accelerates UK innovation. This led to establishing the new joint project, and it has already attracted international attention.
The partnership and new project were presented at this year’s G7 meeting as an example of countries moving beyond intent and actively working together to deliver practical, real-world innovation.
The optical engine will be validated at CSA Catapult’s Future Telecoms Hub in Bristol (new translational research facility for telecoms hardware and technology platforms) before being tested on JOINER, an international experimentation platform born out of the UK, which allows new hardware to be trialled under realistic operating conditions.
“By linking our UK design skills and expertise with Canada’s outstanding laser fabrication and assembly capabilities, we’re creating a robust and exciting new trans-Atlantic supply chain and developing ground-breaking optical hardware that will help AI run faster and more sustainably,” says Joe Gannicliffe, head of Photonics and RF at CSA Catapult. “The technology demonstrator we’ll create will have been tested in the lab and in real world, and UK companies working with us will be able to access and build on this in future, helping them integrate next-generation optical technology into their own systems and strengthening the UK’s position within a growing global market.”
National Research Council of Canada signs MoU with Quebec’s C2MI and UK’s CSA Catapult
