Ireland Puts €71m Into Chiplet Research Centre Led by Photonics Chief

Ireland will spend nearly €71m over eight years on Rinn Semiconductors, one of seven national research centres launched in July under the new Rinn Network. The seven centres share €460m in Government money, support 577 research positions and plan to develop more than 800 PhDs across 17 research-performing organisations, according to Research Ireland figures released with the launch.

Prof Paul Townsend, a photonics specialist at University College Cork and Tyndall National Institute, directs the new centre. He told SiliconRepublic.com the money is only part of the picture; the real test is whether coordinated research can outperform scattered projects.

What is the centre actually building?

Rinn Semiconductors will focus on heterogeneously integrated semiconductor systems. Its stated answer to the end of Moore's Law scaling is chiplet-based design: multiple smaller modules assembled into one larger processor. The centre will apply these technologies in three areas — future internet, sustainable energy and the environment, and digital healthcare.

Townsend frames the stakes in concrete terms. "Today, semiconductor chips touch nearly every aspect of our daily lives; they are in phones, computers and medical technology," he said. "Almost any problem you can think of – societal or technological – requires the use of semiconductors to provide a solution."

He also cites the industrial base the centre must serve. Ireland hosts a semiconductor sector with a 50-year operating history that employs 20,000 people across more than 100 companies, he said. The national Silicon Island strategy aims to build on this and to contribute to the EU Chips Act goal of growing Europe's share of global semiconductor manufacturing output. A research centre does not manufacture chips, so the contribution will be indirect — through design, packaging research and talent rather than fab capacity.

Who is Paul Townsend?

Townsend studied physics and earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge on polymers that behave as one-dimensional semiconductors. He then worked at British Telecom on quantum cryptography, work he describes as ancestral to "the quantum information and computing revolution that we frequently read about" today.

"In 2003, I had the opportunity to move to Ireland with my family and colleagues to found a new group at UCC and Tyndall, working on optical fibre communication systems with funding from Science Foundation Ireland," he said. He has since led photonics research at Tyndall. "My ambition is to take this an exciting further step forward with Rinn Semiconductors," he said.

How will the collaboration work?

The centre plans what it calls "radical collaboration" with and between Dublin City University, Munster Technological University, Trinity College Dublin, Tyndall, UCC, University of Galway and University of Limerick. Townsend said the goal is a cohesive "atom to systems" value chain in Ireland, connecting everything from basic materials research through to complete technology solutions, leveraging the fabrication facilities at Tyndall.

He offered one early proof point. "The significant scale of the industry collaborative research projects we have established in just the first two months of operation gives me great confidence that this vision can be realised," he said. He named no project partners, values or timelines, so the claim rests on his word alone.

What does the director do?

Townsend is responsible for prioritising the programme, budgeting, grant compliance and stakeholder relations. He also runs his own research group as an active principal investigator, in two areas:

• Energy-efficient interconnect technologies for AI clusters in data centres, aiming to constrain AI power consumption.
• Distributed acoustic sensing in optical fibre cables, targeting better monitoring of undersea communication cables and offshore windfarm power cables.

What comes next?

The centre targets four outcomes: research breakthroughs in chiplet integration and packaging; translation into manufacturable technologies and products; talent development; and engaged research programmes with stakeholders on policy and society. That last item includes work with teachers and policymakers to draw more students, particularly women, into physics and engineering.

Townsend argues the wider Rinn Network can create "greater value and impact than could be achieved by a group of individual centres working in a less connected way", and that its scale will attract external talent to Ireland.

The promise is large and the funding is modest by fab-era standards. Whether €71m can shift a 20,000-person industry's trajectory will show in the first industry projects, PhD output and any products that reach manufacturing.