Valued at $23 million CDN, the National Microelectronics and Photonics Testing Collaboratory (NMPTC) gives university researchers the best available equipment and expertise to test intricate and high-frequency designs at the required levels of speed and complexity that these technologies make possible.

In 2007, the Testing Collaboratory included 21 Canadian institutions that are conducting research in microsystems and related fields. Four labs host the equipment: the Advanced Photonic Systems Lab at Queen's University; the Advanced Mixed-Signal Systems Lab at McGill University; the Advanced Digital Systems Lab at the University of Toronto; and the Advanced RF Systems Lab at the University of Manitoba.

Managed by CMC, these "virtual labs" support both onsite and remote access to industry-standard equipment for the verification and test of SoC technology, mixed-signal systems, RF components, photonic systems, and integration of all the above.

As described at the links below, Canadian researchers are using these labs to develop hardware countermeasures that will guard against security threats to cryptographic system, implement new signal processing techniques in microelectronic devices, study self-pulsating lasers, help create novel devices for applications which will take advantage of extremely high frequency bandwidths, and much more.

• The Advanced Digital Systems Lab at the University of Toronto
• The Advanced Mixed-Signal Lab at McGill University
• The Advanced Photonics Lab at Queen’s University 
• The Advanced RF Lab at the University of Manitoba