Silicon Gorge is a region in

South West England South West England, or the South West of England, is one of the nine official regions of England, regions of England in the United Kingdom. Additionally, it is one of four regions that altogether make up Southern England. South West England con ...

in which several

high-tech High technology (high tech or high-tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or ...

and research companies are based, specifically the triangle of

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

Swindon Swindon () is a town in Wiltshire, England. At the time of the 2021 Census the population of the built-up area was 183,638, making it the largest settlement in the county. Located at the northeastern edge of the South West England region, Swi ...

and

Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city, non-metropolitan district and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West England, South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean ...

. It was ranked fifth of such areas in Europe in 2002, and is named after the

Avon Gorge The Avon Gorge () is a 1.5-mile (2.5-kilometre) long Canyon, gorge on the River Avon (Bristol), River Avon in Bristol, England. The gorge runs south to north through a limestone ridge west of Bristol city centre, and about 3 miles (5&nbs ...

Cities

Gloucester

is home to a number of cyber/digital companies including some key UK data centres and hosting companies. Lots of these companies started in the early years of the Internet such as Star Internet, now Claranet and Fasthosts, now IONOS - two long standing employers in the area. Supporting Gloucester and the south-west infrastructure is a data centre that sits on the figure-of-eight fibre connectivity route that runs around the UK
Indectron Data Centre
where many carriers have points-of-presence (POP). This includes

Tier 1 network A Tier 1 network is an Internet Protocol (IP) network that can reach every other network on the Internet solely via settlement-free interconnection (also known as settlement-free peering). Tier 1 networks can exchange traffic with other Tier 1 net ...

, which puts Gloucester along side Manchester and London on the connectivity rankings. The area is fast becoming known for cyber security with the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) locally in Cheltenham (since 1950). New cyber accelerators such as CyNam have been growing, with a new £1 billon cyber park called Golden Valley pushing growth even further of the sector within the region.

Bath

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

is home to a number of high-tech companies ranging from fabless semiconductor designers to eCommerce retailers. Many companies have been started by ex-employees of companies such as

Future Publishing Future plc is a British publishing company. It was started in 1985 by Chris Anderson. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. History 1985–2012 The company was founded by Chris Anderson a ...

and IPL, two long standing employers in the area.

Microelectronic companies in Bath

* PicoChip

Ventures

Lovehoney Lovehoney is a British business that sells sex toys, lingerie and erotic gifts on the Internet. Their tagline is "the sexual happiness people". In addition to retailing, Lovehoney has more than 400 own brand products and does development and ...

uk sex-toy retailer. * The Filter media recommendation service. *

Netcraft Netcraft is an Internet services company based in London, England. The company provides cybercrime disruption services across a range of industries. History Netcraft was founded by Mike Prettejohn in Bath, Somerset. The company provides web s ...

Internet Research and Security

Bristol

is part of the Silicon Gorge, along with

and

and hosts a number of

and

creative industries The creative industries refers to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. They may variously also be referred to as the cultural industries (especially in Europe) or the ...

including research group

HP Labs HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for HP Inc. HP Labs' headquarters is in Palo Alto, California and the group has research and development facilities in Bristol, UK. The development of programmable desktop calculators, ink ...

and animation studio

Aardman Animations Aardman Animations Limited, known simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It is known for films and television series made using stop motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those fe ...

. The cluster of high-tech electronics industries began when

Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...

located a design office in Bristol in 1972.

also has the strongest digital media supply chain in England, outside London and has been pinpointed as a "hot spring" for innovation on the McKinsey/World Economic Forum innovation map.

Microelectronics companies in Bristol

* Blu Wireless *

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

Cray Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed ...

Supercomputers *

Codasip Codasip (Abrev., abrev. CO-Design Application-Specific Instruction-set Processor) is a Processor (computing), processor technology company enabling system-on-chip developers to differentiate their products. The company specializes in RISC-V proce ...

Graphcore Graphcore Limited is a British semiconductor company that develops AI accelerator, accelerators for AI and machine learning. It has introduced a massively parallel ''Intelligence Processing Unit'' (IPU) that holds the complete machine learning mo ...

AI accelerators *

Imagination Technologies Imagination Technologies Group Limited is a British semiconductor and Computer software, software design company owned by Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a private equity fund based in Beijing that is ultimately owned by the Chinese government. ...

Infineon Infineon Semiconductor solutions is the largest microcontroller manufacturer in the world, as well as Germany's largest semiconductor manufacturer. It is also the leading automotive semiconductor manufacturer globally. Infineon had roughly 58,0 ...

* Nordic Semiconductor * Sondrel *

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

* UltraSoC * XMOS

Tech companies in Bristol

* Blackmagic Design * Just Eat * Open Bionics * Zap Map

Business incubators

* Bristol Robotics Laboratory Hardware Incubato

* SETsquared * Spike Design

Support organisations

Media Sandbox
by Watershed Media Centre

Networks

* Bristol Media

Ventures

Dyson Dyson may refer to: * Dyson (surname), people with the surname Dyson * Dyson (company), a Singaporean multinational home appliances company founded by James Dyson * Dyson (crater), a crater on the Moon * Dyson (operating system), a Unix general- ...

Gresham Technologies plc Gresham Technologies, formerly Gresham Computing, is a British software company that specialises in providing real-time transaction control and enterprise data integrity solutions for the finance indutsry. Listed on the main market of the Lond ...

IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

Renishaw plc Renishaw plc is a British engineering company based in Wotton-under-Edge, England. The company's products include coordinate-measuring machines and machine tool products. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTS ...

* Viral Ad Network

Other cities

Cities sometimes associated with the region: *

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

Southampton Southampton is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. It is located approximately southwest of London, west of Portsmouth, and southeast of Salisbury. Southampton had a population of 253, ...

Plymouth Plymouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England. It is located on Devon's south coast between the rivers River Plym, Plym and River Tamar, Tamar, about southwest of Exeter and ...

Academic Institutions

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

University of the West of England The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a Public university, public research university, located in and around Bristol, England, UK. With more than 39,912 students and 4,300 staff, it is the largest provider of hi ...

University of Bath The University of Bath is a public research university in Bath, England. Bath received its royal charter in 1966 as Bath University of Technology, along with a number of other institutions following the Robbins Report. Like the University ...

University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a research university in the West Country of England, with its main campus in Exeter, Devon. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of ...

Bath Spa University Bath Spa University is a public university in Bath, Somerset, Bath, England, with its main campus at Newton Park, about west of the centre of the city. The university has other campuses in the city of Bath, and one at Corsham Court in Wiltshi ...

References

High-technology business districts in the United Kingdom Information technology places Science and technology in Bristol Science and technology in Gloucestershire Science and technology in Wiltshire {{Wiltshire-geo-stub

Cities

Gloucester

Bath

Microelectronic companies in Bath

Ventures

Bristol

Microelectronics companies in Bristol

Tech companies in Bristol

Business incubators

Support organisations

Networks

Ventures

Other cities

Academic Institutions

See also

References