Edinburgh-based start-up Acuid has gone into administration.

“The business could not get enough revenue to meet its overheads,” a source close to the firm told Electronics Weekly.

The firm’s administrators would not discuss what is happening with Acuid’s assets, which include a second spin of the test silicon which was claimed last year to be operating at 14Gbit/s.

Based on high-speed serial link intellectual property from Russia, the firm had two strands, a fabless chip operation developing serial interface chips and another making chip testers for the semiconductor industry.

The firm reported having test silicon of its 10 Gigabit Ethernet PHY in February last year and was developing an integrated Gigabit Ethernet controller.

HgCapital invested £16m into Acuid in two stages and as recently as November last year the Scottish Executive put in £500,000. It also received an order for DRAM testers from Infineon Technologies in June last year.

In addition to its Dalkeith design centre, the firm had operations in Russia, Germany, Canada and Singapore, employing around 70 people.