Recent activities on ultrafast photonic device technology development in the Femtosecond Technology Project sponsored by NEDO are introduced. Topics include management and control of the higher order dispersions of optical fibers, ultrafast mode-locked semiconductor laser, symmetric Mach-Zehnder type all-optical switch, ultrafast serial-to-parallel signal converter and sub-picosecond wavelength switch. Challenges towards novel ultrafast switching material systems are also described.