The US Memories co-operative is no more, the president Sanford Kane was expected to announce at a press-conference due to start as we closed for press. The plan to establish a large, high volume plant to fabricate 4M-bit memory chips to a design donated by IBM failed because beyond that company, DEC, Hewlett-Packard Co, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Intel Corp, LSI Logic Corp and National Semiconductor Corp, no other companies were prepared to contribute to the $500m equity finance thought needed to put the project on a sound footing. Already, US Memories had had to scale back its ambitions, saying that it would settle for $300m (CI No 1,327), but even that proved too hard a target and according to the New York Times, at least one of the original backers, faced with falling demand for computers and hence for chips of all kinds, wanted to pull out of the project. One effect of the venture has been to persuade IBM to license its 4M design to other chipmakers: it has already licensed it to Micron Technology Inc, and Cypress Semiconductor Inc has also been negotiating with IBM.
