A UK start-up company has completed the patenting of a three dimensional memory system it claims will revolutionize the computer and storage business, offering vendors the chance to cram 2300GB of data onto a PC Card-sized device costing as little as a conventional CD-ROM drive. According to the technology’s inventor, emeritus professor of physics, Ted Williams, it has been the dream of a lot of people to produce three-dimensional memory. Now he says that dream will become a commercial reality very soon.
Williams, with the backing of London venture capital group, Cavendish Management Resources (CMR), has set up Keele High Density, a private company that he says is already in negotiations with a number of major computer companies. Keele, named after the UK’s Keele University where Williams spent nine of the 13 years he has taken to perfect his invention, will be purely a licensing company said CMR managing director, Mike Downey.
Although Williams was loathe to reveal details of his invention, he confirmed reports in a UK national newspaper that his hybrid memory technology, which encompasses solid state, and magneto-optical elements, can hold 86GB of data per square centimeter and deliver read speeds of 100Mbps.
The current benchmark for pure magnetic drive technology was set by IBM earlier this year when Big Blue’s Almaden Laboratories demonstrated a system offering 20GB per square inch – much less than the per square centimeter rating of Keele’s technology. In the commercial space, the present average cost of magnetic systems is $18 per megabyte. Williams is talking of PC Card devices costing the equivalent of a $50 CD-Drive that will hold 2300GB – at just over two cents per gigabyte.
If Williams’ calculations can be converted into real products, Keele’s technology could genuinely set the storage industry, and by implication, much of the rest of the computer industry, on its head.
Much will depend on whether the implementation of the new technology will require an equally great revolution in the production facilities and integration systems of vendors. However, according to Downey, while the hardware aspects of the technology do not conform to existing industry standards, the technology is well understood and will not require a sea change in production and implementation techniques.
Indeed, Williams and Downey are anticipating rapid roll-out of the technology once licensing agreements have been agreed. We are in conversation already with a number of the major computer companies in the world. But the idea is that this [the technology] will be generally available, Downey said.
Although CMR and Keele have not finalized their business plans, Downey said it is likely that a principal manufacturing license may be granted to a single company, but that any such agreement would also demand that the company offers cross licensing opportunities to other vendors.
