Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!albanycs!crdgw1!uunet!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!ditmela!yarra!melba!baby!gnb From: gnb@bby.oz (Gregory N. Bond) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: FRAM Message-ID: Date: 15 Jun 89 00:40:28 GMT References: <1012@aber-cs.UUCP> Sender: gnb@melba.bby.oz Lines: 35 In-reply-to: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP's message of 13 Jun 89 14:47:56 GMT In article <1012@aber-cs.UUCP> pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: [...] It is therefore an old technology, and I have been hoping for the last ten years that it comes of age. Before these, the most recent news were that the technology had been licensed by Australians, in a hope to leapfrog current technology and build an indigenous industry around them. In fact there are some serious patents held by an Australian company working in the area, Ramtron Australia Limited, arising out of research conducted at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. There was an article in the paper a few weeks ago that Ramtron's U.S. subsidiary had signed a very large contract ($50m?) with, of all people, Alcan to develop the technology. Apparently there is a very good match between the manufacturing of ceramic components (which Alcan is very involved in) and the Fram devices, much closer than traditional Si processing. Ramtron needed manufacturing technology and Alcan wanted to expand its hi-tech materials exposure. According to the hype in the financial press (where Ramtron is somewhat of a white knight of the hi-tech stocks around here) they hold fundamental patents on the whole technology and should do extremely well out of it. However, it is quite unlikely that there will be an "indigenous industry" as there is virtually ZERO infrastructure for a components manufacturing facility. And little chance the Govt. will provide the required support. Disclaimer: I'm not a Ramtron shareholder! and this is from hazy memory. Greg. -- Gregory Bond, Burdett Buckeridge & Young Ltd, Melbourne, Australia Internet: gnb@melba.bby.oz.au non-MX: gnb%melba.bby.oz@uunet.uu.net Uucp: {uunet,mnetor,pyramid,ubc-vision,ukc,mcvax,...}!munnari!melba.bby.oz!gnb