4DS Memory Ltd: Could this be the greatest disruption to the semiconductor memory chip industry in decades?
4DS Memory Ltd Interim Executive Chairman David McAuliffe on 3AW, 2GB & 6PR Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed 4DS Memory Ltd Interim Executive Chairman David McAuliffe talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about 4DS’ successful testing of its latest patented memory chip technology that sent its share price wild.
TO LISTEN TO THE 4DS MEMORY LTD AUDIO INTERVIEW - CLICK BELOW
4DS Memory Ltd is a software development company specialising in non-volatile memory technology for next-generation data storage in mobile and cloud. The company owns patented IP portfolio which have been deployed in-house to create high-density Storage Class Memory – an emerging memory technology positioned in the vast space between the most successful system memory (DRAM) and the most successful silicon storage (NAND Flash). 4DS collaborates with imec, a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Last month, 4DS announced better than expected results from testing.
RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears brought to you today by 4DS Memory
Matt Birney - ASX code: 4DS
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now by the Executive Chairman of 4DS Memory, David McAuliffe
Matt Birney - Hi Dave
David McAuliffe - Morning mate
Matt Birney - Okay, so 4DS Memory is on a mission to create a new class of memory that has the potential to shake up the semiconductor chip market.
Matt Birney - The company has two strategic partnerships – one with the
world’s number one independent semiconductor institute – Imec - and another with a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest digital storage players, Western Digital Corporation.
Matt Birney - After a challenging year of R&D, 4DS recently nailed its latest round of testing that saw its share price hike 7 fold.
Matt Birney - Okay Dave we'll get into those test results in a moment but firstly what problem are you trying to solve here? How does your computer memory differ to what's out there?
David McAuliffe - Well it doesn't exist at the moment Matt so in your devices, you have a thing called DRAM and you have something called Flash and so both of those technologies have different characteristics.
David McAuliffe - So what the industry is looking for is something which is a combination of both, they're looking for something which has really, really vast ability to read a cell or write to a cell but also has the ability to retain the information with the power off so that doesn't exist at the moment so the results we showed on our Fourth Platform Lot give an indication that we're getting very close to being able to solve this problem and it's an industry challenge and there hasn't been a lot of change to how our devices work and we potentially have something which will change the industry going forward.
Matt Birney - Okay so I see your share price ran from 3 to about 21 cents recently on the back of some successful testing. Without getting too scientific, what were the practical outcomes of that testing?
David McAuliffe - What it showed is that we're very close to the most significant piece of technology in your device so it's called DRAM, so it has the ability to work you know nanoseconds in terms of its ability to write to a cell in 30 nanoseconds, we've shown we're very close to that.
David McAuliffe - It has the ability to turn on and off a cell a billion times, we've been able to show we can do our cells two billion times and we've also shown we've been able to retain information when the power's off so we're looking like we could be a companion to DRAM and this is what the industry is looking for so you know the results are far better than we expected and we're continuing to do more testing on our device going forward.
Matt Birney - How much cash have you got? I'm guessing it's expensive to do this testing right?
David McAuliffe - No, we're pretty lean so we spend about five million bucks a year, 4.5/5 million bucks a year so if we reported in June we had 5.6 million dollars so I'm guessing we've probably got about 4.8 at the moment but because of the way the share price has behaved, we've got a whole heap of options that are coming in so we're fully funded for a couple of years now.
Matt Birney - Very quickly, what's the business model look like? How do you commercialise this thing?
David McAuliffe - We're not in the business of doing licensing deals, we think that a licensing model doesn't work so we're looking to get the technology proven up enough for it to be acquired by one of the major players in the area so Imec's, you know, got everyone on their books in terms of partners so you know Imec will likely be our business model in terms of introductions to all those different types of companies.
Matt Birney - David McAuliffe from 4DS Memory
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears
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