4DS - Anything but Charting, page-19364

I think much of this is down to the fact we are at the bleeding edge - IMEC haven't trodden this ground before and if a process hasn't been worked out at the lab level, they aren't in a position to implement it in a fab process.

Just going on my experience with crystalline structures in Geology and Materials Engineering - they typically have hard, smooth structures when fabricated. If you have to "paint" a conductive layer onto them to connect with the overlying diodes - you need to be able to "rough up" the surface to create a good bond.

Clearly, breaking out the mouse sander with 200 grit paper on it isn't going to work at the nm level - so you achieve that with an etch that you deposit or "paint" onto the surface. That etch has to rough up the surface, but also not interfere with the conductivity of the connection, or destroy the underline FEOL components (the memory cells). So I can see why they need to do this. Bear in mind Platform Lot 2 wasn't the fully crystalline PCMO so going to PL3 on the fully crystalline PCMO

Hash - what you are suggesting about SCM is that hardware suppliers are essentially emulating the promise of SCM with existing DRAM and NAND components - since it's a known quantity, people would rather work in that than take a leap. And it's not as if people aren't finding a way to keep improving those technologies. So SCM is in the bin as a concept.

So to take the leap the next thing has to be so good the decision is a no-brainer - it has to show it can go sub nm geometry to bring the mobile device market on board.

This doesn't change my opinion on the announcement - 4 weeks to pull that together? It should have been accompanied by a webinar to explain what it all meant. The end of the trading suspension should have drawn a line under everything that has been achieved so far and announced what 4DS was proposing to do now. It's like they have been caught flat footed.

It sounds to me like the company is on the precipice of a massive pivot. That's OK, BRN had to do that too and they are doing alright now, but it's going to take some clear communications to get buy-in from investors. We need cash - it needs to be clear to investors that the company has a clue where 4DS is trying to head. This has to have actionable outcomes, not just be some open ended science experiment.