Did I say they burn diesel on any old thing? In fact I...

Did I say they burn diesel on any old thing? In fact I pre-empted this exact excuse in one of my previous comments. I have not claimed 4DS are 'any old thing'. In fact please show me where I said IMEC deal with any old thing.

Has 4DS through its R&D furthered understanding of memory, reram, materials science, semi design etc?
Yes of course they have, at very cutting-edge levels. There is no doubt about that. So yes, this had and has significance for the overall progress of this realm of science and manufacturing if you look big picture.

What some seem to conflate here is that IMEC somehow will only work with companies whose products are guaranteed to go on and be multi-billion-dollar acquisitions and that somehow because they have taken 4DS as a customer that they can somehow see the commercial outcome here.

If 4DS ends up selling for nothing, is it IMECs fault (please re-read the if.)? Because what you are implying is that they should never have taken on the scope knowing that it would fail and therefor it is a smear on them. They are a R&D facility, they likely work with products that fail in some regard all.the.time.

But yes, because IMEC take our money and we are working on interesting science, it means we are certain to sell for $30 billion.