Given the standard tone-down language of 4DS announcements, this has got to be the most enthusiastic announcement I've seen. Although - still toned down, in that they are a little unclear about the success of mounting the chips on the Mb platform. But they did say:
They received: "The Initial Platform Lot of 300mm wafers, fabricated prior to HGST joining the 4DS/imec collaboration, to validate the integration of 4DS’ memory cells on imec’s megabit platform"
And the testing results: "Testing of the Initial Platform Lot validated the integration process steps required to integrate 4DS memory cells with imec’s megabit platform."
Bit cagey - they've "validated the integration process steps required to integrate" but not "they have validated the integration". How did they validate the steps if they haven't actually integrated? It must have worked somehow if they've managed to get test results out of it.
As for the additional wafer lot: "The Company also measured retention and the results remain confidential to the Company and its partners until such time the upper limits of retention can be more accurately defined."
This doesn't say whether the retention results are lower than expected, or higher. I'm guessing that with HGST now deeply involved - and they've clearly got some brains on the team given they've already made significant improvements - they have some more tweaks they want to do to see how high retention can get.
Which will take a little longer so hence the cap raise. No idea to who. But surely at a premium.
4DS Price at posting:
5.3¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
