I've had a little more time to read the latest HYRep alongside and in light of the earlier announcement.
I like this bit in the latest report:
"... The primary accomplishment of the period has been the culmination of years of effort transitioning a prototype technology into a design and fabrication process that can be reliably manufactured in mass volumes. ..."
The past tenses in this make it clear what the state of play is in all that is being announced:
The company has accomplished the transition of the design into a fabrication process that can be manufactured reliably in volume.
That pretty much says it all very clearly. This is echoed in the emphasised text in the report:
"... Recently delivered wafers that have consistently proven to meet the required electromechanical specifications, have undergone the entire fabrication process with all process amendments and corrections, emphasise the significant progress achieved in transitioning the technology from prototype to a mass produced technology. ..."
All in all we can now be confident that making the devices is in the bag. At this point it just becomes a question of placing the order on the FAB and the packager and waiting for the process to deliver the finished goods.
We also can have confidence that the process produces devices that are as durable as needed (>1 trillion actuations).
However, we still have to take it on faith that the confidence of the technologists at AP and at TJ will be fully vindicated in terms of the audio quality meeting the expected specs after the unspecified fix being applied.
"... Having wafers that meet the required electromechanical specifications enables the company to advance on a number of fronts in particular with the acoustic characterization phase. Our engineers have already been able to characterize the acoustic output of the MEMS transducer. While the devices performed consistently including the playing of speech and music, the acoustic output was measured to be below our targeted specifications. In order to achieve the optimal acoustic response from the transducerelements (“Pixels”) we must control the shape and pulse of the acoustic response. The membrane geometries and material properties are of critical significance to attaining the desired pulse shape. Detailed characterization revealed slight anomalies in the devices that were traced to the inherent limitations of the current fabrication process. These imperfections were only identifiable once the fabrication process produced electromechanically reliable devices allowing for detailed acoustic characterization to be conducted.
Rather thanalter the fabrication process in order to try to diminish or possibly eliminate the slight imperfections of fabrication, the company together with its vendor devised a plan that willrevert the specification to compliancy, while diminishing dependencies on the vendor’s fabrication tolerances. Considerations concerning preservation of intellectual property protection prohibit discussion in greater detail, however management is confident that the relative nuanced changes that are already in progress on test wafers that are anticipated to be completed by mid-September 2019, will produce the desired results with minimal disruption to the overall fabrication pipeline. ..."
I read this as saying four things:
a) That the devices worked consistently and played music, but the sound output was below spec. This is presumably because the SPL from each moving pixel was slightly inconsistent, and this inconsistency would cause the combination of pulses to be even more inconsistent, but probably most noticeable for smaller numbers of individual pixels, i.e. at lower volumes (this is my deduction). If this is a consequence of slight variations in the critical physical dimensions of the production process - and this is indicated to be where these dimensions are slightly different than the specified dimensions - then it can be expected that by ensuring that these dimensions are closer to the specs then the problems would be eliminated.
b) If AP's and TJ's confidence is justified (which they indicate they believe to be very likely) then they have found a simple way to ensure that this does happen, and that problem can then be expected to be considered resolved. The "fix" is a "change that is not a change" i.e. to the whole process but only a small "nuanced" change to some small undisclosed operational parameter at some stage of the whole process being operated outside of its normal settings to ensure that the shortfall is rectified practically, but without AP having to change its spec. And of course this fix also becomes valuable and patentable IP.
c) Test wafers made using those nuanced changes will be available around mid mid Sept - i.e. in around 2 weeks from now. Thus we can expect either confirmation that their confidence was justified or not. If their confidence is correct then we can say we are imminently likely to have a finished and validated chip. It will presumably be tested out as quickly as possible to confirm the status.
d) Once it is confirmed they will place an order on TJ for bulk production run for chips that will be available for demo and sampling. A few of the test wafers could conceivably be used for limited demos once packaged.
The next few months are going to be quite interesting I think!
(20min delay)