Perth headquartered tech start-up Weebit-Nano is well on the way to commercialization after their French partner, Leti, managed to reproduce the ASX listed company’s lab scale “Siox ReRam” computer memory technology in their massive pre-industrialization facility in France.
Weebit’s Siox ReRam technology is a new form of computer memory that the company claims is 1000 times faster than traditional “flash” memory and is 1000 times more energy efficient.
Flash memory is generally found in devices that have a requirement to store memory after the device has been switched off such as lap tops, mobile phones, usb thumb drives and a raft of other devices.
It is also used in the burgeoning cloud data centre storage industry.
After securing the rights to the technology that was produced out of Rice University in Houston, Texas, Weebit managed to strike a deal with Leti to take the technology through to commercialization.
Leti is a revered French microelectronics research institute with connections to the French Government.
The two partners will develop silicone oxide Re-RAM memory using Weebit’s technology that is scalable to 40 nanometres in order to convince any part of the $35b a year worldwide flash memory market to convert to Re-RAM memory.
Leti is a global powerhouse in the innovation and technology space having already produced 2800 patents with 40% of them under license.
They boast some 1800 researchers, 250 PHD’s, 350 industrial partners and they have already shaken some 54 start-ups into commercial consciousness.
Weebit, Rice University and Leti are scheduled to meet this week to complete the technology transfer to Leti and to look at expediting the project after the technology was successfully reproduced in leti’s facility.
Leti is expected to release a detailed report on the development process and optimization of the technology in the first quarter of 2017 with the ultimate goal being to produce a 40nm ReRam cell by late 2017.
Weebit believes that achieving this milestone will open discussions with leading players in the semiconductor industry with a view to convincing them to ditch their old flash memory technology in favour of Weebit’s silicone based ReRam memory.
The greatest barrier to change in the technology space is the need to re-tool production lines when switching from one technology to another.
Weebit say they have this covered however given they have uniquely developed their ReRam memory using silicone which is the element of choice currently used by most semi-conductor manufacturers.
This means that one of the major barriers to commercialization of Weebit-Nano’s technology has already been broken down and with a massive global powerhouse like Leti on the job, the future looks reasonably bright for this Perth headquartered tech play.
Weebit-Nano CEO Yossi Keret stated, “After only two months, the initial results from our collaboration with Leti are very promising. We are very impressed with Leti’s technical expertise and the progress that has been made towards the delivery of our SiOx in a stable and reproducible manner. We are looking forward to providing further updates as soon as they are available.”
By Matt Birney
