Alot of neat discussion(s)going on. Martinez' first patent was co-invented with Akins in 75? It was assigned to TRW. In fact if you start compiling information on employees of Jmar's top management you shall find a Majority have previously worked for TRW. Now why is that important? Well take a look at the most recent laser patent's issued and you will find alot of Livermoore Lab folks, US Air force Assignments, Tons of Patents assigned to IBM (have to call the company to get licensing information on most of them, not all just those assigned)and a very new neat one assigned to TRW. Then you will encounter a Patent(classified)which has Martinez' as the inventor.
Someone mentioned that Martinez was trying to somehow(in a dastardly way)hype Jmar. Now that's a first. We have been trying to get any information possible concerning this project and have him announce it. We have failed for a year in our attempts, even news releases became tame with General information concerning, contracts and other things. No names just "a large corporation", etc. Martinez apparently has been given the go ahead by IBM along with the US Govt. because his mouth has been zippped for at least 15 months. There appear to be many more controling factors, but the information is difficult to nail down. Some of Jmar's older releases pre-95 have alot more names.
As for the statement "test runs" what do you think Cal ASIC does? You got it, they run test(designer) under 1000 chips for companies. So naturally unless you understand Jmar's Subsidaries, the thought is, he isn't saying production, he's testing the actual equipment. Wrong! They will be prepared at Cal ASIC to do test runs for ordering companies. Big difference. ASIC companies do exactly that, make limited design chips for new or emerging products, so the company ordering the chips can do all sorts of testing. Cal ASIC uses Direct write and the reason Jmar purchased them was they had a unique process which could enable extemely fast production of all chips, in combo with Jmar's Tech. Why ASIC's? Well it is pretty hard to imagine, much less design products for the size of IC's that are going to be produced. A revolution requires alot of changing, and Jmar has what could become a huge industry advantage in doing "test run" IC's for all the new applications that will emerge from this quantum leap in technology.
What is XRL? That answer is not readily available anymore. There are so many hybrids that have shot off of one term, it's like naming Antibiotics. Well, there was at one time, only one, now the types are so varied and volumous they just use the term as description. So do the same with XRL, it is a way to produce micro IC's with something other than optical technology. Who owns it? Who knows. Right now the Govt. is the only one for sure, Jmar is most likely also in there along with a large group of other companies. Jmar seems to have a larger piece of this pie. Lucent is most likely involved since they gave up those $25mil steppers. So Jmar is content to license any tech. out and simply make ASIC's for all those licensee's. Not a bad deal, very nice chunk of a multi billion dollar a year market.
Those of you that say XRL is at least 3-10 years away are not necessarily incorrect, just not accurate. XRL is here for along time, NOW. The Products produced from them will take time to get to the market, due to stunning leap in tech. applications.
Well I'm sure Cymer will live, but does anyone remember a Company called Cirrus Logic? Well, is this deja vu? I truly hope not. |
