Micron gains as floating-body firm closes
Peter Clarke
5/13/2011 8:03 AM EDT
LONDON – Innovative Silicon, a 2002 startup that developed a floating-body single-transistor memory it called Z-RAM that it claimed could scale better than DRAM, appears to have closed.
The outgoing chief operating officer Michael Van Buskirk states on his LinkedIn profile that he was the "key operational and technical corporate officer throughout the sale of Innovative Silicon: pre-sale corporate road-show, as well as facilitating asset and personnel transfers."
Van Buskirk does not state there who bought the company assets but there are indications that Micron Technology Inc. (Boise Idaho) is at least one key beneficiary.
The privately-held, venture-backed Innovative Silicon was founded in 2002 by Pierre C. Fazan and Serguei Okhonin in Lausanne, Switzerland and was subsequently headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
Two websites for the company (www.innovativesilicon.com and www.z-ram.com) no longer appear to work and the last listed phone number is unobtainable. However, both website URLs are now registered to Micron.
In addition Fazan, previously chief technology officer and chairman at Innovative Silicon, is now listed on the LinkedIn social networking site as a Micron Fellow and as working as an engineering manager for Micron in the IMEC research facility in Leuven, Belgium. He has been in post since September 2010.
Z-RAM gets off SOI, goes vertical
Okhonin, previously chief scientific officer at Innovative Silicon, is the founder of a startup called ActLight Inc.
The Z-RAM technology was originally based on the use of silicon-on-insulator wafers, which are more expensive than bulk CMOS wafers and have yet to become mainstream within the industry.
The company subsequently developed a low-voltage floating-body DRAM memory cell suitable for bulk silicon stand-alone memory application. Indeed, Van Buskirk credits himself with having determined that the original Z-RAM technology was "neither scalable nor reliable" and having co-invented the alternative bulk silicon technology.
A joint paper between Innovative Silicon and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. on a bulk form of Z-RAM was presented at the VLSI Technology Symposium in 2009 and another paper on the vertical double-gate floating body Z-RAM memory cell was presented at the same conference in 2010.
It is not known whether either Micron or Hynix is continuing to work on the vertical, double-gate floating body Z-RAM technology.
Innovative Silicon raised $47 million in three rounds of venture funding from firms including: Auriga Partners, Index Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Austin Ventures and Wellington Partners. It would seem likely that Micron has picked up Innovative Silicon's patent portfolio.
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