What's in the AXC R&D pipeline?
These are the products they are disclosing in the presentations sponsored by Pennyslvania Merchant Group:
IN PRODUCTION:
1) Keepered Media - inductive heads
2) High Data Rate DST - ATM/OC3 lines
IN DEVELOPMENT:
1) Keepered Media - MR heads
2) Keepered FLEXIBLE Media (tape)
3) Expanded DST libraries
RESEARCH:
1) Dynamic Image Compression (C-CUBE partnership?)
2) Field Confinement Heads (tape and disk drives?)
During the late eighties when it became clear that HDTV was going to be delayed, AXC started the process of restructuring its operations, which were basically grounded in its broadcast equipment and tape businesses. One of the things they did was to essentially do a triage of their patent portfolio. As you probably know, a typical patent has a life of 17 years with maintainance fees due on fixed intervals (3rd year-7.5 year-11.5 year). Additionally, AXC had to secure equivalent patents in its foreign markets to protect its inventions. Hand in hand with their decision to disengage from the TV and tape businesses and focus on the mass storage and instrumentation markets, Ampex had to abandon a significant number of patents that were not part of that strategic shift as part of the cost-cutting effort (thousands of patents = millions of dollars in maintainance fees).
Their HEAD/MEDIA patents, however, were protected and I think continues to represent a major track in the narrower and more focused R&D effort (still at 15-17% of sales). Keepered media technology is really, and maybe only the low-lying fruit of those efforts. Beverley R. Gooch has something like 20 patents, all to do with KM and heads, and I think those patents represent part of a major track of AXC's efforts to commerialize its inventions, as systems and as mass market components.
Everybody in compression, it seems, is after that same holy grail of dynamic image compression so I really don't know where that effort stands, but there are indications that Ampex has been making progress in FIELD CONFINEMENT HEADS.
My understanding here is less than elementary, but AXC has been making progress in FC heads which have the advantage of being easier to make than inductive and MR heads and MAY be better than MR heads!!! My understanding of MR heads is that the magnetoresistive element is inherently weak or not-so durable, partly accounting for the poor yields. FC heads MAY provide similar increases in recording density AND may provide some manufacturing yield advantages. Maybe those of you with a technical background can check the patent database and see if you find a better explanation.
Gus
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