Quinas and IQE get a £1.1 million grant to industrialize ULTRARAM

Quinas Technology, Ltd., a leader in universal memory technology (ULTRARAM), has been given an Innovate UK grant valued at £1.1 million ($1.43 million), to be carried out in conjunction with the UK universities of Cardiff and Lancaster as well as the multinational semiconductor business IQE.

The initiative, which is the first step toward mass manufacturing of the universal computer memory ULTRARAM designed by Lancaster Physics professor Manus Hayne, will be overseen by Quinas, a spinout company of Lancaster University.

ULTRARAM is a unique kind of memory technology that combines the energy efficiency, speed, and endurance of DRAM with the non-volatility of flash as a storing memory. Its stated switching energy per unit area is more than 10,000 times lower than that of other developing memories, 1,000 times lower than that of flash, and 100 times lower than that of DRAM.

Under the one-year project, Lancaster University's compound semiconductor layer production will be scaled up to an industrial process at the Cardiff-based company, IQE.

Leading the project, Quinas' co-founder and CTO, Dr. Peter Hodgson, stated that this award was a significant step toward the company's goal of producing ULTRARAM in large quantities. It was thought to be impossible to create a memory that could combine fast, energy-efficient write and erase speeds with non-volatility. The secret of ULTRARAM's special qualities is its capacity to transition between a highly conductive and highly resistant state.

The CEO and co-founder of Quinas, James Ashforth-Pook, stated that the UK is presently not involved in the memory chip business, despite estimates that it will be valued at approximately US$320 billion by 2030. Future computing will require ever-higher memory capacities due to the development of more established businesses like aerospace and defense, as well as new applications like quantum computing and revolutionary artificial intelligence. Numerous of those demands are met by ULTRARAM's special blend of fast access memory and non-volatile storage, which also has the ability to significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.