Quinas and IQE receive £1.1 million grant for ULTRARAM industrialisation

Innovate UK-funded project to be carried out with UK Universities of Lancaster and Cardiff

Quinas, innovator of the award-winning new universal memory technology ULTRARAM™, has announced that it has been awarded an Innovate UK project worth £1.1 million (US$1.43 million) to be carried out jointly with global semiconductor company IQE and the Universities of Lancaster and Cardiff, both in the UK.

Lancaster University spinout firm Quinas will coordinate the ambitious project, which is the first step towards volume production of the universal computer memory ULTRARAM invented by Lancaster Physics Professor Manus Hayne.

ULTRARAM has extraordinary properties, combining the non-volatility of a data storage memory like Flash, with the speed, energy-efficiency, and endurance of a working memory like DRAM. ULTRARAM has a reported switching energy per unit area that is 100 times lower than DRAM, 1,000 times lower than Flash, and over 10,000 times lower than other emerging memories.

Under the one-year project, IQE will scale up the manufacture of compound semiconductor layers from Lancaster University to an industrial process at the Cardiff-based firm.

Dr Peter Hodgson, who is leading the project, and is also co-founder and Chief Technical Officer at Quinas, said: “This grant marks an important milestone as we move towards mass production of ULTRARAM. A memory combining non-volatility with fast, energy-efficient write and erase capabilities has previously been considered unattainable. ULTRARAM’s ability to switch between a highly resistive state and a highly conductive state is the key to its unique properties.”

James Ashforth-Pook, CEO and co-founder of Quinas, said: “It is estimated that the global memory chip market will be worth about US$320 billion by 2030, but the UK currently has no stake in it. Future compute will place ever-increasing demands on memory capability, driven by emerging applications like novel AI and quantum compute, as well as evolution in more traditional markets like defence and aerospace. ULTRARAM’s unique combination of non-volatile storage and rapid access memory addresses many of those needs, offering the potential for huge energy savings and carbon emission reduction.”

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