other
industries, too, including medical devices, consumer products, and
machine tool manufacturing.
Production
for these markets is planned for the near future. According to NVE,
it is the first to make and sell GMR-based sensing products for the
general market, and it has established a new company division for
this purpose. Its sales of GMR-based sensors have grown by about 3,000
percent recently, from around $5,000 in 1994 to more than $150,000
in 1997. The company has also generated revenues from engineering
contracts, as well as royalties from companies that license its technology.
NVE entered into an agreement with Motorola in 1995 to develop MRAMs,
and the development work is under way. Production could begin in 1999.
If this effort succeeds, NVE expects to capture a sizable share of
the $45 billion annual market for memory and hard-disk drive products.
The company also signed an agreement with
NVE entered
into an agreement with Motorola in 1995 to develop MRAMs .
. .
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Microtrace
in 1996 to use a procedure based on GMR techniques to make counterfeiting
of aircraft parts much easier to detect. The development work is under
way, and products for this application are also expected in 1999.
For GMR applications beyond its own pursuits, NVE has offered its
knowledge to other companies, universities, and national laboratories.
This was done through another
NVE has offered
its knowledge to other companies, universities and national
laboratories.
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ATP project (#91-01-0016: Ultrahigh-Density Magnetic Recording
Heads) conducted by a large joint venture led by the National
Storage Industry Consortium. NVE |
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officials
consulted on fabrication methods for making GMR films and supplied
samples of the films made by NVE.
Benefits From the Technology
Because NVE is selling only sensors, all benefits will initially come
from that product. When the sensors actually begin appearing in commercial
products some time after 2000 end users will have access
to competitively priced devices that operate at much greater temperature
extremes than do conventional sensors. Additional benefits will accrue
from GMR sensors as more are used in a variety of applications.
GMR sensors will likely generate substantial economic benefits beyond
those realized by NVE. A sensor is a small part of an antilock brake
system, which is a small part of a much larger device an automobile.
Several manufacturing and subassembly stages lie between the development
of the sensor and the final product, and the sensors add value to
the product at each stage. According to NVE, the total of this spillover
benefit will likely be more than 10 times greater than what the company
earns for the use of its new technology. And the aggregate benefit
will increase as more cars are equipped with antilock brake systems
incorporating NVE sensors. Spillover benefits promise to be even larger
when the sensors are used in other applications.
In addition to these applications, the companys GMR sensors
are being used for portable traffic monitoring instruments, and they
may be very useful for instruments used to detect land mines. Geometrics,
Inc., in Denver, Colorado, has contracts to design and test devices
to detect antipersonnel mines for the U. S. military, and it has subcontracted
with NVE to supply GMR sensors for the detectors. If the design and
testing lead to workable detection instruments, a much better job
of finding and removing unwanted land mines will be the result. There
are 100-200 million such land mines throughout the world in areas
that were formerly areas of warfare, and they kill and maim tens of
thousands of innocent people each year.
The market for MRAMs the application initially targeted by
NVE may eventually be important, but it
is still in the future. If MRAMs ultimately reduce accidental loss
of information to computer users, benefits will be large.
ATP Project Saves Company
Before the ATP project, NVE was a tiny, undercapitalized company facing
significant technological risks in |
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