InPhase Technologies

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InPhase Technologies was a technology company developing holographic storage devices and media, based in Longmont, Colorado. InPhase was spun out from Bell Labs in 2000 after roughly a decade of basic research in photopolymers for storage combined with simultaneous research into developing a read/write mechanism for storing and reading out data. Their technology promises multiple terabyte storage; this in fact was achieved in 2009 when InPhase surpassed the density (bits/unit area) of then current magnetic storage media available in commercial markets. InPhase spent 2001-2004 in development to understand the engineering and manufacturing issues of getting a commercial product in a library involving a small number of reader/writers (e.g., 4), a large number of storage media (e.g., 1000) and a mechanical system that could retrieve any piece of storage media and place it in the appropriate reader/writer. At the start of 2005, InPhase investigated development of a rack mounted reader/writer; the CEO, Nelson Diaz, overruled this approach by partnering with StorageTek, a local established storage vendor, to put the InPhase reader/writer into a 5¼-inch form factor, while the storage media could be stored as 5¼-inch disks; this decision led to significant technical risk for development of a highly reliable robust reader/writer in this form factor that would have been significantly ameliorated by a rack mounted drive. On top of this, Steven Socolof of New Venture Partners who was lead investor in InPhase, demanded that InPhase launch a commercially viable product within one year, and raised in conjunction with other investors sufficient money to do so; the engineering team was informed of this one year deadline, and wrote a memo to the Board of Directors stating that it would take three to five years to deliver a commercially viable product, not one year, based on hundreds of years of experience in the engineering and manufacturing team, and this was noted by the Board but then ignored, not once, but two more times.

In May 2008, [1] the company first reader, Tapestry 300r, offered customers a storage capacity of 300  GB, with transfer rates of 20  MB/s in read/write mode; the product roadmap would increase both these figures of merit by at least an order of magnitude over two generations of products. However, the company has failed several times to release the reader on schedule after previously setting release dates of late 2006, and then February 2007. [2] As a result of these delays, InPhase was forced to cut a number of its workforce; currently there is no release date for the drive and storage media visible. [2]

In February 2008, InPhase Technologies was granted a joint patent with video game company Nintendo for a flexure-based scanner for angle-based multiplexing in a holographic storage system. [3]

In 2011, a book entitled Holographic Data Storage: From Theory to Practical Systems, by Kevin Curtis, Lisa Dhar, Adrian Hill, William Wilson and Mark Ayres, was published by Wiley. This book is a technical summary of the design of a holographic storage system including storage media a writer/reader mechanism; it does not include a summary of how much work is required to be able to reliably manufacture storage media and writer/readers, and there are roughly 200 patents roughly half on the storage media and half on the writer/reader. One of the reasons InPhase was able to get so far was it had both components, media and writer/reader, so if problems arose in one area the other side could be modified to address this problem, in a manner of bootstrapping product development.

On March 16, 2010, Signal Lake Venture Capital acquired a majority equity stake in the remains of InPhase. [4] In 2010, InPhase acquired digital holographic storage media manufacturing equipment from Hitachi Maxell in Tokyo, Japan. In 2011, Signal Lake, on behalf of InPhase, acquired the assets of DSM AG in Westerstede, Germany, so InPhase has rights for designing, developing, manufacturing, and supporting digital libraries (autoloaders that can hold one disk drive and fifteen disks with a robot that moves media between slots and disk drives, or libraries that can hold four disk drives and up to 2,140 disks) and a robot picker that moves media between slots and disk drives, to be bundled with sales of drives and media.

On October 17, 2011, InPhase Technologies filed for bankruptcy protection to reorganize under Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code. Much of the blame for InPhase's bankruptcy was placed on Steven Socolof as lead investor who demanded that CEO Nelson Diaz produce a reliable product in one year three years in a row (and Steven Socolof demanded that the Board of Directors not tell this to the other investors in Phase, all of whom agreed not to do so, in particular Steven Kitrosser, Chairman of the Board). Both Steven Socolof and the Board of Directors ignored the engineers' warning that the product was not ready for market and would require another three to five years of development. Throughout this time, Nelson Diaz was on full pay while all other employees worked for minimum wage. [5] The main reason that InPhase Technologies failed to bring a product to market was internal management: the Board of Directors followed Steven Socolof in dictating how to get a product out, in the face of the engineering team arguing the schedule to get a full product out in one year was technically impossible, and this was proven in three successive years.

All of the InPhase assets were sold at auction in March 2012. Akonia Holographics acquired the InPhase assets, including the critical equipment and know-how, and all of the intellectual property. Akonia Holographics, LLC was officially launched on August 10, 2012 after closing on a $10.8 million investment round. [6] On August 30, 2018, Apple Inc. announced it was acquiring Akonia Holographics. [7]

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References

  1. ↑ Holografischer Speicher vor der Markteinführung (German language). Retrieved on April 20, 2008.
  2. 1 2 Modine, Austin (June 5, 2008). "Holographic storage kingpin turns staff and product into an illusion". The Register .
  3. ↑ USpatent 7336409,Bradley J. Sissom,"Miniature flexure based scanners for angle multiplexing",published 2007-09-06,issued 2008-02-26, assigned to InPhase Technologiesand Nintendo
  4. ↑ "Signal Lake buys majority of InPhase". Boulder County Business Report. Retrieved March 18, 2010.
  5. ↑ "How I watched a holographic storage company implode". The Register . Retrieved December 29, 2010.
  6. ↑ "New Company Believes in Holographic Data Storage, Yes it Exists!". StorageNewsletter. Retrieved December 11, 2012.
  7. ↑ "Apple sees the (augmented) light, buys holo-glass tech startup". The Register . Retrieved August 30, 2018.
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