Named as one of the beneficiaries of the US government’s latest technology conversion and dual use grants (CI No 2,531), Chatsworth, California-based Micropolis Corp has belatedly announced what the cash from the Pentagon is for – a 1.8Gb disk drive that can store 1Gb. The company heads a team including Read-Rite Corp, Silicon Systems Inc, Adaptec Inc, Tulip Memory Systems Inc, Intevac Vacuum Systems Division and the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles. A 1Gb 1.8 disk would of course have happened anyway, but the aim of the programme is to get it to market two years earlier than would otherwise have happened. Calluna Plc shares soared to a big premium to their 65 pence placing price in first day trading in London on Monday, closing at 92 pence, but the fact that the US government is subsidising a direct competitor is not good news for the Scottish company. The excuse for subsidising the work is that as well as Personal Digital Assistants, the thing could be used in Tactical Digital Assistants for the military. The cost is estimated to be $20m and about half is coming from the Advanced Research Projects Agency.The project is expected to take two years.
