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October 2015 • SMT Magazine 73 with different pick-and-place suppliers and printer suppliers, to communicate, so that you know exactly when it reaches inspection. You have all the information available. You need to find a way how to give this in- formation to the customer, so that the custom- er can benefit from it. Las Marias: what are some best practices to help customers or manufacturers reduce their cycle times in the process? Bornemann: The best practice is working to- gether. If we understand the customer require- ments, we can work out solutions, and that's one of the things we want to do—provide solu- tions. We don't want to be a machine provider only; we want to be a solution provider. There are many different industries and every indus- try has a different requirement, therefore from my point, it's sitting together with the customer and using our knowledge, and our technology, to work out solutions. Las Marias: Can you give us some examples of how Viscom is giving value to customers who are still under pressure to cut expenses? Bornemann: In general, what we do is provide communications all along the line. So if you find defects, of course you want to know where they are coming from and how to avoid them. At AOI, you have all the information available. At the end of the line, you know basically what is happening in your processes. With our new TrueYield concept, and this communication along the line, we are providing this informa- tion to our customers as a way of helping them see where in their process the defect is happen- ing, and avoiding this in the future—thereby cutting down their cost. Las Marias: great, thank you very much for your time, guido. Bornemann: You're welcome, and thank you as well. SMt InSPectIon InnoVAtIonS to reduce cycLe tIMe The first all-optical permanent on-chip memory has been developed by scientists of Karlsruhe institute of Technology (KiT) and the universities of Münster, oxford, and exeter. This is an important step on the way towards optical computers. "optical bits can be written at frequencies of up to a gigahertz. This allows for extremely quick data storage by our all-photonic memory," ex- plains professor Wolfram pernice, who headed a working group of the KiT institute of nanotech- nology (inT) and recently moved to the university of Münster. "The memory is com- patible not only with con- ventional optical fiber data transmission, but also with latest processors," Professor Harish Bhaskaran of oxford university adds. The new memory can store data for decades even when the power is removed. it can also store many bits in a single cell of a billionth of a meter in size (multi-level memory). instead of the usual information values of 0 and 1, several states can be stored in an element and even autonomous calculations can be made. This is due to so-called phase change materials, novel materials that change their optical properties depending on the arrangement of the atoms: Within shortest peri - ods of time, they can change between crystalline (regular) and amorphous (irregular) states. for the memory, the scientists used the phase change material ge2Sb2Te5 (gST). The change from crystalline to amor- phous (storing data) and from amorphous to crystal- line (erasing data) is initiat- ed by ultrashort light pulses. for reading out the data, weak light pulses are used. Permanent Data Storage with Light FeATure inTerview