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BOSTON - Sony Corp. last week stepped forward as a champion of the Grating Light Valve technology of 1994 startup Silicon Light Machines, taking an exclusive license to develop, manufacture and market display devices and products based on the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology.
Suehiro Nakamura, senior ex ecutive vice president at Sony, pointed to great potential for GLV "in applications such as digital cinema and home theater" but indicated that the company will concentrate initially on front projectors for business applications and, later, on rear-projection monitors for the consumer market.
"We believe the GLV technology has the potential to become one of the key components for future large-scale projection displays that offer unprecedented image quality," Nakamura said.
Sony and SLM (Sunnyvale, , Calif.) declined to put a price tag on the agreement.
Dave Corbin, Silicon Light Machines' president and chief executive officer, called Sony "the world's best authority on display quality" and "the best possible partner to advance all of our hardwork to the next level. Meanwhile, we can apply the unique optical-micromachining talents of our engineering team toward other killer applications." One of them, he said, is optical communications.
"This is really fantastic news for both sides," said analyst David Mentley, vice president at Stanford Resources(San Jose,...