History (1991): Silmag, New French-Italian Magnetic Head Maker

A new company named Silmag (Grenoble, France) was set up to manufacture magnetic heads based on a new technology developed by Leti, a French research department, with the support of CEA patents and financial help from the ECC as part of the Eureka project.

Silmag is owned by engineers of Leti, among which is Jean-Pierre Lazzari, 3 capital firms and a venture Data Magnetic Corp., this last one being part of Teknecomp of the Italian group Olivetti.

Activities should debut in 2H91.

The chairman is Roberto Gemi from DMC.

The initial capital is FF1.2 million but will be increased up to FF50 million in 1992. The technology developed by Leti is quite new. Unlike other thin-film head manufacturers that use an aluminum substrate a few millimeters thick, the CEA department has developed silicon microelectronic processes on silicon that allow a very precise volume production. It is possible to integrate 2,000 components.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠42, published on July 1991.

Note: Silmag went into liquidation on June 1998.