SANDISK LAUNCHES NEXT-GENERATION SOLID-STATE DRIVES FOR NETBOOK MARKET
New Gen 2 SATA SanDisk®
pSSD Answers Need For High Capacity and Speed at Lower
Cost
CES 2009, South Hall, Booth # 30659,
LAS VEGAS- Jan. 6, 2009- SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:
SNDK) today unveiled its next-generation of flash memory-based
solid-state drives (SSD) to support the evolving needs of
designers, manufacturers and users in the exploding netbook market
- SanDisk® pSSD™. The new SanDisk pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2 SSDs
have capacity and performance for more full-featured netbooks which
require a robust operating system.
Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs),
SanDisk's new second generation module has a SATA interface to meet
new netbook design requirements. The SATA interface offers a
significant boost in performance rendering these SSDs faster than
HDDs in critical aspects. Booting and launching applications takes
just half the time of an HDD.
Available in capacities of 8, 16, 32 and 64-gigabytes
(GB)1, SanDisk Gen 2 pSSD drives are aggressively
priced, making them attractive for POS terminals, printers, ATMs
and other applications where users need HDD functionality with
strong reliability, yet want to pay a low cost for the exact
capacity that they need. For example, the 32GB modular SSD is
priced at parity with 2.5" HDDs in OEM quantities.
"Netbooks represent the fastest growing PC segment in 2009 and 2010
yet widespread adoption of SSDs in netbooks has been limited by
speed, capacity and cost constraints," said Rich Heye, senior vice
president and general manager, Solid-State Drives (SSD), SanDisk.
"With the significant improvements in performance, capacity and low
pricing, these SSDs are a perfect fit for the exploding netbook
market."
Netbook Market Takes Off
Netbooks as a category sold about half a million units in 2007 yet
market researchers International Data Corp. (IDC) recently hiked
their projected worldwide sales to reach 11 million this year,
growing to 41 million in 2012. Initially, IDC projected worldwide
sales to reach nine million in 2012.
"SanDisk's Gen 2 pSSD drives have the best combination of
capacity, performance, weight, pricing and power advantages to
really excite designers, manufacturers and users of netbooks," said
Richard Brown, VP of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Our latest
reference designs will include SanDisk's Gen2 pSSD drives, and we
look forward to working with SanDisk to aggressively address the
netbook market's needs."
SanDisk's Gen 2 pSSD drives, slated to be available in February,
2009, are built using the company's reliable 43-nanometer
Multi-Level Cell (MLC) flash memory. This technology is produced at
fabrication plants in Yokkaichi, Japan, where SanDisk and its
partner, Toshiba Corporation, share the output.
The technology on which the Second Generation Modular SSDs are
based also utilizes SanDisk's innovative patented All Bit Line
(ABL) architecture with advanced proprietary programming algorithms
and multi-level data storage management schemes to yield MLC NAND
flash memory chips that don't sacrifice performance or
reliability.
About SanDisk:
SanDisk Corporation, the inventor and world's largest supplier of
flash storage cards, is a global leader in flash memory - from
research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and
retail distribution. SanDisk's product portfolio includes flash
memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders;
digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the
enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state
drives for computers. SanDisk (www.sandisk.com/corporate)
is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half
its sales outside the United States.
1 1 gigabyte = 1 billion bytes
SanDisk's product and executive images can be downloaded from
http://www.sandisk.com/corporate/MediaKit
SanDisk's web site/home page address:
http://www.sandisk.com
SanDisk and the SanDisk logo are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation,
registered in the United States and other countries. SanDisk pSSD
is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation. Other brand names mentioned
herein are for identification purposes only and may be the
trademarks of their respective holder (s).
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements,
including expectations for new product introductions, technology
measurement standards, applications, markets, and customers that
are based on our current expectations and involve numerous risks
and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements
to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking
statements to be inaccurate include among others: the proposed
standards may not be adopted by the market, market demand for our
products may grow more slowly than our expectations or there may be
a slower adoption rate for these products in new markets that we
are targeting, our products may not be available at the prices,
dates or in the geographies we anticipate, our products may not
perform as expected and the other risks detailed from time-to-time
in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports,
including, but not limited to, our annual report on Form 10-K and
our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We do not intend to update the
information contained in this press release.