SANDISK’S ELI HARARI TO RECEIVE 2009 IEEE ROBERT N. NOYCE MEDAL
Prestigious Award
Recognizes Harari's Leadership in Development and Commercialization
of Flash Memory Technology
Milpitas,
Calif., June 23, 2009 - SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK)
today announced that the company's co-founder, chairman and CEO,
Eli Harari, will receive the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal at the IEEE
Honors Ceremony on Thursday, June 25 in Los Angeles. IEEE is the
world's leading professional association for the advancement of
technology. The award recognizes Harari's innovation of flash
memory technology, contribution to the proliferation of flash
memory devices, and visionary leadership within the semiconductor
industry.
Dr. Harari, along with his colleagues Sanjay Mehrotra, president
and COO, and Jack Yuan, founded SanDisk in 1988. Their vision was
to create a revolutionary, low cost storage technology based on new
flash semiconductor memory that would replace film, magnetic tape
and rotating magnetic disk drives and enable new large consumer
markets. SanDisk has achieved its founders' vision and it has grown
into the global leader in flash memory cards, with total revenues
in excess of $3.35 billion in 2008, selling consumer flash memory
products at more than 240,000 retail outlets worldwide.
"This award is a wonderful recognition of the breakthroughs
achieved by SanDisk in the past 21 years," said Eli Harari,
chairman and CEO, SanDisk. "I have been fortunate to work with a
supremely capable team, dedicated to transforming our bold vision
into reality. Today hundreds of millions of people worldwide
entrust their memories to SanDisk, and the entire SanDisk team has
a share in this great honor. For me personally this award carries
particular meaning, coming on the 50th anniversary of
Bob Noyce's co-inventing the integrated circuit, an invention that
profoundly changed the course of history."
Under Harari's leadership, SanDisk invented flash mass storage
cards and pioneered USB flash drives, developed the
CompactFlash® flash memory card format and co-developed
the SD™, microSD™, Memory Stick PRO™ and Memory Stick PRO Duo™ card
formats. Harari was instrumental in the transition from NOR-based
flash memory to NAND-based flash memory as well as the invention
and development of multilevel cell data storage. When combined with
state-of-the-art semiconductor processes executed at the leading
edge, these technologies resulted in the densest,
lowest-cost-per-bit, nonvolatile solid-state memory possible.
SanDisk successfully developed and implemented 14 consecutive
generations of flash memory chips, thereby reducing the cost of
flash storage by more than 10,000 times cumulatively. These
unprecedented cost reductions proved the key factor in fueling the
explosive growth of large scale flash storage markets.
The commercialization of flash memory has reshaped the consumer
electronics landscape, enabling content on-the-go any time,
anywhere. Flash imaging cards and flash-based MP3 players helped
enable the digital photography and music revolutions, replacing
35mm film as well as tapes and CDs. Flash USB drives and solid
state drives (SSD) have set new standards in removable and internal
storage, and are poised to supplant optical media like DVDs and
hard disk drives.
SanDisk continues to pioneer flash memory technology with the
commercialization of 3-bits per cell (X3) and 4-bits per cell (X4)
flash memory chips, which are the most advanced multi-level cell
technologies available to date. SanDisk holds more than 1,700
patents worldwide, generating $508 million in license and royalty
revenue for 2008.
Harari holds a doctorate degree in solid state sciences from
Princeton University and a bachelor's degree in physics with honors
from Manchester University. In addition to inventing the floating
gate EEPROM, the precursor to flash, Harari's technical resume
includes more than 100 U.S. and foreign patents and numerous
technical publications.
About SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in flash memory cards -
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 is a Silicon
Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales
outside the United States.
SanDisk's web site/home page address: http://www.sandisk.com
SanDisk's product and executive images can be downloaded from
http://www.sandisk.com/corporate/mediakit
SanDisk, the SanDisk logo and Compactflash are trademarks of
SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other
countries. SD, microSD and miniSD are trademarks of SD-3C LLC.
Memory Stick PRO and Memory Stick PRO Duo are registered trademarks
of Sony 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
and applications 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: there may be a slower adoption rate for these products in
new markets that we are targeting or market demand for these
products may grow more slowly than our expectations, these products
and accessories 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
most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our subsequent quarterly
reports on Form 10-Q. We do not intend to update the information
contained in this press release.