SANDISK'S MODULAR SOLID STATE DRIVE SELECTED BY ASUS FOR ITS UNIQUE COMPUTER WITH ROTATING TOUCHSCREEN DISPLAY
New Eee PC™ T91MT
Multi-Touch Netbook Uses SanDisk pSSD Drive's Compact Form Factor
and Innovative Flash Technology To Help Deliver Enhanced User
Experience and Maximum Portability
Milpitas, Calif., December 3,
2009 - SanDisk SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the
global leader in flash memory cards, today announced that the
32-gigabyte (GB)1 SanDisk® pSSDTM Gen2 drive was
selected by ASUS as the SSD of choice for its new Eee PCTM
multi-touch netbook computer.
The SanDisk pSSD drive helps enable
the small form factor and low power consumption of ASUS's latest
addition to the popular Eee PCTM Touch series convertible
touchscreen netbook line, the T91MT. Solid State Drives (SSD) use
no moving parts, offering improved durability that helps prevent
data loss resulting from drive failure. Computers with an SSD run
quieter, cooler and consume less power than conventional hard disk
drives (HDD).
The new ASUS Eee PC T91MT netbook
offers a broad array of features that contribute to an improved
user experience.
- Running Microsoft Windows 7 home
premium edition OS, the netbook's rotating display supports
multi-touch gestures such as pinching, rotating and swiping, and
can function as a tablet PC.
- Using a 256-level pressure sensor,
the Eee PC™ T91MT's crisp and responsive 8.9" multi-touch screen
reproduces handwriting beautifully and accurately whether written
using a finger or the bundled ergonomically-designed stylus.
- With its 8.9-inch display, compact
size (8.86 x 6.46 x 0.99 inches) and a total weight of less than
1kg (2.12lbs.), the ASUS T91MT is ideal for on-the-go consumers who
need an advanced netbook that can easily be taken anywhere.
"SanDisk is pleased to contribute to
the stylish design of the Eee PCTM T91MT netbook from ASUS," said
Yoram Cedar, executive vice president, OEM business unit and
corporate engineering, SanDisk. "ASUS's selection of SanDisk is
also an indication that the market is ready to progress beyond
traditional mechanical storage provided by hard disk drives and
enter a new era of computing that uses highly durable and
power-saving SSDs. As a supplier of modular SSDs for the PC OEM
industry, we see increased interest for the SanDisk pSSD drive from
companies that bring to the market portable computing solutions
that are smaller, lighter and faster."
The SanDisk pSSD drive includes an
industry-standard PATA interface and a Mini PCIe form factor,
delivering a variety of features that complement the ultra-thin
ASUS T91MT netbook. The 32GB SanDisk pSSD drive's compact size
(weighing only 6.4 grams and measuring 32.2mm x 50.95mm x3.6mm) and
low power consumption (average power of 0.15W2) are
well-suited to the ASUS netbook's particular form factor and
extended battery life requirements.
"SanDisk pSSD's small form factor
and low power consumption contributes to the stylish design and
light weight of the Eee PCTM T91MT multi-touch netbook," said Jerry
Shen, CEO, ASUSTeK Computer Inc. "With greater portability and
longer battery life, our customers gain the freedom and flexibility
to use their laptops anytime, anywhere."
SanDisk's modular solid state drive,
pSSD, also allows ASUS to deliver greater performance to its users.
pSSD offers 9,000 vRPM3 of performance and has the added
benefit of employing nCache™ technology4, a large
non-volatile write cache technology that boosts burst random write
performance. nCache™ technology improves user responsiveness and
helps prevent incidence of drive "stalling."
SanDisk pSSD Gen2 drive supports
Windows 7, Windows XP and Linux. The drive comes in a variety of
PATA and SATA interfaces and is available to OEMs in capacities
ranging from 8GB to 64GB. More information about SanDisk's pSSD
drives is available at: www.sandisk.com\pssd
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.
1 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1
billion bytes.
2 While running MobileMark and average (typical)
power.
3 vRPM (virtual Revolutions Per Minute) - a metric to
compare SSD performance in client PCs with theHDD and with other
SSDs. vRPM answers the question how fast would a HDD have to spin
in order to deliver the same performance as a SSD in a client PC.
vRPM = 50 / ((0.5 / 4kB random read IOPS) + 0.5 / 4kB random write
IOPS)).
4 nCache™ acceleration
technology is a large Non Volatile Write Cache, a unique feature in
SanDisk pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2 that improves random write
performance and ensures an improved user experience. Studies show
that modern operating systems mostly access the storage device
using 4k access blocks. The cache is filled during these small
write commands and emptied during idle time when the host is not
accessing the drive, with no risk of data loss. For a typical
everyday use, the write performance that the users see is the
nCache technology (burst) high performance, and not steady state
(sustained) SanDisk pSSD performance. Based on IOmeter 4K random
write test.
SanDisk's product and executive
images can be downloaded from:
www.sandisk.com/about-sandisk/media-kit
SanDisk's web site/home page address: www.sandisk.com
© 2009 SanDisk Corporation. All
rights reserved. 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, specifications, 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:
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
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/A and our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We
do not intend to update the information contained in this press
release.