SanDisk Begins Shipping High-Speed, Next-Generation Solid State Drives for Ultra-Hot Netbook Market

TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today announced that it has begun shipping its next-generation flash memory-based solid state drives (SSD) for netbooks, offering high-performance components at a competitive price. SanDisk^® pSSD^™ P2 and S2 employ a new technology called nCache^™, which improves netbook performance. The drives will be demonstrated at the SanDisk booth at Computex, Taipei, June 2-6, 2009: Booth # N709 Nangang Hall, 4^th floor.

“This enables key component suppliers to lower bill of materials costs without sacrificing performance or crucial equipment capabilities.”

Netbooks are small, low-cost computers that offer consumers a highly portable means of surfing the Internet, accessing email as well as enjoying their favorite music and videos on the go. Market researchers, IDC, project consumer purchases of netbooks to rise from 11.5 million sold in 2008 to 50 million in 2013¹.

nCache: Advanced Technology for Faster Performance

SanDisk’s exclusive nCache technology is a non-volatile write cache capable of supporting burst performance up to five times the steady state vRPM² to further enhance the user experience³. nCache improves user responsiveness and helps prevent incidence of “stalling” or “shuddering” often seen in first generation netbook SSDs.

The SanDisk pSSD P2 and S2 drives offer 9,000 vRPM of steady state performance in addition to nCache, which goes beyond this and offers a non-volatile cache of up to 320MB* to support bursts of random write commands maximizing system responsiveness. In addition, because nCache is non-volatile, the user’s data is protected in the event of a power interruption.

“Full-featured operating systems make tremendous demands in the storage device – writing large amounts of data in fast bursts using small random transfer sizes,” said Doreet Oren, director, product marketing, SanDisk. “SanDisk pSSD drives with nCache offer up to 50 times the random write performance of our first generation SSDs, delivering on the SSD promise for netbooks.”

Strategic Collaboration to Lower Netbook Costs

“As Netbooks migrate from retail stand-alone systems to operator-managed devices, many mobile network operators (MNOs) will consider Linux and netbooks with ARM processors for their low power consumption, low cost and greater customization capabilities,” said Tim Bajarin, president and principal analyst, Creative Strategies, Inc. “This enables key component suppliers to lower bill of materials costs without sacrificing performance or crucial equipment capabilities.”

Engineers from SanDisk and Canonical, the creator of the popular Ubuntu Linux-based operating system (OS), have worked closely on system optimizations for the Gen2 pSSD, resulting in improved system responsiveness and longer battery life.

“Canonical is enabling original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and designers (ODMs) to offer consumers a fantastic user experience with Ubuntu Netbook Remix running on netbooks,” said Chris Kenyon, director, OEM services, Canonical. “Our tests have shown SanDisk second generation pSSD equipped with nCache performing significantly better than a 5400 RPM HDD, providing Ubuntu users with the speed and stability that they need.”

SanDisk pSSDs are also ideal for use in netbooks equipped with ARM processors like Freescale’s i.MX515 device, which offers impressive performance at costs that let OEMs and ODMs meet critical price points. The processor’s advanced power management features extend battery life and eliminate the need for energy-sapping fans or costly heat sinks.

“All-day battery life is critical in the netbook space, where OEMs carefully evaluate each component for optimal energy efficiency,” said Glen Burchers, marketing director, consumer segment, Freescale. “Like Freescale’s i.MX515 processor, SanDisk’s pSSDs are designed with power management in mind, thus addressing critical market requirements.”

Availability

Available in capacities of 8, 16, 32 and 64-gigabytes (GB)*, SanDisk second-generation pSSD drives are attractively priced for segments such as Netbooks, POS terminals, printers, ATMs and other applications where users need HDD functionality with improved reliability, yet want to pay only for the exact capacity that they need.

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 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes, 1 megabyte (MB) = 1 million bytes.

¹ IDC, Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, June 2009

² vRPM (virtual Revolutions Per Minute) - a metric to compare SSD performance in client PCs with the HDD and with other SSDs. vRPM = (50 / ((0.5 / 4kB random read IOPS) + 0.5 / 4kB random write IOPS))

³ Performance based on internal testing and projections may vary depending on host device.

SanDisk’s product and executive images can be downloaded from

http://www.sandisk.com/corporate/media.asp

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 and nCache are trademarks 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, features, 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 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, or in the geographies or capacities that 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.

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