SanDisk releases 32-GB SSD for notebooks

MILPITAS

JANUARY 4, 2007

SanDisk Corporation introduced a 32-gigabyte (GB), 1.8-inch solid-state drive
(SSD) as a drop-in replacement for the standard mechanical hard disk drive.
Initially aimed at enterprise users as the first step toward mass consumer
adoption, SanDisk SSD offers field-proven durability to keep mobile PCs working
in the toughest of conditions and improves the overall user experience.

Previously, large capacity flash-based drives had been used primarily by the
military, aerospace and telecom industries, which demanded high performance and
reliability under challenging environmental conditions. But now the declining
cost of NAND flash memory has made SSD a viable and economically attractive
alternative to existing technologies in a wider variety of applications,
including mobile PCs aimed at enterprise and consumer users.

"This is an important milestone for SanDisk in our relentless quest to
create new large-scale markets for flash storage solutions for consumers in the
personal computing space," said Eli Harari, SanDisk CEO. "The
32-gigabyte SSD that we are announcing today represents the fifth generation of
flash-based solid state drives developed by msystems, which we recently
acquired. The 32GB SSD has been made commercially viable through SanDisk's
technology leadership coupled with msystems' tremendous experience and IP, which
are captured in the high-performance, low-cost system controllers that
distinguish this product.

"Once we begin shipping the 32GB SSD for notebook PCs, we expect to see
its increasing adoption in the coming years as we continue to reduce the cost of
flash memory. When these SSD devices become more affordable, we expect that
their superior features over rotating disk drives will create a new consumer
category for our retail sales channels worldwide," said Harari. It is
projected that inclusion of the SanDisk 32GB SSD in a notebook PC could increase
the end-user price by around $600 in the first half of 2007, he added.

Using NAND flash enhanced by SanDisk's patented TrueFFS flash management
technology, SanDisk SSD delivers two million hours mean time between failures (MTBF).
With no moving parts, it does not need to spin into action or seek files in the
way that conventional hard disk drives do. These characteristics, combined with
SanDisk's advanced flash management technology, make it possible for SanDisk SSD
to deliver excellent performance compared with hard disk drives and competing
solid state drives.

The SanDisk SSD announced today achieves a sustained read rate of 62 MB per
second and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a
512-byte transfer - more than 100 times faster than most hard disk drives.
Taking advantage of this performance, a laptop PC equipped with SanDisk SSD can
boot Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise in as little as 35 seconds. It also can
achieve an average file access rate of 0.12 milliseconds, compared with 55
seconds and 19 milliseconds, respectively, for a laptop PC with a hard disk
drive.

Another advantage of SanDisk SSD is its extremely low power consumption rate
compared to the hard disk drive: 0.4 watt during active operation versus 1.0
watt. This is particularly important to extend the battery life for the benefit
of enterprise road warriors. These results enable new operating systems, such as
Microsoft Vista, to provide mobile PC users with a superior overall system
experience.

SanDisk SSD 1.8-inch 32GB solid state drive is now available for original
equipment manufacturers. It is the first in a range of solutions that SanDisk
will be offering to bring flash to the mainstream mobile PC market.