Press Releases

May 31, 2010

Computex 2010, Booth #N0108, Taipei, June 1, 2010 - SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today introduced its latest solid state drive (SSD) products. The SanDisk® SSD G4 serves as a drop-in replacement for hard disk drives (HDD) in notebooks; while the SanDisk® SSD P4, the successor to the widely used pSSD modular drive, enables designers to offer even thinner netbook and tablet computers.

The new drives offer a unique balance of performance, high-capacity storage and long-term reliability. SanDisk SSD P4 and SanDisk SSD G4 offer up to 128 gigabytes (GB)¹ and 256GB of storage respectively, double the capacities of the company's previous SSD offerings. The drives are available in various compact form factors, which SanDisk can customize according to manufacturers' specification, offering greater freedom and flexibility in how OEMs design their products. The SSDs use SanDisk's advanced 32-nanometer (nm) multi-level cell (MLC) process technology, which enables cost-competitive high-capacity storage with a tiny footprint.

"We designed our new SSDs with long-term consumer usage in mind," said Doron Myersdorf, senior director, SSD marketing, SanDisk. "Our drives offer faster boot times and improved system responsiveness while maintaining our uncompromising reliability standards. In addition, the drives utilize our Adaptive Flash Management (AFM) technology, which enables them to bridge the gap between demanding market requirements and increasingly challenging raw NAND flash characteristics."

SanDisk SSD G4 Balances Fast Performance, Storage and Long-term Endurance

• Capacity and Performance: Ranging from 64GB to 256GB with sequential read/write speeds of up to 220 and 160MB/sec³. The drive's combination of high capacities and performance delivers the fast boot times, enhanced system responsiveness and space needed to easily handle storage-intensive data such as videos, photos, music and games.

• Endurance: SanDisk SSD G4 offers Long-term Data Endurance (LDE) of 160 terabytes written (TBW) for a 256GB drive, sufficient for over 10 years of PC usage⁴, well beyond a typical user's length of ownership of a computer.

• Page-based Algorithm: To accelerate performance and extend the drive's endurance, the SSD G4 uses ExtremeFFS, a page-based algorithm that significantly increases random write speeds and efficiency². This AFM implementation for SSD G4 enables the drive's unique balance between fast performance and long-term endurance.

• Flexible Form Factors: SanDisk offers customized form factors to meet stringent OEM requirements, enabling thin and lightweight laptop designs that cannot be achieved using a standard HDD.

"Enhanced user experience and long-term reliability are two qualities of SSDs that directly impact the end-user and ultimately represent what consumers care about," said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager, solid state drives, IDC. "Solid state drives like the SanDisk SSD G4 that optimize around actual usage scenarios and device endurance, as opposed to sufficing solely on device level metrics, should provide a better indication of real world performance."

SanDisk SSD P4 Enables the Emerging Tablet and Handheld Computing Market

• Large Capacity, Tiny Footprint: With capacities ranging from 8GB to 128GB, the drive lets OEMs equip small devices with big storage where a bulky HDD is not an option. The drive is available in various form factors that include a new ultra-small variant of the mSATA module, mSATA mini, with dimensions of 26.80 x 30.00 x 3.4 mm. This is SanDisk's tiniest SATA module form factor.

• Performance: SanDisk AFM implementation for SanDisk SSD P4 uses nCache^TM acceleration technology, a large non-volatile write cache technology that boosts burst random write performance to shorten boot times, help prevent "stalling" and "hiccups," and increase system responsiveness. The SanDisk SSD P4 offers burst random 4KB performance of up to 600 IOPS.

• Multiple Applications: SanDisk SSD P4 is ideal for use in small devices such as netbooks, smartbooks, tablet computers and ultra-thin notebooks, in addition to POS terminals, Set Top Boxes (STBs), printers and other devices that use embedded flash.

Pricing and Availability

   The SanDisk SSD G4 and SanDisk SSD P4 are currently being evaluated by top tier OEMs. High-volume production of the drives is expected in the Q3 2010 timeframe with product available to OEMs at that time; pricing will depend on the quantity ordered.

SSD Advantage

   Unlike conventional HDDs, SSDs have no moving parts, improving durability which helps prevent data loss resulting from drive failure. In addition, SSD-equipped computers run cooler and more quietly, consume less power and deliver faster performance than those using HDDs.

Fast Boot Demonstration at Computex Booth #N0108

   Insyde Software is working with SanDisk and Microsoft Corp. to address the growing demand from consumers and PC makers to reduce boot times and operating system load times. At the SanDisk booth #N0108, Computex attendees can witness a demonstration of a notebook PC using SanDisk G3 SSD power-on to Windows Desktop in less than 15 seconds.

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.

¹1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes. 1 terabyte = 1 trillion bytes.
²ExtremeFFS is a SanDisk page-based flash management algorithm, optimized for popular operating systems, has the potential to greatly increase SSD random write speeds and efficiency thus accelerating the performance and extending the endurance of SSDs inside PCs.
³Based on SanDisk internal testing of sequential read and write speeds; performance may be lower depending upon host device. 1 megabyte (MB) = 1 million bytes.
⁴Based on 256GB SanDisk SSD G4; Approximations based on LDE (Long-term Data Endurance) - an industry metric, introduced by SanDisk, that quantifies how much data can be written to a SSD in its lifespan expressed in terabytes written (TBW). Data is written using typical PC transfer size, written at a constant rate over the life of the SSD, and data is retained for at least 1 year upon LDE exhaustion. Based on SanDisk internal measurements, a typical client PC user writes 4GB/day.

SanDisk's product and executive images can be downloaded from www.sandisk.com/corporate/media.asp SanDisk's web site/home page address: www.sandisk.com

©2010 SanDisk Corporation. All rights reserved. SanDisk and the SanDisk logo are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder (s).