Record Capacity of 832GB for New 2.5-Inch MLC Flash Disk From Bitmicro

Flash solid state disk (SSD) pioneer BiTMICRO Networks announced at the CES 2008 show in Las Vegas, Nevada its plan to launch an 832GB version of the E-Disk Altima SATA flash SSD in 2.5-inch form factor.

E-Disk Altima E2A3GM flash SSD will utilize the multi-level cell (MLC) type of NAND flash, which doubles the number of bits stored per memory cell compared to the single-level cell (SLC) NAND, effectively increasing data density at low price points. What’s more, BiTMICRO will be using its EDSA and LUNETA controllers (see below) to optimize the performance of the E-Disk Altima SATA flash SSD, allowing the drive to reach peak data transfer and I/O rates that are comparable with current SLC flash-equipped solid state drives.

The 2.5-inch E-Disk Altima E2A3GM flash SSD is estimated to deliver sustained rates of up to 100MB per second and up to 20,000 I/O operations per second. BiTMICRO further complements this SSD-level performance with enterprise-level capacities, as the E-Disk Altima SATA flash solid state disk can reach capacities of up to 832GB of pure solid-state flash storage. The drive offers SATA 3.0 Gbps support and "hot pluggable" capabilities to personal computing and enterprise applications requiring high capacity and high performance yet affordable solid state storage.

"This latest product pre-announcement seeks to establish BiTMICRO’s commitment to deliver solid state storage in all market applications," said Rudy Bruce, Executive VP for Marketing and Sales and CMO at BiTMICRO Networks. "We are excited to offer E-Disk Altima SATA flash solid state drive as a PC and enterprise storage alternative offering the best-in-class capacity, performance and reliability."

"The declining cost of NAND flash memory, coupled with rising SSD densities, is enabling SSD implementation in the personal computing market," says Jeff Janukowicz, Research Manager for Solid State Drives at IDC. "More cost-effective SSD solutions based on MLC technology, such as the E-Disk Altima E2A3GM flash SSD from BiTMICRO, are positioned to take advantage of the tremendous unit growth opportunity in the personal computer SSD segment, which is expected to rise by 477% annually from 2006 to 2011."

Sampling for the E-Disk Altima SATA solid state disk is expected to begin in Q2 2008 and will ship in volume by Q3 2008 in capacities ranging from 32GB to 832GB.

About EDSA and LUNETA
The Enhanced Datamover and Storage Accelerator (EDSA) flash I/O controller is a proprietary ASIC that succeeds the highly successful disk controller chipset of BiTMICRO’s electronic disk technology. The EDSA flash I/O controller supports large block NAND and AND flash as well as single, dual, quad-die flash devices, allowing BiTMICRO to hike E-Disk Altima solid state disk capacities to terabytes of pure flash memory.
EDSA goes hand in hand with the Logical Unifier of Extensive Transfer Arrays (LUNETA) ASIC, BiTMICRO’s proprietary flash memory management interface controller that is designed to orchestrate massively parallel and multi-block I/O operations on large arrays of flash devices. LUNETA supports both NAND (SLC or MLC) and AND types of flash memory and is typically used in designs to complement the EDSA controller in applications that require scalability and management of larger amounts of flash devices.

BiTMICRO Networks