Ruggedized Flash Drives by SST

SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.) announced three new additions to its NANDrive family
of ATA solid-state storage devices. The new 512 MByte, 1 GByte and 2 GByte
NANDrive products are capable of operating at industrial temperature ranges,
making them compelling storage options for industrial applications operating
in harsh environments, including medical equipment, factory automation and in-cabin automotive electronics. SST NANDrive is a high-performance, high-endurance, fully integrated embedded flash solid-state drive that provides a
total solution well suited for data storage in embedded or portable
applications. At a mere 12mm x 24mm x 1.4mm, NANDrive is one of the industry’s
smallest ATA solid-state drives.

The new NANDrive devices are rated for operation at temperatures between
-40 and +85 degrees Celsius. This temperature rating, combined with the
devices’ use of single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash and the inherent ruggedness
of solid-state drives, makes these new NANDrive devices an ideal fit for use
in applications that require a long operating life and high reliability under
extreme physical conditions.

"Designers creating products for industrial and automotive markets have
been looking for storage options beyond traditional magnetic hard disk drives,
which typically don’t perform well in stressful physical conditions," said
Frank Lin, vice president, Product Marketing and New Product Development, SST.
"Our new industrial-grade NANDrive devices were developed to give embedded
designers a high-capacity solid-state storage solution with low power
consumption and a small form factor that can withstand the temperature
extremes and high-impact conditions typical of industrial and automotive
applications."

By leveraging SST’s proven NAND controller technology, innovative multi-
chip packaging expertise and a widely used industry standard ATA/IDE
interface, the NANDrive family manages all NAND flash complexities and allows
designers to quickly integrate mass data storage solutions into their designs
without having to make any firmware changes. Because NANDrive complies with
the standard ATA protocol supported by all standard embedded operating
systems, embedded system designers no longer face the risk of host software
revalidation cycles. In contrast, some other solid-state mass data storage
solutions require changing host-side vendor-specific software whenever there
is a change in the controller or a change to new NAND flash devices. To
further ease integration and reduce inventory management, SST NANDrive solves
the issues of pairing a NAND controller with new NAND flash devices. This is
especially beneficial as NAND flash devices continue to migrate to new process
geometries every year. As an integrated multi-chip package solution, NANDrive
eliminates the need for long qualification cycles when there is a change of
NAND flash technology; customers need only qualify the NANDrive as a mass
storage subsystem.

In addition to its ease-of-integration, SST NANDrive offers high
performance along with several advanced security protection features. SST’s
industry-first hardware 8-bit ECC engine and its firmware programmable multi-
tasking NAND interface help solve the slow performance problem that is typical
when using lower cost, multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash. SST NANDrive offers
a unique 20-Byte serial ID number for data encryption as well as up to four
protection zones that customers can use to store boot code. By using the
NANDrive to store boot code, system designers can eliminate the use of certain
discrete devices, thus reducing bill of material costs.

Pricing and Availability
Samples of the industrial-grade 85LD0512 (512 MByte), 85LD1001T (1 GByte)
and 85LD1002U (2 GByte) NANDrive products are available now, with volume
production scheduled to begin in April 2008. In 10,000 unit quantities, the
devices are priced as follows:

85LD0512 (512 MByte): $17.25 per unit
85LD1001T (1 GByte): $30.39 per unit
85LD1002U (2 GByte): $57.33 per unit

Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.