SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced that the iNAND Ultra line of products will be the first of its embedded flash memory products to move to 19 nanometer (nm) manufacturing technology, the industry's most advanced chip making process.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today introduced the 128 gigabyte (GB) SanDisk Extreme SDXC UHS-I card. The new card is ideal for photography enthusiasts capturing Full HD 3D videos and high-resolution photos.

Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., SanDisk Corporation, Sony Corporation and Toshiba Corporation today announced that they have reached an agreement in principle to collaborate on a new content protection technology for flash memory cards such as SD Cards and various storage devices. Under the "Next Generation Secure Memory Initiative," the five companies will start preparing for licensing and promotion of HD (high-definition)-capable security for SD Cards and embedded memory for use in advanced consumer applications such as tablets and smartphones.

This content protection solution will be robust enough to protect HD content. A high level of content security will be realized through the use of the initiative's technologies, including unique ID (identification) technology for flash memory and robust copy protection based on public key infrastructure.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced that it has implemented the new SATA µSSD specification into its SanDisk iSSD product line of postage stamp-sized embedded SSDs. SATA-IO, an industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of serial ATA (SATA) technology, introduced the standard today.

The number of media tablets shipped worldwide is expected to grow from 17.8 million units in 2010 to 53.5 million units in 2011. The five-year CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) is 48.5 percent, according to the IDC 1Q11 Media Tablet and eReader Tracker Forecast. These thin, high-performance mobile computing platforms combine sophisticated components in a small physical area, compounding design complexity and driving the need for industry standards.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today introduced the SanDisk Ultra solid state drive (SSD) for the retail market. The new SSD can extend the life of desktop and notebook PCs, and offers greater performance, durability and power efficiency than a hard disk drive.

The SanDisk Ultra SSD is a convenient drop-in solution for technology enthusiasts looking to upgrade their own PCs for an enhanced user experience. The new SSD features: Fast Performance, Power Efficiency, and Long-term Reliability.

Toshiba Corporation and SanDisk Corporation today celebrated the opening of Fab 5, the third 300mm wafer NAND fabrication facility at Toshiba's Yokkaichi Operations in Mie Prefecture, Japan.

Consumer demand for smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices continues to fuel strong global demand for NAND flash memory. Toshiba began the construction of Fab 5 in July 2010, and the new facility, equipped with manufacturing equipment funded by Toshiba and SanDisk, started volume production in July 2011. Fab 5 currently uses 24 nanometer (nm) process technology and its first wafer outs will be in August. In time, the fab will transition to more advanced process generations, starting with recently announced 19nm technology, the world's smallest, most advanced process node.

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today expanded its Lightning(R) Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD) family with six new 2.5-inch 6Gb SAS (6 gigabits per second Serial Attached SCSI) models. The Lightning products are part of the new Enterprise Storage Solutions (ESS) division that SanDisk created following its recent acquisition of Pliant Technology.

The new drives include three SLC (single-level cell) flash drives with capacities of 100 gigabytes (GB), 200GB and 400GB; and three MLC (multi-level cell) flash drives with capacities of 200GB, 400GB and 800GB. The new drives extend SanDisk's position as the industry leader in EFD performance, performance predictability and reliability. SanDisk also confirmed today that HP has qualified and integrated the new Lightning 6Gb SAS drives into its HP Qualified storage drive offerings.

SanDisk Corporation, the global leader in flash memory cards, today introduced the SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-I card. The card features Ultra High Speed (UHS) technology from the newly released SD 3.0 specification and achieves up to 45 MB/sec read and write performance with long-term reliability by distributing data rapidly and efficiently using SanDisk's proprietary Power Core Controller.

"SanDisk has a long history of developing fast, highly reliable cards for photography enthusiasts and professionals," said Susan Park, director, retail product marketing, SanDisk. "Our new SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC card lets consumers take their skills to the next level by capturing high-resolution still images, fast-moving action shots and HD videos of the highest quality."

SanDisk today announced the world's fastest high-capacity CompactFlash card. The latest milestone in SanDisk's long history of industry-leading products, the SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash card features 128 gigabytes (GB) of storage and up to 100 megabyte per second (MB/sec) write speeds. With its Power Core controller and UDMA-7 interface, the card delivers the performance demanded by high-end DSLR cameras.

SanDisk today announced the world's fastest high-capacity CompactFlash card. The latest milestone in SanDisk's long history of industry-leading products, the SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash card features 128 gigabytes (GB) of storage and up to 100 megabyte per second (MB/sec) write speeds. With its Power Core controller and UDMA-7 interface, the card delivers the performance demanded by high-end DSLR cameras.

SanDisk Corporation, the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced the availability of its smallest USB flash drive to U.S. and Canadian consumers. The SanDisk Cruzer Blade is about the size of a standard size paper clip and weighs approximately the same as a penny, creating a tiny footprint that fits easily on a keychain or mobile phone dongle. Despite its small size, the drive packs high-capacity storage at an affordable price.

Available in capacities ranging from 2 gigabytes (GB) to 16GB, the SanDisk Cruzer Blade lets consumers take their favorite digital content with them wherever they go. A 4GB drive can store 1,000 songs, 1,200 high- resolution photos, or 8 hours of 768kb/s video*. The SanDisk Cruzer Blade offers reliable storage in a sturdy form factor, helping consumers rest assured that their digital content is safe.

SanDisk Corporation, 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.

SanDisk Corporation, the global leader in flash memory cards, today introduced a new line of SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash memory cards, setting a new standard for fast, reliable, high-capacity memory cards designed for professional photographers. SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards feature a new SanDisk Power Core Controller, an advanced memory controller that enables lightning-fast read and write speeds of up to 90MB/s, doubling the performance from previous SanDisk high-end camera memory cards. The cards are shipping worldwide now with storage capacities ranging from 16 gigabytes (GB) to 64GB.

"The new SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash line is the direct result of SanDisk's passion, commitment, and break-through engineering innovation to provide best-in-class flash memory cards for professional photography," said Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. "The SanDisk Power Core Controller delivers unmatched write speed and reliability, providing photographers with a spectacular combination of performance, capacity and peace of mind that images are safely stored."

SanDisk Corporation 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, 4th floor.
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 2013.

SanDisk Corporation today announced that it has shipped the latest editions of its popular SanDisk ImageMate memory card readers, which provide enhanced user experience through increased efficiency and faster data transfer rates. The new readers have shipped to retailers in North America and are available for purchase at this time.

SanDisk Corporation today also unveiled its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs). Using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory technology, SanDisk's G3 Series establishes new benchmarks in performance and price-performance leadership in the SSD industry. Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5" and 1.8" form factors, respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface. Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively.

SanDisk Corporation and Sony Corporation today announced the joint development of two expanded formats that will shape the flash memory landscape for years to come. "Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity (Tentative name)" expands the "Memory Stick PRO" format series to achieve a maximum storage capacity of 2-terabytes (TB), while the "Memory Stick HG Micro" format enables a maximum data-transfer speed of 60 megabytes per second (MB/s), making it one of the fastest-smallest memory card formats to date. Format licensing corresponding to the "Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity" and the "Memory Stick HG Micro" is scheduled to start in 2009.

SanDisk Corporation today unveiled its next-generation of flash memory-based solid-state drives for adoption in various netbooks. Dubbed SanDisk pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2, the new flash drives feature SATA interface and come in capacities of 8, 16, 32 and 64-gigabytes. They are made using SanDisk's reliable 43-nanometer Multi-Level Cell (MLC) flash memory. SanDisk also claims that its new pSSDs are going to be very cheap when released, but unfortunately there's no exact information to confirm their words.
"Netbooks represent the fastest growing PC segment in 2009 and 2010 yet widespread adoption of SSDs in netbooks has been limited by speed, capacity and cost constraints," said Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager, Solid-State Drives (SSD), SanDisk. "With the significant improvements in performance, capacity and low pricing, these SSDs are a perfect fit for the exploding netbook market."
SanDisk's second generation pSSD drives are slated to be available in February 2009.

SanDisk Corporation today introduced an innovative new family of SanDisk USB flash drives, including the world's first backup USB flash drive with simple backup software activation at the touch of a button. The SanDisk Ultra Backup USB portable flash drive is the first offering of the company's new SanDisk Ultra USB product line. With capacities up to 64 gigabytes(GB), the SanDisk Ultra Backup USB flash drive is designed to protect computer users' photos, music, videos, personal and business documents, and other types of digital files, with the simple touch of a button. No software installation is needed. The drive protects onboard digital content with a dual layer of security, including password-protected access control and ultra-secure AES hardware-based encryption.

SanDisk Corporation today unveiled an advanced flash file system for solid-state drives (SSDs) that yields dramatic improvement in performance and reliability for computing applications. Called ExtremeFFS, this next-generation patented flash management system - which has the potential to accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems - will ship in SanDisk products during 2009. Speaking in Los Angeles at WinHEC 2008, Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager for SanDisk's Solid-State Drive (SSD) Business Unit, presented ExtremeFFS along with two metrics - vRPM and LDE - that can help end-users evaluate SSDs. vRPM enables comparisons in performance between an SSD and a hard disk drive (HDD) or another SSD, and LDE calculates the lifespan of a solid-state drive.

Who says big cards can't be fast? SanDisk Corporation today announced the 32-gigabyte (GB) SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash (CF) card, the latest addition to its award-winning SanDisk Extreme III line. Combining world-class storage capacity with fast data transfer rates, SanDisk's new memory card is designed to meet the demands of professional digital videographers and photographers. For many cards, an increase in storage capacity often comes at a cost to speed, but the 32GB SanDisk Extreme III CF card at 30 megabytes per second (MB/s) offers customers the best of both worlds.

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of flash memory chips, said today that it is considering an acquisition of SanDisk Corp.

We are considering various opportunities regarding SanDisk but nothing has been decided,

said James Chung, a spokesman at Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung. Possible acquiring of SanDisk would help Samsung save about 400 billion won ($355 million) in royalties annually, it has been reported.

It would have a significant impact on the supply and demand in the flash memory industry, ... Samsung could create additional demand from SanDisk's customers.

said Lee Sun Tae, an independent analyst at Meritz Securities Co in Seoul. On the other side, Mike Wong - SanDisk's official spokesman said that SanDisk is not aware of Samsung being interested in any acquisition. Expect more information, when there's any.

During a conference of the company's second quarter earnings, the CEO Eli Harari of Sandisk, a significant player in the solid state drive (SSD) industry said that Windows Vista would present a special challenge for solid state drive (SSD) makers. Says Harari: "As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk,". He hints at the design of Vista as a cause for performance not being upto the mark, adding that Sandisk's next generation drive controllers should aim to "basically compensate for Vista shortfalls".

"Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year," said Harari. Ironically, he has also been quoted saying that such issues didn't affect the "very low-end, ultra low-cost PCs" (read ULPCs), where existing controller technologies could handle 8 ~ 32 GB drive capacities. Clever choice of words since that's the segment that has drive manufacturers, both SSD and HDD, eying at since it's an emerging segment.

SanDisk Corp said it signed a patent cross-license agreement with PNY Technologies to settle patent cases it filed against PNY last year in Federal District Court and the International Trade Commission, regarding flash memory products. Under the terms of the cross-license, PNY will pay SanDisk royalties on flash memory products that were not previously licensed. The agreement allows PNY to continue marketing and selling USB drives and CompactFlash cards, now as SanDisk licensed products. Other specific terms of the cross-license are confidential.

SanDisk Corp. unveiled a Universal Serial Bus flash drive that automatically copies files to an online backup service when plugged into any PC with an Internet connection. The new Cruzer Titanium Plus flash drive is priced at $59.99 with 4GB of memory. It will be available in March, replacing the older Cruzer Titanium line. The online backup capability is priced at $29.99 per year, after the first six months of the service which are offered without charge. The files will be copied to Tel Aviv-based BeInSync Ltd.'s online backup service under an arrangement with SanDisk. The backup service will store up to 4GB for each product, effectively mirroring the capacity of the USB drive. Any new or changed files copied to the USB flash drive while a PC is offline will be backed up during the next connection. Any files deleted from the flash memory product will be kept online for approximately 30 days. The backup service currently supports PCs running Microsoft Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP and Windows Vista. SanDisk has no plans to provide online backup support to Macintosh- and Linux-based systems.

SanDisk Corporation today unveiled a solid-state storage solution that works in conjunction with a PC's hard drive to store and launch the computer's operating system and software applications when needed. The new SanDisk Vaulter Disk, which is a flash-based PCI Express module, tag-teams with your laptop or desktop computers' hard drive to provide enhanced performance and lower load times. Both Vaulter and the hard drive are integrated into the PC and operate simultaneously, while maintaining a low cost per gigabyte. The SanDisk Vaulter Disk will be offered to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) early next year in capacities from 8GB to 16GB.