CIRRUS LOGIC TEAMS WITH SONY TO DOUBLE CD-RW STORAGE CAPACITY.

Cirrus Logic Inc. (Nasdaq: CRUS), a market leader of ReWritable Compact Disc (CD-RW) chips, announced a new CD-RW drive device that offers twice the storage capacity of current solution.

This new double-density encoder/decoder, designated the CR3490, makes it possible to store 1.3 gigabytes of data on a single CD-RW disc, and boasts the industry's fastest write (16x) and read (48x) speeds.

Cirrus Logic claims to be the first company to deliver a device capable of those speeds and now offers the first device that will meet the new Double-Density CD-ROM/-R/-RW (or DDCD) specification from Sony and Philips when it is finalized.

With more than 10 million CD-RW devices shipped to date, Cirrus Logic holds 35 percent of the burgeoning CD-RW drive market and continues to be a technology leader. This market is already making its way, as a standard feature, into high- and medium-end OEM PCs and is expected to be the removable storage drive of choice, replacing the floppy.

With 1.3 gigabytes of storage, consumers will be able to store twice the number of compressed audio files or family photographs and can back up more conventional data on a single CD, an affordable medium that is reusable.