LIGO, a Caltech and MIT Joint Project, Incorporates BiTMICRO's Solid State Flash Disk Drive; E-Disk Solid State Storage Technology in the Forefront of Technological Achievement.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2001

BiTMICRO Networks, Inc., a pioneer in intelligent flash solid state disk storage and storage management solutions, today announced the implementation of its solid state E-Disk technology in the LIGO Project.

LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. LIGO is a joint project between scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Cooperative Agreement PHY--9210038.

"BiTMICRO's E-Disks were easy to integrate and work flawlessly in our Quanterra 4120 systems. We are very satisfied with the E-Disk performance, SCSI compatibility, low power consumption and reliability. Their response to inquiries and the depth of the technical information provided is outstanding," said Dr. Szabolcs Marka, LIGO Project researcher. "Overall, I am very happy that we chose BiTMICRO!," added Dr. Marka.

LIGO Project's mission is to observe gravitational waves of cosmic origin. The gravitational waves were first predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity in 1916, when the technology necessary for their detection did not yet exist. Today, the technology has reached the point where it can finally prove Einstein was accurate one more time.

LIGO will search for gravitational waves created in supernova collapses of stellar cores (which form neutron stars and black holes), collisions and coalescences of neutron stars or black holes, rotations of neutron stars with deformed crusts and the remnants of gravitational radiation created by the birth of the universe.

The LIGO facility houses a laser interferometer, consisting of mirrors suspended at each of the corners of a huge L-shaped vacuum system, measuring 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) on each side. Pre-Stabilized laser beams in the interferometer are used to detect minuscule motions of the mirrors, which can be caused by passing gravitational waves.

These waves that might have originated hundreds of millions of light years from earth are expected to change the 4 kilometer mirror spacing by about a thousandth of a Fermi (less than one trillionth of the diameter of a human hair).

Additional, in-depth information about the LIGO Project is available at the LIGO Web site at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/. Both LIGO observatories are also open for interested students and visitors. Please consult the above Web site for visitor information.

"We take pride in being part of LIGO Project's giant technological leap to mankind's better understanding of the universe," said Rudy Bruce, BiTMICRO's president.

"Coming from Caltech and MIT, the nation's most prestigious technical institutions, the choice of our E-Disk to be an integral part of this great technical endeavor catapults the confidence and recognition of BiTMICRO's solid state technology into the forefront of technological achievement," added Bruce.

BiTMICRO's first generation E-Disk, flashdisk SSD based on patented FlashBus technology, offers unprecedented sustained random read and write transfer rates of up to 34 megabytes a second and random access times of less than 48 microseconds. The E-Disk's flash drive storage capacity ranges between 128 megabytes and 77 gigabytes.

Each E-Disk solid state drive device is configured to have the same form, fit and function as hard disk drives (HDD), but without the need for large power heat dissipation, noise protection and environmental hardening. They are offered with SCSI, IDE or Fibre Channel interface in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch HDD form factors.

The E-Disk brand storage devices are fully compatible with Linux, Solaris, Windows, MacOS and LynxOS. It also supports AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, NetBSD, OS/2, QNX, VxWorks, SCO Unixware and OpenServer, Solaris x86 and Tru64.

For more information on E-Disk, visit http:www.bitmicro.com or call (510) 74E-Disk / [phone].

About BiTMICRO Networks

BiTMICRO Networks, Inc. (http://www.bitmicro.com), a privately held California corporation, is the world's premier supplier of high performance solid-state disk and storage management solutions. BiTMICRO's storage solutions offer unmatched performance, data availability, and manageability across a spectrum of platforms from entry systems to super computers.

Note to Editors: E-Disk(TM), FlashBus(TM), BiTMICRO(TM) and BiTMICRO Networks(TM) are trademarks of BiTMICRO Networks, Inc. Others are trademarks of their respective companies or other countries.