SST Announces LPC-Bus Interface Flash Memory Support for Internet Computing Market.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2001 New Family of SuperFlash-Based LPC-Bus Interface BIOS Devices Accelerates Industry's Transition to "Legacy-Free" Computing Strengthening its role as a leading provider of flash memory for PC BIOS See BIOS. applications, SST SST: see airplane. (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc In the late 1980s, Bing Yeh and his cofounder assembled a small team of engineers in a rented office on Apollo Way in Sunnyvale, Calif., to develop a new breed of nonvolatile memory technology—SuperFlash—for code or data storage in electronic systems and embedded memory for .)(Nasdaq:SSTI SSTI State Science & Technology Institute (Westerville, OH) SSTI Skin and Soft Tissue Infection SSTI Small Spacecraft Technology Initiative SSTI Skin and Skin Structure Infection SSTI Six Sigma Technical Institute ) today announced that it is in production with a family of BIOS flash solutions that support the industry standard LPC-Bus interface. SST's new family of SuperFlash(R)-based, application specific LPC (language) LPC - A variant of C designed ca 1988 to program LP MUDs. flash products are designed for use in systems with "legacy-free" or "ISA-free" chipsets made by chipset vendors such as VIA, SiS and others, to store system BIOS The BIOS on a PC motherboard. Contrast with BIOSs on the peripheral cards. See BIOS. and embedded OS/application software in applications including PCs, game consoles, set-top boxes, thin-clients, servers, network boards and other embedded CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. applications (based on PowerPC, M-Core, ARM, MIPs, etc.). As the first flash memory company with LPC flash products in production, SST is giving a major boost to PC and Internet appliance Also called "information appliance," "smart appliance," and "Web appliance," it is a device specialized for accessing the Web and/or e-mail. Designed for ease of use, it plugs into a telephone jack or LAN connection for Internet hookup. manufacturers in accelerating the transition to "legacy-free" computing, and thereby providing consumers with lower cost, more reliable and better performing products. Today there are faster, less expensive and more efficient alternatives to "legacy" features in older PC architectures. One example of a "legacy" feature is the ISA bus ISA bus - Industry Standard Architecture , which is still a component of many PC systems even though it has been replaced by more superior connectivity solutions such as PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). and USB USB in full Universal Serial Bus Type of serial bus that allows peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, digitizers, data gloves, etc.) to be easily connected to a computer. . With SST's LPC flash products, chipset vendors can eliminate the ISA bus in their designs, and therefore reduce the pin-count and cost of the chipsets. "AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, www.amd.com) A major manufacturer of semiconductor devices including x86-compatible CPUs, embedded processors, flash memories, programmable logic devices and networking chips. strongly supports the design of legacy-free PCs and has validated SST's LPC flash with our current AMD-766TM Southbridge for both the 'legacy' bus and LPC. We see SST's LPC flash as a key part of this transition toward legacy-free systems," said Ned Finkle, Director of the Infrastructure Enablement Organization at AMD. "As the AMD-766 Southbridge moves from supporting AMD's current chipsets to those of the future, the proven track record and wide acceptance of SST's SuperFlash technology will help provide consumers with easier to use and more reliable PCs." SST's new LPC flash memory products include the SST49LF020, a 2 Mbit device, the SST49LF030A, a 3 Mbit device, and the SST49LF040A, a 4 Mbit device. All of the products are based on the core feature set of SST's MPF MPF mitosis-promoting factor. (TM) (Multi-Purpose Flash) family -- a family that was created using SST's proprietary SoftPartition uniform 4 KByte-sector architecture and the simple CMOS-compatible SuperFlash manufacturing process. By using the SoftPartition architecture, the new LPC flash products allow system designers to have better software granularity, which improves memory utilization. This allows designers to fit the system BIOS and embedded OS/application firmware in a smaller density memory array than those of typical flash memory devices without the SoftPartition capability. Therefore, the SoftPartition-based LPC flash products enhance the system performance and reduce the overall system cost. "With the introduction of these new LPC flash products, system manufacturers using chipsets from multiple vendors can now benefit from the high-performance and reliability of our SuperFlash technology," said Eugene Feng, business director of the Application Specific Product Group at SST. "And, with SST already owning about 40% of the flash memory BIOS market, we are further strengthening our position as the leading flash memory supplier for BIOS applications." In addition to the industry-standard LPC flash products, SST also provides Firmware Hub products for systems using Intel chipsets A set of chips that provides the interfaces between all of the PC's subsystems. It provides the buses and electronics to allow the CPU, memory and input/output devices to interact. Most Intel chipsets, which are contained on two to four chips, also include built-in EIDE support. , based on the proprietary FWH FWH Firmware Hub FWH Flexible Working Hours FWH First Wort Hopping (brewing) FWH Federal Withholding FWH FranchizeWuzHere (YouTube) FWH Fast Weekly Household Audience Report FWH Free Wheeling Hub interface protocol owned by Intel Corp. In March of 2000, SST and Intel amended their cross-licensing agreement to cover the Firmware Hub products, thereby making SST the first Intel licensee to implement the Firmware Hub products for Intel's 800 Series Hub Architecture chipsets. In Q4 2000, SST shipped over 10 million Firmware Hub flash memory units, thereby becoming the leading independent supplier of Firmware Hub devices. For more information, please see the press releases titled, "SST Becomes Leading Independent Supplier of Firmware Hub Devices," and "SST Expands Firmware Hub Flash Memory Family," also announced today.
Key Features of New SST49LF020/030A/040A Products
-- Conforms to Intel LPC Interface Specification 1.0
-- SoftPartition Architecture
-- Flexible, uniform sector architecture
-- 4 KByte uniform sector and 64 KByte uniform block erase
capability
-- Superior reliability with SST's SuperFlash technology
-- Typical 100,000 cycles endurance and greater than 100
years of data retention
-- Single 3.0-3.6V read and write operation
-- Fast sector-erase/Byte-program operation
-- 14 microseconds Byte-program time (typical); 18
milliseconds (ms) for sector/block erase and 70 ms for
chip erase (typical)
-- JEDEC standard SDP (Soft Data Protection) command set for
erase/program operation and boot sectors write protection
scheme to prevent unauthorized firmware alteration
-- Two operational modes
-- Low Pin Count (LPC) Interface Mode for in-system operation
-- Parallel Programming (PP) Mode for fast production
programming
-- Packages available
-- 32-pin TSOP (8 mm x 14 mm) and 32-pin PLCC for 2 Mbit, 3
Mbit and 4 Mbit devices
Pricing and Availability The new SST49LF020, SST49LF030A and SST49LF040A are priced at $2.00, $2.50 and $3.00 each respectively in quantities of 100K. Samples of the SST49LF020 are available now with volume production scheduled to begin in early March. Samples of the SST49LF030A and SST49LF040A will be available in late March with volume production scheduled to begin in Q2. About SuperFlash Technology SST's SuperFlash technology is a NOR type, split-gate cell architecture which uses a reliable thick-oxide process with fewer manufacturing steps resulting in a low-cost, nonvolatile memory See non-volatile memory. solution with excellent data retention and higher reliability. The split-gate NOR SuperFlash architecture facilitates a simple and flexible design suitable for high performance, high reliability, small or medium sector size, in- or off-system programming and a variety of densities, all in a single CMOS-compatible technology. About Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale ([sʌniveil]) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 131,760. , SST designs, manufactures and markets a diversified range of nonvolatile memory solutions, based on proprietary, patented SuperFlash technology, for high volume applications in the digital consumer, networking, wireless communications and Internet computing markets. SST's product families include high functionality flash memory components, flash mass storage products and 8-bit microcontrollers with on-chip flash memory. SST also offers its SuperFlash technology for embedded applications through its world-class manufacturing partners and technology licensees IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , National Semiconductor, Motorola, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SANYO Electric Co., Ltd., Seiko Epson Corp. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation TSMC Traffic Systems Management Center TSMC Toll Station Management Controller TSMC Transportation Supply Maintenance Command TSMC Technical Services Manager Code ). TSMC offers SuperFlash under its trademark Emb-FLASH. Further information on SST can be found on the company's Web site at http://www.ssti.com. Forward-Looking Statements Except for the historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements regarding flash memory market conditions, the company's future financial performance, the performance of new products and the company's ability to bring new products to market that involve risks and uncertainties. These risks may include timely development, acceptance and pricing of new products, the terms and conditions associated with licensees' royalty payments, the impact of competitive products and pricing, and general economic conditions as they affect the company's customers, as well as other risks detailed from time to time in the company's SEC reports, including the report on Form 10-K Form 10-K A report required by the SEC from exchange-listed companies that provides for annual disclosure of certain financial information. Form 10-K See 10-K. for the year ended December 31, 1999 and reports on Form 10-Q Form 10-Q See 10-Q. for the quarters ended March 31, 2000, June 30, 2000 and September 30, 2000. For more information about SST and the company's comprehensive list of product offerings, please call 1-888/SST-CHIP. Information can also be requested via email to sfoster@ssti.com or through SST's website at http://www.ssti.com. SST is located at 1171 Sonora Court, Sunnyvale, Calif.; telephone: 408/735-9110; fax: 408/735-9036. Note to Editors: The SST logo and SuperFlash are registered trademarks of Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. MPF is a trademark of Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. Emb-FLASH is a trademark of TSMC. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders. |
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