SST RAMPS PRODUCTION OF 8 MBIT FIRMWARE HUB DEVICE FOR INTEL ARCHITECTURE.

SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.) (NASDAQ: SSTI), a leader in flash memory technology, today reinforced its position as the leading independent supplier of Firmware Hub (FWH) devices by ramping production of its 8 Mbit Firmware Hub product. The 8 Mbit SST49LF008A is part of SST's 49 Series FWH product family that also includes 2 Mbit, 3 Mbit and 4 Mbit devices. The SuperFlash-based SST49LF008A provides designers of Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) chipset-based PC systems with a BIOS solution that supports advanced capabilities and increased functionality in high-end notebooks, file storage, server applications and workstations.

Over the last year, SST has established itself as the leading independent supplier of FWH devices. Intel was the sole provider of FWH chips until March of 2000, when SST became the first Intel licensee to implement the FWH products for Intel's 800 Series Hub Architecture chipsets. Since then, SST has shipped over 35 million FWH products and continues to lead this space.

Production of the SST49LF008A will commence at TSMC, a longtime foundry partner and technology licensee of SST, and will later expand to include other fab partners of SST. Recently, SST has made several strategic licensing agreements and partnerships with fabs such as Nanya Technology Corporation, Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Shanghai Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation Ltd. (Shanghai GSMC) and Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation. These foundry agreements have allowed SST to steadily increase foundry capacity with deep sub-micron geometries in order to meet customer and industry demands and also put SST in a position to maintain and expand its leadership position in the FWH arena.

"SST's expertise in the design and manufacture of high-functionality, reliable and cost-effective flash memory products for high-volume applications is why we have become and will continue to be the leading supplier of Firmware Hub devices in the industry," said Mike Briner, senior vice president, Application Specific Products Group at SST. "Our strong relationships with our world-class foundry partners will insure that we are well prepared to meet the industry's demand for Firmware Hub products."

SST's 49 Series FWH products are based on the core feature set of SST's MPF (Multi-Purpose Flash) series -- a family that was created using the SST SoftPartition uniform sector architecture and the simple CMOS-compatible SuperFlash manufacturing process. Using the SoftPartition architecture of the uniform 4 KByte sectors and uniform 64 KByte blocks, the 49 Series FWH products allow personal computer system designers to have better software granularity, which improves memory utilization. This allows designers to fit the system BIOS and video BIOS firmware in a smaller density memory array than those of typical flash memory devices without the SoftPartition capability. Therefore, the SoftPartition based 49 Series FWH products enable the Intel 800 Series Hub Architecture chipset to enhance the system performance while reducing the overall system cost.

SST's FWH products incorporate the company's proprietary SuperFlash technology, as well as the proprietary FWH interface protocol owned by Intel Corp. and are read-compatible to the Intel 82802 FWH product. The Intel 82802 FWH is used to store system BIOS and embedded OS/application firmware for Intel's 800 Series chipsets and is a key component in enabling future security and manageability infrastructures for the PC platform.