SanDisk Introduces the Shark Tool Kit to Speed Design-in of Multi-Level Cell NAND Flash and Binary NAND Flash; Shark Eliminates Need To Use NOR Flash For Booting Purposes.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 20, 2003 SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq:SNDK) today introduced its Shark tool kit to support design-in of MLC (MultiLevel Cell) A flash memory technology that stores more than one bit per cell. Traditional flash memory defines a 0 or 1 bit based on a single voltage threshold. (multi-level cell) NAND (Not AND) A Boolean logic operation that is true if any single input is false. Two-input NAND gates are often used as the sole logic element on gate array chips, because all Boolean operations can be created from NAND gates. See flash memory. and binary NAND flash memory components. The Shark tool kit is a high performance HDL (Hardware Description Language) A language used to describe the functions of an electronic circuit for documentation, simulation or logic synthesis (or all three). Although many proprietary HDLs have been developed, Verilog and VHDL are the major standards. model that enables a designer to quickly build a NAND flash interface into ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Pronounced "a-sick." A chip that is custom designed for a specific application rather than a general-purpose chip such as a microprocessor. or system-on-chip (SOC) designs. Shark decreases development time and production costs and minimizes system overhead for NAND flash memory devices in consumer and industrial products, including mobile phones, handheld computers, digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, industrial computers and automotive and telecommunications systems. With its new proprietary NAND boot technology, Shark eliminates the requirements for boot ROM. In the past, systems have had to rely on a secondary non-volatile memory device for boot functionality. Farshid Sabet, SanDisk director of retail product and technical marketing, said, "NAND flash memory is becoming the industry standard for high density, non-volatile memory, and now with Shark, NOR components can be eliminated by transferring boot functionality to NAND flash. Compared to NOR flash, NAND flash memory solutions offer higher chip densities, operate at significantly improved write performance levels, consume substantially less power and have a lower price per megabit. NAND's very small cell size delivers an affordable mass storage solution for consumer electronic products that require write intensive applications and large amounts of data storage for digital music, digital images and data files." With Shark, designers may use the latest MLC NAND technologies available in higher densities and lower cost than binary NAND flash. Developers can quickly incorporate NAND flash into a system-on-chip with efficiency and ease. Shark bridges NAND flash to high performance interfaces such as ARM's Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture(TM) (AMBA AMBA Area Metropolitana de Buenos Aires (Spanish) AMBA Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture AMBA American Mold Builders Association AMBA American Mustang and Burro Association AMBA Association of Master of Business Administration ) and Advanced High-performance Bus (AHB AHB Advanced High-performance Bus AHB Assault Helicopter Battalion AHB Air Historical Branch AHB Attack Helicopter Battalion AHB Automatic Half Barriers AHB Aussie Home Brewers AHB Active Hyper Bass ). Shark's host interface can also be configured to work with Asynchronous Refers to events that are not synchronized, or coordinated, in time. The following are considered asynchronous operations. The interval between transmitting A and B is not the same as between B and C. The ability to initiate a transmission at either end. Memory Bus (AMB AMB Ambient AMB Ambassador AMB Amber AMB Ambulance AMB Associação Médica Brasileira (Brazil) AMB Ambulatory AMB Advanced Memory Buffer (FBDIMM control unit on DRAM) ). SanDisk offers a complete family of embedded and removable flash development tool kits. The Shark NAND MLC and binary development tool kit is priced at $19,950 and is available immediately. In addition to Shark, the company offers other tool kits including: Stingray; NAND Boot Solution; NAND Host Interface Logic; HDTK (host development tool kit) for Secure Digital(TM), CompactFlash(R) and Memory Stick(R); and Security SDKS (software developer kits). SanDisk entered the rapidly growing NAND flash memory chip business in 2001 with the introduction of its first NAND devices -- 256 Megabit (Mbit), 512Mbit and 1 Gigabit MLC flash memory chips. The chips, used primarily for data storage, are offered in TSOP (Thin Small Outline Package) A very thin, plastic, rectangular surface mount chip package with gull-wing pins on its two short sides. TSOPs are about a third as thick as SOJ chips. See gull-wing lead, SOP, SOJ and chip package. and BGA (Ball Grid Array) A popular surface mount chip package that uses a grid of solder balls as its connectors. Available in plastic and ceramic varieties, BGA is noted for its compact size, high lead count and low inductance, which allows lower voltages to be used. packages and are widely used in a wide variety of consumer electronics products. SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, CA. The matters discussed in this news release contain forward looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties as described under the caption, "Factors That May Affect Future Results" in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies assume no obligation to update the information in this release. SanDisk's web site/home page address: http://www.sandisk.com All trade names are either registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders. |
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