Features - Storage Innovations:

SanDisk LAUNCHES UTILITY GRADE CompactFlash STORAGE CARDS

SanDisk Corporation has introduced the Utility Grade CompactFlash cards to complement its line of Industrial Grade and Standard Grade, solid-state flash storage products for industrial customers that include CompactFlash cards, PC Cards and 2.5-inch FlashDrives. The Utility Grade CompactFlash family of cards is designed for applications where large capacities at value driven price points are required. The announcement was made at the Electronica 2002 trade show in Munich where SanDisk demonstrated products (Hall A4.243).

SanDisk Utility Grade CompactFlash cards are designed to provide high reliability CompactFlash storage cards at an exceptional value for its industrial customers. In addition to Utility Grade CompactFlash, SanDisk currently offers its Industrial Grade CompactFlash, PC Card and Flash Drive product lines for extreme endurance, high performance and unparalleled reliability under harsh conditions, and its Standard Grade CompactFlash line for most common industrial applications.

"We can now offer our industrial customers the ideal flash storage solution in terms of performance, price and reliability for any industrial application," said Mitch Cohen, SanDisk's vice president and general manager of Industrial Business. "The Utility Grade product line fully complements our Industrial and Standard Grade lines, and provides an ideal storage solution that meets the unique needs of our ever expanding industrial customer base."

SanDisk Utility Grade products offer a number of features that include:

• 100% testing of all cards and components
• Bar code serialization and trace-ability program
• Card-level MTBF Greater than 1 million hours
• Mature architecture with carefully managed technology transitions.

SanDisk Utility Grade CompactFlash cards are available in capacities that range from 64 megabytes to 1 gigabyte (Type I format). Suggested OEM pricing for a 1GB CompactFlash card is $600.

With the introduction of the Utility Grade line, SanDisk now offers three lines of cards to meet the needs of its industrial customers:

Product Line:

• Utility Grade (value line): Large sequential file transfers
• Standard Grade (general purpose): Read/Write-intensive applications
• Industrial Grade (high endurance & reliability: Mission-critical applications, Read/Write-intensive applications, Extreme environments

Flash memory is a solid state storage technology that is inherently more reliable than conventional rotating disk drives and other electromechanical storage systems that have moving parts and are subject to mechanical problems. With no moving parts, flash memory is much more rugged and reliable and offers users considerably more data protection. Mechanical disk drives found in portable computers typically have an operating shock rating of 100-200 Gs, which is equivalent to a drop of less than a foot. SanDisk offers Utility Grade CompactFlash cards with operating shock rating of up to 2,000 Gs, the equivalent to a 10-foot drop to the floor.

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.

SanDisk's Web site can be found at www.sandisk.com.

Contact: Mike Wong of SanDisk Corporation, 408-548-0223, mwong@sandisk.com.