Pallab’s Place

SanDisk’s primary retail business has been in portable shareable media. This has included many formats of removable computer storage as well as media storage for cameras, video, music players and phones. This marketplace has shown strong growth in the past and is targeted for sustained strong growth in the near future.

SanDisk is introducing an additional marketing direction which to PC OEMs and VARs only. The product they are targeting is Solid State Disks (SSDs). The adoption is being driven by hardware requirements for low power, low weight, high reliability & high performance storage for the Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC), Mobile Internet Devices (MID), and Netbook markets.

SanDisk is helping create an ecosystem that is solidified for SSDs based on application software and standard hardware interfaces such SATA and PATA. Part of this ecosystem is the creation of optimized chipsets for SSDs. The value proposition for SSDs in a netbook are different from those of a laptop. A netbook is optimized for web surfing, email communication and viewing posted documents. Laptops are optimized for content creation (documents, web, video, photo processing) in addition to these tasks. The use of Nand Flash technology for these SSD is well targeted to these applications as they are read many, write few applications. In some of the applications, based on size, power requirements, cooling and data performance the SSDs can be more cost effective than traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs).

The SanDisk SSDs are designed for internal applications at this time. Future products will target the secondary replacement and upgrade market. In the primary marketplace, SanDisk has developed a PSSD device that is 1/5th the size of a 2.5″ HDD and is built using MLC flash. These products are using SATA and PATA interfaces rather than the Intel lead ONFI format for controllers.

Currently, 1st generation products are shipping, 2nd generation are due in the production ramp, and 3rd generation are completing design and will be available soon. The pedigree of the reliability of the product in the commercial space has been addressed by having the flash cells and technology being from the Mil/Aero qualified product space.

The advanced SSD applications include high speed capture for pro-video that is being jointly developed between Sony and SanDisk.

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