SST Ramps Foundry Capacity to Meet Demand for Serial Flash in 2005
2005年2月1日 - 5:05PM
PRニュース・ワイアー (英語)
SST Ramps Foundry Capacity to Meet Demand for Serial Flash in 2005
SST's Serial Flash Capacity is Expected to Exceed 150 Million Units
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SST (Silicon
Storage Technology, Inc., Nasdaq: SSTI), a leader in flash memory
technology, today announced plans to increase its foundry capacity
in 2005 to meet the anticipated industry demand for serial flash
devices. SST expects applications such as optical and hard disk
drives, LCD monitors and LCD TVs to drive sales of its serial flash
devices. SST also expects the use of micro drives, tiny hard disk
drives commonly used in applications such as MP3 players, to also
increase demand for serial flash devices. The company believes
worldwide demand of serial flash devices in 2005 will exceed 500
million units. To meet this anticipated volume growth, SST will
increase serial flash capacity in its world-class foundry partners
including Grace Semiconductor, Seiko Epson and TSMC. With densities
ranging from 512 Kb through 16 Mb, and with higher densities
expected in its roadmap, SST offers the industry's broadest serial
flash product offering and is well positioned to meet the
industry's current and growing need for these devices. "For years
now, SST has been driving the industry shift from parallel to
serial flash and it appears a greater number of customers are
migrating to the more advanced technology in order to utilize the
reduction in board space, power consumption and system costs that
serial flash provides," said Alan Niebel, CEO, Web-Feet Research.
"My expectation is the adoption of serial flash will experience an
order of magnitude increase next year. With this growth, SST and
its feature-rich serial flash products will be an attractive option
for customers looking to transition to serial flash, where SST is
particularly strong." SST's serial flash product offering, the
SST25VF family, is based on SST's self-aligned, split-gate
SuperFlash CMOS technology and incorporates a four-wire, Serial
Peripheral Interface (SPI). The devices use fewer pins to transfer
data to and from a system CPU, thereby creating an overall
reduction in chipset pin counts, board space, power consumption and
cost. As an added benefit, SST's serial flash devices offer an Auto
Address Increment (AAI) operation, a programming mode that
decreases total flash memory programming time by up to 50 percent
compared to single byte-programming modes. Apart from providing the
industry's smallest die, lowest power consumption and lowest cost
devices, all of SST's serial flash devices are featured in a
variety of industry-standard packages, enabling customers to
experience a seamless migration path as they move to higher
densities. This packaging strategy makes SST's serial flash family
an ideal solution in a variety of applications, including optical
disk drives, LCD monitors and displays, hard disk drives, graphics
cards and MP3 players. SST works with a diversified list of
customers and partners who incorporate its serial flash technology
to create competitive solutions, including Genesis Microchip and
Mediatek. "We are pleased to see the expansion of SST's serial
flash technology into a broader range of densities. We believe
SST's increased product offering will enable our customers to offer
competitive LCD monitor and LCD TV solutions by reducing their
overall system costs," said Anders Frisk, executive vice president
of Genesis Microchip. Alex Chen, sales and marketing director,
Mediatek, added, "SST has been the primary supplier of parallel
flash memory in the optical disk drives field for years, and we are
pleased to see SST's product expansion into serial flash. SST's
serial flash technology offers our customers the broadest capacity
in the industry and features a small package size with low power
consumption, allowing our customers to deliver highly competitive
solutions compared to parallel flash." "We expect 2005 to be a
watershed year for serial flash products and we believe SST is well
positioned in this market," said Bing Yeh, president and CEO, SST.
"We have experienced significant traction within the serial flash
market over the past few years, and as we expect industry demand to
increase, we feel we are in a position to meet our customers'
requirements and provide them with the serial flash solution that
best suits their density, capacity and cost needs." 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 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, 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 various densities of high functionality flash
memory components, flash mass storage products and flash
microcontrollers. SST also offers its SuperFlash technology for
embedded applications through its world-class manufacturing
partners and technology licensees including 1st Silicon (Malaysia)
Sdn. Bhd., Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (Grace),
IBM, Motorola, Inc., Nanotech Corporation, National Semiconductor
Corporation, NEC Corporation, Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd.,
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SANYO Electric Co., Ltd., Seiko Epson
Corp., Shanghai Hua Hong NEC Electronics Co., Ltd., Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), Toshiba Corporation,
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation, and Winbond
Electronics Corp. TSMC offers embedded SuperFlash under its
trademark Emb-FLASH. Further information on SST can be found on the
company's Web site at http://www.sst.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 Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2003
and on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2004. 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 or through SST's Web site at
http://www.sst.com/. SST's head office is located at 1171 Sonora
Court, Sunnyvale, Calif.; telephone: 408/735-9110; fax:
408/735-9036. The SST logo and SuperFlash are registered trademarks
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. For More Information Contact:
Sasha Afanasieff Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. 408/522-7310
Steve Gabriel Porter Novelli 408/369-1500 x627 DATASOURCE: Silicon
Storage Technology, Inc. CONTACT: Sasha Afanasieff of Silicon
Storage Technology, Inc., +1-408-522-7310 or ; or Steve Gabriel of
Porter Novelli, +1-408-369-1500, ext. 627, or , for Silicon Storage
Technology, Inc. Web site: http://www.sst.com/
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