BiTMicro Unveils World's First and Fastest Flash-Based Fast Wide SCSI E-Disk SFW35 Solid State Disk

Business Wire, August 12, 1999

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 12, 1999--

Record-Breaking Flash Storage Solution Delivers Unmatched

Performance and Easy Integration Required for Today's

Storage Networking Demands

BiT Microsystems, Inc. today announced the availability of E-Disk(TM) SFW35 -- the world's first, fastest, and largest capacity Fast Wide SCSI solid state flash disk.

Built on proven BiTMicro's proprietary FlashBus(TM) technology, E-Disk SFW35 delivers 20 MBytes/sec burst read and write transfer rates, over 18 MBytes/sec sustained read and write transfer rates, and less than 0.35 ms system access time. E-Disk SFW35 storage capacities range from 128 MBytes to an unprecedented 9728 MBytes in 3.5" form factor.

The enhanced SFW35 Fast Wide SCSI is the newest addition to BiTMicro's E-Disk product line that doubles the performance of the previous SFX35 Fast SCSI, and quadruples the earlier SNX35 Normal SCSI predecessors. The sustained read and write transfer rates of SFW35 are over 9 times faster than the closest competitors.

The earlier SFX35 and SNX35 predecessors have undergone a number of extensive product qualifications worldwide across Windows, MacOS, and various UNIX platforms including SunOS, IRIX, Linux, *BSD, IRIX, OS/2, AIX, SCO, OSF1, and CP/M.

The results are very encouraging based on the responses and product approvals received from customers representing different industries including telecommunication, financial trading, OLTP, Internet, e-commerce, servers, multimedia, video-on-demand, film, video, and audio editing, transportation, aerospace, industrial, government, and military applications.

The excitement over BiTMicro's E-Disk high performance products is reflected in the following comment: "My organization heard about you through the Oracle Partner Program in Australia. We have got a bunch of ISP's who want really fast and reliable proxy servers. Seems to me a FreeBSD box running squid would really fly on E-Disk(s)! It also means that we don't need to worry about lots of disks and a RAID controller either. There are a very limited number of RAID controllers that work with FreeBSD. ISP's are always looking for better solutions," said Troy Adkins, managing director of AIMS Independent Computer Professionals.

The high performance E-Disk SFW35 is also BiTMicro's introductory entry into the burgeoning Network Attached Storage (NAS) market. SFW35 is well suited in mission critical storage applications that require high system uptime, high input/ouput (I/O) rate, and high sustained reads and writes. SFW35 is also the favored storage solution for applications operating in harsh environment of extreme temperature, shock, and vibration.

"The move to keep supplying the market with the world's fastest E-Disk products parallels our commitment to providing the most advanced technologies needed for today's e-commerce, networking and telecommunication market. We will widen our technological advantage by introducing a leading edge line of E-Disk products and position BiTMicro in the industry as the best Flash Disk and Enterprise Storage Company in the world," declared Dr. R. H. Bruce, president of BiT Microsystems, Inc.

About BiT Microsystems

BiT Microsystems, Inc. is a Fremont based company that designs, manufactures, and markets flash solid state storage solutions using its patented FlashBus technology. BiTMicro is a member of Fibre Channel Association (FCA) and Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For further information, call 510/623-2341 or e-mail info@bitmicro.com, or visit BiTMicro's web site at http://www.bitmicro.com.

Note to Editors: E-Disk(TM), FlashBus(TM) and BiTMicro(TM) are trademarks of BiT Microsystems, Inc. Products mentioned are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies or from other countries.

In the product name "*BSD" noted in fourth paragraph of this news release, there is an asterisk symbol before "BSD." This symbol may not appear properly in some systems.