Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sandra Simon who wrote (1417)	11/10/1997 10:56:00 AM
From: Mike Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Sounds like a wonderful product. The only drawback is the capacity of CompactFlash compared to CD-ROM. Max capacity of CompactFlash is currently 24MB. Max capacity of CD-ROM is, I believe, 640MB. But CD-ROM drive is much more bulky than a CompactFlash. This product from NCII will probably serve some special application. From the Sandisk's web site, further proof of Sandisk flash's superiority and compatibility with Windows CE. It also confirms Derek's earlier statement that Sandisk's flash works with any OS. ============================= Q.What's the difference between SanDisk FlashDisk technology and other vendor's Flash Memory cards? A. Most flash memory card vendors (e.g. Intel, AMD) use a flash card design that contains an array of flash memory and interface chips but no intelligent controller to manage the flash media. The burden for management of the flash media is placed on the CPU of the host computer, using one of the various software Flash File Systems provided by Microsoft, M-Systems or SCM. In other words, the performance of most flash memory cards is very dependent on host processor speed. Additionally, the performance of these cards degrades with card usage, i.e., as the amount of data stored on the card increases, the performance of the card slows down. This performance degradation is directly related to the Flash File System architecture. SanDisk's Flash cards, on the other hand, contain an intelligent controller on the card which performs the same Flash management functions transparent to the user. The unique hardware implementation that SanDisk has developed and patented is many times faster, far more reliable and without any performance related issues when compared to the hardware/software solution its competitors offer. Furthermore, the competition's flash cards will operate only on computers which have the same software vendor's flash file system installed as the host system on which the flash card was originally used. This is because you cannot mix and match flash filing system software from different vendors. By contrast, SanDisk's family of Flash cards can be used interoperably between any computer which supports the PC Card ATA standard regardless of which host CPU or which operating system is employed. Another very important difference between SanDisk FlashDisks and competing products is that competitors' Flash memory chips are designed to mimic the EPROM memory architecture and use a very large block size (64 - 4 KBytes). By contrast, SanDisk's Flash memory chips are designed to mimic the file structure of a disk drive and use the same 512 Byte sector size employed in all PC hard disk drives. This architectural difference makes the SanDisk cards 100% compatible with all MS-DOS applications and utility software. The performance of some competitors flash memory cards also varies inversely with the amount of data stored on the card, i.e., the larger the amount of data stored on the card, the slower the operating speed of the card.