SANTA ANA, Calif., March 5, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- STEC, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEC), The SSD Company™, a leading global provider of solid-state drive (SSD) technologies and products, today announced that its enterprise-class MACH16™ SSD technology now extends to the embedded market in one of the industry's smallest solid-state form factors. The new MACH16 Slim SATA SSD provides embedded system designers with the same advanced flash management technology as STEC's enterprise SSDs. The device leverages industry-standard 22-pin SATA cabling (supporting JEDEC MO-297 and SFF-8156 specifications) and provides the highest data integrity, endurance and reliability available in this market segment. With these features, the MACH16 Slim SATA SSD is well-suited for high-performance and rugged embedded systems.
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Where size and power consumption are concerned, the MACH16 Slim SATA is an ideal drop-in replacement for a 2.5-inch rotating hard disk drive (HDD), or even a traditional 2.5-inch SSD. This SATA-based solution, which enables system designers to shrink the total storage footprint by 60 percent, consumes up to 70 percent less power than an HDD or conventional SSD. This combination of compact design and low power consumption supports the industry trend toward commercial, off-the-shelf, small-format system boards (e.g., Mini-ITX, Pico-ITX and CompactPCI) targeted for next-generation original equipment manufacturer (OEM) embedded designs.
"We estimate that the market for intelligent embedded systems is over 1.8 billion units and over $1 trillion in revenue today, and will double to nearly 4 billion units and over $2 trillion in revenue by 2015," said Jeff Janukowicz, research director for solid-state storage at IDC. "The MACH16 Slim SATA SSD will anchor STEC's embedded solid-state portfolio, and is a well-positioned solution for embedded system designers who require true enterprise SSD technology in a small industry-standard format."
The MACH16 Slim SATA embedded SSD leverages STEC's patented SSD controller and firmware technologies that help optimize performance, endurance, data integrity and reliability. The device features the same advanced flash management capabilities as STEC's leading enterprise SSDs, including:
- STEC's CellCare™ Technology, which uses a combination of flash management techniques, digital signal processing, ECC methods, and other technologies to increase NAND cell endurance and data retention, as well as performance.
- STEC's Secure Array of Flash Elements™ (SAFE) Technology, which improves reliability by providing mechanisms to recover from NAND flash page-, block-, die- and chip-failures, improving the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and the Mean Time To Data Loss (MTTDL).
- STEC's PowerSafe™ Technology, which provides instant data backup and recovery in the event of an unplanned power failure.
- Data-path protection and advanced error code correction, which protects critical data from corruption.
- Advanced wear-leveling, which spreads the writing of each data block evenly across all data blocks to maintain consistent and even use of the NAND blocks so that one block location does not wear out faster than any other block location inside of the device.
"Our new MACH16 Slim SATA SSD brings the critical features of our proven enterprise-class SSDs to embedded platforms," said STEC Chairman and CEO Manouch Moshayedi. "System designers no longer have to settle for consumer-grade products for their mission-critical and ruggedized applications. They can now trust their data to the MACH16 Slim SATA SSDs."
STEC's new MACH16 Slim SATA embedded SSDs are available now, with user capacities of 25 and 50 Gigabytes (GB). These devices support sustained performance up to 245MB/s for sequential 128K read operations, and up to 150MB/s for sequential 128K write operations. As a result, MACH16 Slim SATA SSDs are ideally suited for a range of embedded applications that includes network and telecommunication systems, military vehicles, rugged PCs, gaming systems, digital signage, transportation systems, ATM machines, kiosks, point-of-sale machines, cash registers, printers, GPS systems, vehicle infotainment systems, data loggers and medical equipment.
For more information regarding the MACH16 Slim SATA embedded SSD, please visit STEC's Web site at www.stec-inc.com.
About STEC
STEC, Inc., The SSD Company™, is a leading global provider of solid-state drive (SSD) technologies and solutions tailored to meet the high-performance, high-reliability needs of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). With headquarters in Santa Ana, California and locations worldwide, STEC leverages almost two decades of solid-state knowledge and experience to deliver the most comprehensive line of SSDs to the storage industry. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.stec-inc.com.
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STEC, the STEC logo, The SSD Company, MACH16, CellCare, Secure Array of Flash Elements and PowerSafe are either registered trademarks, or trademarks of STEC, Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks or brand names referred to herein are the property of their respective owners.
Safe Harbor Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including those statements concerning customer adoption, sampling and utilization of MACH16 Slim SATA embedded SSD solutions; the adoption of MACH16 Slim SATA and embedded solid-state solutions into new applications and markets; the benefits from CellCare, Secure Array of Flash Elements, PowerSafe and other developing technologies; the benefits, capabilities, performance, cost savings and energy efficiencies of STEC's products and solutions; the evolving embedded systems design market; and the size, strength and growth of the embedded systems market. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors that could delay, divert or change any of them, and could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from current expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in forward-looking statements are detailed in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, made from time to time by STEC, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and its Current Reports on Form 8-K. The information contained in this press release is a statement of STEC's present intention, belief or expectation. STEC may change its intention, belief or expectation, at any time and without notice, based upon any changes in such factors, in STEC's assumptions or otherwise. STEC undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date hereof, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
