SUNNYVALE, Calif, November 12, 1999 - UMC Group, the semiconductor foundry technology leader, today announced that SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) the world's largest supplier of high-density flash memory and controller technology, tapped UMC Group's state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for the development of unique, new generation high capacity flash products and chipsets. Sandisk's newest 0.25 micron, 256 megabit D2 (Double Density) flash chip increases the capacity of its Multimedia Cards, Compact Flash cards, PC Cards, Secure Digital Memory Cards and other Flash offerings.

Ralph Hudson, senior vice president of operations for SanDisk noted, "UMC Group continues to prove to be an excellent foundry partner for SanDisk as its management and technology teams have a thorough understanding of our needs. This understanding linked with manufacturing expertise, an aggressive time-to-market mentality, and a continuous drive for process improvements makes UMC Group our number one choice in the fab business. Due to joint efforts, we are already shipping our 256 megabit D2 chips in volume. Beyond this, UMC Group is assisting us with a migration path for next-generation products. This means more shippable megabytes per wafer,and more value to our customers."

UMC Group played a key role in helping SanDisk develop its patented 256 megabit, D2 technology that doubles the capacity of flash storage products. The process required precision current control to sense and store two bits of data (four states) in each flash cell instead of the typical one bit per cell. The stringent device physics specification, the most challenging part of the process technology, was enabled by UMC Group's manufacturing team. SanDisk's flash memory achieves sustained wire rates equivalent to SanDisk's standard (binary) flash design.

"Sandisk's manufacturing alliance with UMC Group is an outstanding example of an important new trend in the industry, fabless semiconductor companies engaging with foundry engineering teams and technology to leverage existing product portfolios into the next generation, and getting to market first with superior products," said Jim Ballingall, vice president of worldwide marketing at UMC Group. "This approach differs from the old mentality of viewing the foundry as a commodity supplier. Customers such as SanDisk understand that by aligning with UMC Group, they can not only tap leading manufacturing resources but also top engineering talent to help them realize their designs in silicon, and migrate to the next generation quickly."

SanDisk's new products will be demonstrated at COMDEX in Las Vegas, NV, November 15-19 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall and are scheduled to ship in Q1, 2000.

SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, CA.