Spansion(R) EcoRAM(TM) Solution Delivers 60X Performance Improvement for Modeling and Visualization Applications in Oil and Gas Industry

--Stanford Exploration Project Selects Spansion EcoRAM Solution to Dramatically Reduce Processing Time

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 20, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- Spansion Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSN), the world's largest pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, today announced that the Spansion(R) EcoRAM(TM) Solution is delivering a 60X performance improvement to the oil and gas industry for visualization and other read-intensive applications. The Stanford Exploration Project recently selected the Spansion EcoRAM solution to reduce the processing time of multi-Terabyte datasets and for the first time make visualization of half a Terabyte (512 Gigabytes) datasets possible from typical x86 servers.

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The Spansion EcoRAM Solution is designed to enable very high density main memory of up to half a Terabyte in today's standard x86 servers with low power consumption and high performance. By delivering up to eight times the memory capacity of typical x86 servers, Spansion EcoRAM solution-enabled servers are capable of storing vast amounts of data close to the CPU to enable high-speed processing. The solution, a flash memory based DRAM alternative, is ideally suited for use with read-intensive applications like visualization and modeling for the oil and gas Industry.

"The Spansion EcoRAM solution is a breakthrough memory architecture for our read-intensive applications like visualization and data transpose," said Robert Clapp, senior research engineer of Geophysics, Stanford Exploration Project, Stanford University. "A step in the processing flow that would normally take 22 hours to complete using the standard disk to DRAM architecture can now be performed in 22 minutes using the Spansion EcoRAM solution. We're seeing performance improvements approaching two orders of magnitude better than our existing system. It's quite impressive."

The performance bottleneck for visualization and data reordering applications is the architecture of today's x86 server with disk storage and DRAM main memory. The size of datasets are well beyond the supported DRAM memory capacity in typical servers. Applications that need to read data randomly, rather than sequentially, are very inefficient in a disk to DRAM processing scheme. With the Spansion EcoRAM solution, large amounts of data can be can be loaded in main memory and continually accessed without going back to disk. In the future, researchers hope to move beyond the need to constantly write intermediate volumes to disk but instead do real-time processing and visualization. The Spansion EcoRAM solution presents the first technology that has the potential to make this a reality.

"The Stanford application is a great example of how the Spansion EcoRAM solution can be harnessed to provide breakthrough levels of performance that are resulting in significant benefits to end users," said Jan Silverman, vice president, Server Solutions Business Unit, Spansion Inc. "Beyond the system level performance increases, the Spansion EcoRAM solution enables up to a 4X server consolidation in the data center which translates into a significant total cost of ownership savings."

The Stanford Exploration Project (SEP) is an industry-funded academic consortium whose purpose is to research improvements in the theory and practice of constructing 3-D and 4-D images of the earth. SEP sponsors include the top oil and gas and geophysical survey companies including: BP America Inc., BGP Americas Inc., BHP Billiton Petroleum (Americas, Inc.), CGGVeritas, Chevron Energy Technology Company, ConocoPhillips, Eni S.p.A. E&P Division, ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, Fairfield Industries Inc., Fugro Seismic Imaging, Inc., GX Technology Corporation, Hess Corporation, Landmark Graphics Corporation, Marathon Oil Company, Nexen Petroleum USA Inc., Petrobras (Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.), PGS (Petroleum Geo-Services), Repsol Services Company, Saudi Aramco, Shell International E&P Inc., StatoilHydro ASA, TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company, TOTAL E&P Services, Weinman GeoScience, WesternGeco, U.K.

Credited for pioneering many innovations since its inception in the 1970s, the SEP plans to issue a report to the SEP sponsors companies on the applicability of the Spansion EcoRAM solution to the oil and gas industry, in addition to utilizing the platform in its own research.

General Availability of the Spansion EcoRAM Solution

The Spansion EcoRAM solution is available today with capacities up to 512GB per server. Systems with the Spansion EcoRAM solution are now available from Appro, a leading provider of supercomputing solutions with expertise in the high performance computing (HPC) markets.

"Leveraging technology like the Spansion EcoRAM solution will allow Appro to meet the high capacity main memory needs of high performance computing customers while providing cost-effective solutions using standard x86 platforms," said Daniel Kim, CEO of Appro. "We are excited to be partnering with Spansion and offering two-socket or four-socket systems with the Spansion EcoRAM solution."

In addition, Virdient System's GreenCloud(TM) server line will use the Spansion EcoRAM Solution for applications in Internet Data Centers. The Spansion EcoRAM solution is compatible with a large number of 64-bit Linux applications. The Spansion EcoRAM Solution can also be exploited for read-intensive applications in areas like analytics, bioinformatics, business intelligence, government, internet, and oil and gas or can be used as a "drop-in" augmentation for hadoop clusters.

About Spansion EcoRAM Memory

Spansion EcoRAM memory supports read latencies in hundreds of nanoseconds, which is competitive with server DRAM latencies. By comparison, this is 10,000X faster than hard disk drives (latencies in milliseconds) and up to 100X faster that state of the art solid state drives (latencies in microseconds). Read bandwidth reaches up to 2.2 gigabytes per second (GB/s) or over 20x compared to typical 100 Megabytes a second (MB/s) enterprise-class hard disks. Write performance for a Spansion EcoRAM system compares to high-speed enterprise-class hard disks which are in the hundreds of MB/s.

About Spansion

Spansion (Nasdaq: SPSN - News) is a leading Flash memory solutions provider, dedicated to enabling, storing and protecting digital content in wireless, automotive, networking and consumer electronics applications. Spansion, previously a joint venture of AMD and Fujitsu, is the largest company in the world dedicated exclusively to designing, developing, manufacturing, marketing, selling and licensing Flash memory solutions. For more information, visit http://www.spansion.com.

NOTE: Spansion(R), the Spansion Logo, EcoRAM(TM), , and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Spansion LLC in the US and other countries. Other names used are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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