STEC Stec, Inc. (MM)

STEC, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEC), The SSD Company™, a leading global provider of solid-state drive (SSD) technologies and products, today announced a new family of high endurance, enterprise-class solid-state accelerators (SSAs) that uniquely integrates PCI Express (PCIe) and flash technologies onto a compact, power-efficient, on-board application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-based card. STEC's new Kronos™ PCIe accelerators avoid taxing the host system's memory and CPU cycles to perform flash management tasks, freeing them for more critical functions, such as application acceleration.

The Kronos PCIe SSA architecture combines next-generation software with an integrated PCIe-based ASIC on a card to achieve superior application-level acceleration that is capable of delivering consistent, fast and reliable access to data, as well as stellar performance and endurance over the lifetime of each accelerator card. For any business application where accelerating access to data accelerates time to money, the Kronos PCIe SSA family is an ideal choice. Data centers equipped with Kronos PCIe SSAs require fewer and lower cost server deployments that translates into lower total operating costs.

Custom-engineered from the ground up and built upon four successful generations of STEC's SSD controller technology, the new Kronos PCIe SSA family provides super low-latency and accelerated responses to host requests via its PCIe implementation. The SSAs deliver high-performance and enterprise-class reliability that enables IT consolidation (server virtualization) and server consolidation in virtualized environments, while still providing accelerated access to data and supporting the high transaction rates required by e-commerce and financial applications.

In addition, the Kronos PCIe SSA family reduces the overall footprint and power consumption in the data center by lowering direct capital expenses (Capex) and operating expenses (Opex), and delivering ultra low-latency access without sacrificing input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance. The Kronos PCIe SSA family also includes technologies such as CellCare™, Secure Array of Flash Elements™ (S.A.F.E.) and PowerSafe™, that provide a superior combination of performance, endurance and data protection for mission-critical enterprise and cloud computing applications. Each Kronos PCIe accelerator card is warranted for 5-years and provides even longer product life cycles for flash memory, based on multi-level cell (MLC) and single-level cell (SLC) architectures.

The Kronos PCIe accelerator family consists of three models: (1) Kronos PCIe SSA; (2) Kronos Turbo PCIe SSA; and (3) Kronos Bi-Turbo PCIe SSA, and supports a range of SLC and MLC user capacities from 300 Gigabytes (GB) to 1.95 Terabytes (TB). All models achieve a Read access time of 50 microseconds and a Write access time of 30 microseconds.

"Our MLC flash integration uses our proprietary CellCare technology and now enables a new cost-effective family of enterprise-grade PCIe accelerator cards that features the price points and performance for mainstream server and storage application adoption," said Manouch Moshayedi, STEC's Chairman and CEO. "With the ability to achieve impressive application-level acceleration and data center consolidation, the new Kronos PCIe SSA cards requires fewer and lower cost servers."

The Kronos ASIC card architecture delivers direct access to the PCIe bus and represents one of the best PCIe accelerated solutions without taxing the CPU or utilizing system memory, so consistent performance is delivered over the life of these accelerator cards. It achieves this by combining STEC's innovative software layer and the ASIC architecture to deliver new levels of integration that spans from the application layers, all the way to the flash components. Other implementations, such as flash-managed PCIe products, requires high host CPU and RAM utilization, while multi-component solutions that use RAID and a flash controller have higher latencies and reduced I/O performance since multiple levels are required to access flash.

"Enterprise OEMs are challenged to deliver solutions that provide consistent, fast and reliable access to data that is also cost-effective," said Jeff Janukowicz, Research Manager for Solid State Storage at IDC. "PCIe-based solid state solutions, such as STEC's Kronos PCIe family with CellCare technology, provide the low-latency and high-performance required to satisfy enterprise customers. Reliable MLC solutions enable more attractive price points, and will drive further consumption to a broader range of server and storage applications."

STEC is now sampling the Kronos PCIe SSD family to key customers. For more information regarding this solution, or other STEC enterprise SSD solutions covering ZeusRAM™, ZeusIOPS® and MACH16™ families of products, please visit the company's web site at http://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 http://www.stec-inc.com.

The STEC logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=1079

STEC, the STEC logo, The SSD Company, Kronos, CellCare, MACH16, PowerSafe, Secure Array of Flash Elements, ZeusIOPS and ZeusRAM 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 Kronos PCIe SSD products; the performance of Kronos PCIe SSD products; the production schedule for Kronos PCIe SSD products; the adoption of Kronos PCIe SSD products into new applications and markets; the benefits from MLC flash, CellCare and other developing technologies; overall product and solution cost savings; the capabilities and performance of STEC's products and solutions; and the evolving enterprise storage and server markets. 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 the forward-looking statements are detailed in filings with the 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.

CONTACT: Scott Harlin
         Public Relations Manager
         STEC, Inc.
         (949) 260-8231
         sharlin@stec-inc.com