(Press Release) Hitachi Semiconductor has announced a 1-Gbit AND-type monolithic flash memory device that achieves a 10-MBytes/sec write speed, a new industry record for this cell type and five times faster than previous Hitachi products. The new flash device, HN29V1G91, is the first product to be based on Hitachi's proprietary Assist-Gate AND-type (AG-AND), multi-level cell flash memory technology introduced at the 2001 International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington, DC last December. The memory chip is capable of recording 128 MBytes of data, equivalent to two hours worth of CD-quality MP3 music, in about 13 seconds. It is the ideal recording medium for high-functionality digital cameras that produce large, high-resolution image files and offer moving-picture capability. Other key applications include mobile phones and wireless-capable PDAs that can receive pictures from broadband transmissions, as well as high-performance solid-state data storage devices for industrial applications.