Chip giant Intel last week gave a sneak preview of its vision for solid-state storage with a demo of a technology it calls Robson.
Taking a hybrid approach, Intel used a 128-megabyte Nand Flash chip to store applications and operating system commands to allow almost instant boot up. Systems will be able to use industry-standard Nand between 64MB and four gigabytes, and the technology should boost the Flash chip market.
When accessing the Flash chip on a standard Centrino system, the time taken to load applications such as Quicken and Acrobat Reader is slashed by as much as five seconds, and Acrobat Reader opens in the blink of an eye.
The technology means faster boot up and loading times, less power consumption and longer battery life. That is because instead of accessing the hard disk, which requires spinning the disk spindle, the PC goes straight to the Flash chip to retrieve the required data.
Such a set-up is like a cache and works similarly to the DRam on a PC system, according to a notebook manufacturer. The difference is that DRam loses its memory when powered off, while Flash keeps it and thus can be accessed immediately.
Information from the hard disk needs to be loaded into DRam each time the system is powered up.