Currently, both Microsoft as well as the hard drive makers are working on integrating a limited amount of flash memory into future-generation drives. This flash memory could serve several purposes, including power savings when hard drive data is not required, quicker boot times by reading operating system data out of the quick flash memory or even performance enhancements. Flash enabled hard drives certainly are the future, but they have nothing to do with Intel's latest approach to sell more chips.
Robson will serve as an add-on component to help speed up the process of booting Windows. Currently, Intel is talking about 256 MB, but depending on flash prices, that could easily end up being 1 or 2 GB. While Windows PCs will certainly benefit quite a bit, flash cannot replace conventional hard drives any time soon because of its capacity constraints. However, small form factor solutions could definitely be powered by multi-gigabyte flash storage solutions rather than hard drives.
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Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.
