SAN FRANCISCO—Intel has been
developing solid-state flash memory processors for as long as flash has been
around (20 years). But only on Aug. 19 at the Intel
Developer Forum here did the world’s largest chip maker announce its
first-ever flash-based SATA drives for data storage.
Intel’s High-Performance SATA (Serial ATA) solid-state drives are data storage
devices that use flash-based memory to store a computer’s data, emulating—and even
replacing—hard
drives in some computers.
NAND flash memory, which has much faster read/write performance than
conventional disk drives, originated with Toshiba in the mid-1980s and forms
the core of the removable USB storage
devices known as USB flash drives, as well
as most memory card formats now available. Apple’s iPod and iPhone are two of
the most currently successful commercial usages of NAND flash.
Flash SSDs are slowly beginning to move into the enterprise data center market,
led by EMC, which started shipping
flash drives as options for its high-end Symmetrix storage system arrays in
March.