Intel cuts PC boot time

With Robson, a PC pulls data and applications off an add-in flash memory card and Intel software, rather than the PC's hard drive. Flash reacts more quickly than hard drives, thus cutting down the time it takes to launch an application. Potentially, notebook users could experience a longer battery life because the harddrive, which is spun by a motor, wouldn't have to work as hard.

While an Intel representative did not provide exact bootup time comparisons, she said Robson will cut the amount of time it takes from when you hit the "on" button to when the PC can operate, the time it takes to go from a sleep state to an active state, and the time it takes to launch an application.

	You can fit an entire library in a postage-size chip. (Image not to scale)

The technology was shown off on Monday at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei. Intel has not said when the technology might hit store shelves.

Flash is moving deeper into PCs and other devices, thanks to dropping costs and increasing data densities.

Earlier this year, Samsung and Microsoft showed off a prototype hard drive with an internal 1GB flash memory chip that also cuts power consumption. In that prototype, incoming data (words, photos, songs and so on) gets written to the flash memory chip.

While Intel has developed the software for Robson, the chips come from outside. Robson relied on NAND flash memory, produced by Samsung, Toshiba and others. Intel makes NOR flash memory, which is not used for these sort of read-write-erase functions.