New PCs that start up almost instantly could take 40 per cent of the market by 2008, boosting sales of the Flash memory chips that drive them. The fast-booting PCs could account for as much as seven per cent of global demand for Nand Flash chips within two years, and earn an extra $1bn for manufacturers, according to researchers at South Korea"s Hyundai Securities.
Microsoft and Intel have unveiled plans to use Flash memory to improve disk access speed and reduce boot-up time. The Flash memory holds some commonly-used parts of the operating system which are normally accessed from the hard drive when the PC starts. Microsoft"s Flash-assisted start-up technology is called Windows ReadyBoost, and Intel"s is currently codenamed Robson.