Half of notebooks will use flash storage by 2009

A REPORT from iSuppli predicted that by the fourth quarter of 2009, over half notebooks sold will use flash memory for storage, rather than hard drives.

Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst at the company, said the shift to flash is being aided and abetted by a dramatric drop in prices for NAND memory.

He said that 1GB of NAND flash cost nearly 100 times more than hard drive storage in 2003, but by 2009 the gap between prices will be more like 14 times.

But it's not just price that will drive its use, said Wilkins. The use of memory gives better performance than rotating storage because of its faster read times. It also has better shock resistance and offers superior reliablity to HDDs, he added.

The three types of flash storage currently slated all offer better performance than conventional HDDs - those are Intel's "Robson", hybrid HDDs, and solid state drives.

Flash will start first to reach the market in the ultraportable then mainstream notebooks. µ