Using Compact Flash base IDE Drives Instead of Hard Disks

[smugiri]

An update: it appears that this technology is on the way to the market place with the initial implementation by Microsoft & Samsung using Flash memory as a hard drive cache/buffer to improve response times. More on that story here

[jwcrim]

An update: it appears that this technology is on the way to the market place with the initial implementation by Microsoft & Samsung using Flash memory as a hard drive cache/buffer to improve response times. More on that story here

Interesting.

What first got my attention was an article that expressed surprise at the level of quiet industry investment in this area (>$10B) over the past 12 months and slated for this year. Semicon companys mentioned were:
Samsung
Toshiba
Intel
Micron

From your link it looks like operating system changes to help make these new products more practical may also be under way. Given a laptop's battery backed power supply it appears you have an opportunity for a RAM buffer reducing accesses to FLASH buffer reducing accesses to a hard drive.