New hard drives to boost laptops

Computers, from laptops to supercomputers, could get a major speed boost next year, thanks to a new kind of hard drive developed by Intel. Intel Optane drives, as they will be called, are based on a new way to store digital data that can operate as much as 1,000 times as fast as the flash memory technology inside hard drives, memory sticks, and mobile devices today.

The first Optane drives won’t be that much faster than today’s data storage. An early prototype shown by Intel at its annual developer conference in San Francisco on Tuesday was only about seven times as fast as a top-of-the-range flash disk drive available today. However, even that level of performance could have significant effects on the capabilities of consumer and corporate computers, and Optane drives may perform better by the time they hit the market in 2016.

Removing bottlenecks - The sluggish speed of data storage compared to the pace at which processors can work on data has become a significant bottleneck on the capabilities of computers. Several large computing and chip companies have invested heavily in promising new data storage technologies, but none has yet borne fruit. Intel’s Optane drives are based on a technology called 3D Xpoint, developed in collaboration with the memory chip company Micron.

Intel says the technology is affordable enough that Optane drives will be made available next year for uses ranging from large, corporate data centres to lightweight laptops. Rob Crooke, a general manager on Intel’s memory project, predicted that they would improve gaming, supercomputers and data analysis. “We expect to see breakthroughs in personalised medicine, in business analytics to allow companies, cities and maybe countries to run more efficiently,” he said.

— Source: www.technologyreview.com