Analyst: Intel's Braidwood technology could threaten SSD adoption

Intel wants to speed up the amount of time required to boot-up a computer and launch applications. Scheduled to launch in Q1 of 2010, Intel's Braidwood technology is poised to make this happen by allowing NAND flash memory modules to be installed directly on the motherboard.

Braidwood is expected to offer capacities of between 4GB to 16GB, but at an incremental price of just $10 to $20 per system, noted analyst Jim Handy from Objective Analysis. As a result, the analyst thinks Braidwood could undermine the demand for solid-state drives (SSDs), an assessment which Intel disagrees with.

Having used a fast SSD for the last couple of months, I confess that aside from increasing one's RAM, swapping in an SSD is now squarely on my "must do" list of upgrades. As such, it is hard to imagine the possibility of another memory technology that can speed up a computer so effectively as to negate the advantages of an SSD. As such, I would say that the jury is still out on this one.

I thought Handy had a good round-up of Intel's strategy here, though. He told InfoWorld, "Intel has got a very good [SSD] product. But, they view additional layers of NAND technology in PCs as inevitable. They don't think SSDs are likely to take over 100 percent of the PC market, but they do think Braidwood could find itself in 100 percent of PCs."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InfoWorld

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