Ultrabooks, which will hit store shelves starting September, are expected to spur a wave of demand for solid-state drives, according to industry observers.
The first available Ultrabooks will mostly use hybrid drives, a combination of low-capacity SSDs and hard disk drives, the observers indicated. The adoption of SSDs is expected to increase along with falling NAND flash prices, the observers said, adding that Ultrabooks will eventually use only SSDs to meet not only required slimness but also affordable prices.
While boosting the adoption of SSDs, Ultrabooks will simultaneously open up a new market segment for NAND flash, the observers said. NAND chips are used to store data in mobile handsets, portable music players and other consumer electronics devices such as tablet PCs.
In addition, Ultrabooks are built with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, which will help accelerate the transition to 4GB as the mainstream memory density in PCs, according to the observers. And as the goal with Ultrabooks is to enable thin and light designs, more manufacturers are choosing to weld RAM directly to the system's motherboards, the observers said.