Stefan Mileschin

Sales of cache solid-state drives (SSDs) will soar in the next three years thanks to a booming Ultrabook trade.

Market research group iSuppli said that Ultrabook sales will force the sales of SSDs through the roof. The announcement will be good news for Intel which is taking a huge gamble with the Ultrabook. It means that if the likes of iSuppli see Ultrabooks as taking off, then chances are they will.

iSuppli expects shipments of cache SSD units to reach 25.7 million units in the next 12 months, and 68.2 million units the year after.

This means that by the end of 2015, this figure could be 121 million units which is more than a hundred times than it is now.

Ryan Chien, research associate for memory and storage at iSuppli, said that from the release of Intel's Nikiski reference design, to its announcement that more than 60 additional ultrabook designs will enter the market in time for the 2012 holiday season, Intel has showed that Ultrabooks have become the centrepiece of its mobile computing strategy.

Cache SSDs represent a key part of Intel's Ultrabook specification, providing performance, convenience and power-savings capabilities that play a key role in defining the platform, he added.

Chien thinks that of the 25 million cache SSDs to be shipped this year, about 22 million units will be present in Ultrabooks.

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