I missed this news yesterday. Intel Corp. has unveiled a new technology, named Robson, that can speed up notebook PC power-up or access program’s times, as well as improving battery life. This new cache technology ensured an almost immediate start-up of a Centrino-based notebook PC during a live demonstration at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei, while a laptop with identical hardware but without Robson took several seconds to boot up.

As a comparison, the laptop with Robson opened Adobe Reader in 0.4 seconds, while the other notebook required 5.4 seconds. It opened Quicken in 2.9 seconds, while the laptop without Robson technology needed 8 seconds to do the job. That’s about 4-5 times faster.

According to Intel, Robson nonvolatile cache technology relies on NAND flash memory. Instead of booting from the hard drive, a laptop using Robson would turn to standard NAND flash memory instead. The difference saves time and battery power.

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