BAD HARDWARE WEEK

Finally, a truth on bad flash hardware.

Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Micron Technology (NYSE: MU) on Friday said they have developed technology for a high-speed solid-state drive that's five times faster than current products used in consumer and professional devices ranging from handheld computers and notebooks to digital cameras and camcorders.

The NAND flash memory chips developed jointly by the two companies can reach speeds of up to 200 MB per second for reading data and 100 MB per second for writing data, the partners said. Current memory chips have maximum read-write speeds of 40 MB and 20 MB, respectively.