Flash memory drives have big ambitions. They hope to elbow aside traditional hard disk drives to become standard equipment in tomorrow's laptop computers – taking charge of a huge market in the process.

Today, price is a hurdle. They cost more while storing less.

But misperceptions and confusion about their performance and energy efficiency are beginning to prove hold ups as well.

"I think the market is ripe for (them)," especially in tiny ultra-mobile PCs and notebooks for computing on the go, said Knut Grimsrud (pictured), an Intel fellow and director of storage architecture. "I think it's going to go mainstream pretty quickly".

But growing misperceptions will not help. It seems consumers are starting to ask whether the benefits of flash memory chip drives are real, Grimsrud said Thursday at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara.

Performance is one area of confusion, he said. All flash memory drives – which store data in a PC even when the power is off – are not created equal. Some slower models might be tainting all flash drives with their less impressive speed, he said.

Power efficiency is another area of confusion. Some people claim flash doesn't provide significant power savings when used in place of hard drives. But Intel has proved this wrong, extending battery life up to 30 minutes, Grimsrud said.

"There really are power savings to be had," he said.

Grimsrud said Intel plans to release detailed information and data about its flash products next week at its forum for developers in San Francisco.

By Mark Boslet, Editor at Large.