The development of wireless technologies has dramatically increased the availability of mobile devices for business and consumer applications. One such application, notebooks, is associated with the mobility of hardware, data, and software in computing applications. Consequently, size, weight, and battery life are critical to the proper functioning of these systems. Full-sized notebooks are typically used as auxiliary to desktops or as direct replacements. These full-featured systems offer portability but limited battery life of up to two hours on a charge—a limitation to some users. Notebook shipments have grown steadily over the last few years. However, consumers seeking ultra portability are demanding lighter versions with extended battery life. As a result, the subnotebook segment is now beginning to show promise. Netlist’s high-density solutions minimize power dissipation by limiting the number of disk accesses by the processor. Disk drives consume about 10% of the total power consumed by a notebook running on a battery. About 60% of this power is dissipated in spin-up of the disk. When the disk is in sleep mode, disk operation requests incur a very high energy cost, which may be prevented with a high-density memory subsystem solution. To meet the needs of these applications, Netlist has developed very low profile (VLP), unbuffered memory subsystems of 1GB and higher densities using proprietary high-speed board designs in small outline and MicroDIMM form factors.
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