Intel pushes HDD makers to create 5mm thin HDDs for ultrabooks

The thinnest HDDs on the market are 7mm slim, but for Intel this is still too thick. The chip giant is pushing HDD makers to develop 5mm thin HDDs, enabling laptop makers to create even thinner ultrabooks. These disks will have room for just one platter, but according to Intel, 5mm thin hard drives should be available in capacities of up to 1TB by 2015. Full details at VR Zone.

Our colleagues over at VR-Zone Chinese snapped a picture of what Intel is hoping for during one of the many presentations. Despite SSD's being popular in Ultrabooks, for many people 128 or 256GB is simply not enough space and it's not always convenient to carry around an external hard drive with you. As such, the company is proposing a new hard drive standard with a new SATA interface in tow.

As you can see from the picture, the new SATA interface will be less than a quarter of the size of today's SATA interface and will be moved from a fairly central position on the drive, onto one of the corners. Coming up with new implementations of the SATA interface will take time though and Intel isn't expecting the SATA-IO to be ready until Q4 of this year at best when it comes to finalizing the standard.