Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory chips, has announced the world’s first flash cache device designed to accelerate performance of hard disk drives (HDDs) in Microsoft Windows Vista environment. The product can work even with current generation HDDs and improve responsiveness of computers available today.

“By caching hard drive data using Samsung's flash SSD and the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, a typical user will see performance gains that will make working with their PC lightning fast,” said Don Barnetson, director, flash marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.

The device that employs 4GB solid state flash memory comes with dynamic random access memory and a special-purpose microprocessor onboard, which enables Windows Vista to compress the data and store up to 8GB on chip. The product will connect to any ATA ports, even though, Samsung only showcased a model designed for ancient Parallel ATA and did not say whether it plans to offer models for Serial ATA too.

The Windows ReadyBoost feature of the Windows Vista operating system will intelligently populate the solid state drive (SSD) with the data a user needs before they ask for it. It readies a user’s favorite applications and data in the background, accelerating everyday actions such as starting applications and switching users, Samsung explained. When a user requests that data, rather than being limited to servicing 100-200 requests per second (as with a traditional HDD), Samsung’s SSD can service up to 5000 request per second, virtually eliminating data seek delays. The 4GB SSD can also work in tandem with a hybrid hard drive, coming into play as a secondary source of cached data.

The new device will also be used in separate applications unrelated to Windows Vista such as for special industrial needs.

The product is being “readied for production”, according to Samsung. Prices are unclear.