At a pre-CES briefing on Friday, Intel introduced a new solid-state storage drive for ultra-mobile PCs. Called the Z-P140 PATA SSD, this tiny drive will be provided as an optional module to OEMs to embed on motherboards made for the Menlow platform which also includes the Silverthorne processor and Poulsbo chipset.

The ultra-small, low-power, high-performance NAND flash-based storage drive will initially be available in 2GB and 4GB capacities (expandable to 16GB by adding up to three additional SSDs) and will have a read throughput of 40MBps and a write throughput of 30MBps.

Menlow-based devices will ship in the first half of 2008. Intel said it will display ultra-mobile PCs based on the Menlow architecture from vendors including Asus, BenQ and Lenovo at the CES conference in January.