OCZ Technology has announced that their enterprise-grade Deneva 2 mSATA solid state drives have been tested with Intel Smart Response Technology (SRT) and passed the performance benchmarks for the "while using" portion of the responsiveness requirements outlined by Intel for 2012 Ultrabooks. Qualifying parts include the OCZ Deneva 2 30GB and 60GB mSATA SSDs, part numbers D2CSTEMS1A10-0030 and D2CSTEMS1A10-0060.

"We are pleased with the results that Intel has achieved with our Deneva 2 mSATA products," said Tobias Brinkmann, VP Partner Relations at OCZ Technology Group. "The Deneva 2 SSDs have a very small footprint making them ideal for the slim and stylish Ultrabook™ designs, and also deliver exceptionally fast bootup and data transfer speeds for a superior instant-on and overall more responsive computing experience."

In the press release, OCZ points out that the mSATA form factor that the Deneva 2 drives feature are significantly slimmer than traditional 2.5-inch notebook drives, enabling Ultrabooks to support low-profile dimensions without compromising storage capacity, speed or battery life. While this is true, future Ultrabooks will also have a traditional hard drive on board alongside the mSATA SSD.

Intel's SRT uses a solid state drive to cache data from a traditional hard drive, giving you an SSD-like speed boost and the capacity that spinning drives afford. Manufacturers have been using SRT to adhere to Intel's strict Ultrabook guidelines that require solid state drive storage and near-instant resume while keeping costs down and storage capacities where most consumers would expect them to be.

Deneva 2 drives are based on the SandForce SF-2281 controller, utilize 20nm MLC NAND and support SATA 6Gbps. The drive features sequential read speeds of 550 MB/s and 80,000 IOPS.

There was no mention of any specific manufacturer utilizing the Deneva 2 in upcoming Ultrabooks but with CES 2012 just around the corner, we might get an update on this sooner rather than later.