Chicago's Iron Galaxy Studios Develops Solid-State Drives for Gaming

Solid-state drives are nothing new. Developed in the 1950's, they were the result of researchers who wanted to develop a technology that could store memory without moving parts. They were faster and more reliable but too expensive for mainstream success.

But now, as the price of powerful consumer electronics becomes cheaper and cheaper, it may finally be time for solid-state drives to shine. And Intel, the world's largest chip maker, isn't about to let this opportunity pass them up. They hired Iron Galaxy Studios to research the impact of solid-state drives on the future of gaming.

Lang, president of the company, and his team discovered that modern hard drives were actually some of the biggest limiting factors in computer gaming. The spinning disks and moving parts of a regular hard drive are inefficient, causing games to slow down and take longer to load.

A solid-state drive, however, doesn't have this problem. In fact, the kinds of images and videos that may strain a modern hard drive barely stress a solid-state drive.

To prove it, Lang and his team developed a video in which a wall of television monitors each displayed different videos. This video was designed to "break" even the respectable capabilities of the solid-state drives, but they barely struggled. Played on a regular hard drive, the result was the exact opposite.

Prior to his research of solid-state drives, Lang's company focused mainly on console games. However, this technology may have shown him the light.

"New kinds of games are going to be possible because of this. When you are not limited by (a hard drive) imagine what a company like Rockstar could do with their open world stuff?"

Intel agrees. At last week's Game Developer's Conference, they said that they expect to see solid-state drives in every laptop in the world. Seeing that this is in their interest, we all might be enjoying the product of Lang's research very soon.