New PCs that start up almost instantly could take 40 per cent of the market by 2008, boosting sales of the Flash memory chips that drive them.

The fast-booting PCs could account for as much as seven per cent of global demand for Nand Flash chips within two years, and earn an extra $1bn for manufacturers, according to researchers at South Korea's Hyundai Securities.

Microsoft and Intel have unveiled plans to use Flash memory to improve disk access speed and reduce boot-up time. 

The Flash memory holds some commonly-used parts of the operating system which are normally accessed from the hard drive when the PC starts.

Microsoft's Flash-assisted start-up technology is called Windows ReadyBoost, and Intel's is currently codenamed Robson.

Both systems take advantage of the fact that some types of operating system data, in particular numerous small files, can be accessed from Flash memory far more quickly than from hard drives because Flash contains no moving parts.

An early prototype of Intel's Robson technology was able to boot Windows in less than 10 seconds at a demonstration last year.

In addition to the start-up advantages, added Flash memory can also help PCs load large programs more rapidly, reduce wear on hard drives and control power consumption and heat.

The latter two factors make it a particularly attractive option for notebooks and other mobile PCs.