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Chipset manufacturer Intel has put forward plans to produce high-end flash drives during its ongoing developer conference, it has been reported.

Intel's Troy Winslow, the company's marketing manager, noted that the new multi-level cell technology technology would be targeted at high-end specialists such as IT support individuals and businesses on a whole, recognising that price was still an issue for the general consumer market.

"What sets these drives apart is the massively high performance," he stated.

"It will not be cheap but, arguably, high-end high-value workers could enjoy such a boost to productivity that it would be cheaper to use this technology than old-fashioned hard drives."

The chipset manufacturer will soon launch an 80GB and 160GB multi-level cell drive with a 320GB-capacity option scheduled for release in 2009, signalling a possible shift in demand towards reliable and mainstream solid state drives.

Computerworld also highlighted other comments made by Intel at their developer conference which suggested that human and computer intelligence will be similar by 2050.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent)