Historically unreliable DigiTimes is claiming that their industry sources indicate Apple is once again securing large orders of NAND Flash memory. The most likely use of this stockpile would be for the upcoming Nano revision which should top-out at 8 GB.
Apple made similar stockpile arrangements before the original Nano launch, and with rumors floating about a higher-capacity and redesigned Nano due by this fall, such stockpile claims are not totally suspect. That being said, DigiTimes' record has been less than stellar, with iBook and Powerbook G5s all rumored to arrive in 2005 according to them.
Digitimes has also in the past claimed that Apple was working with Intel on using Intel's Robson Caching technology, which uses Flash memory to speed bootup and launching of commonly used applications. While not specifically cited by DigiTimes as a use for the Flash stockpile, if Apple does plan on using Robson technology the stockpile could easily be used for production of such notebooks.
