Intel launched its new Z-P140 PATA drive today as part of the company's push to advance mobile Internet device technology. The Z-P140 SSD (solid state disk) is impressive, with a total area smaller than a fingertip (as pictured) and available capacities of 2GB and 4GB. At 0.6 grams, the Z-P140 is 75x lighter than a standard 1.8" drive, while occupying only 1/400 of the volume. Intel claims that the Z-P140 class of drives can be expanded up to 16GB in future iterations.

It might be tiny, but Intel claims its new SDD is no slouch in the performance department. The Z-P140 is rated at a 40MBps read speed and 30MBps write speed. Power draw (or lack thereof) is also impressive; the Z-P140 draws 300mW under load and just 1.1mW in sleep mode. The current drive only supports the PATA (Parallel ATA) interface, but future models will be SATA compliant. The Z-P140 is meant to supercede the USB-based Z-P130, though it's not clear if the P140 will replace the P130 entirely at this point.

Intel's decision to focus on this type of SSD design only makes sense when the company's Menlow platform is considered as a whole. Intel has been talking up Menlow (and MIDs in general) since it launched the concept back in April of this year. Whereas the first-generation of UMPC/MID devices were based on a platform code-named McCaslin, and built around the Intel A100/A110, the 945GU Express chipset, and the ICH7U southbridge, Menlow will incorporate Intel's new Silverthorne CPU and will run on the Poulsbo chipset. Intel hasn't published exact specifications on Paulsbo as of yet, but the chipset is expected to debut with support for 802.11n and WiMax.

Ars discussed Intel's Silverthorne design last week, while our senior CPU editor, Jon Stokes shared some thoughts on how the x86 ISA might be expected to perform, in general, in the mobile segment back in September. Intel's new PATA SDD launch might seem unrelated to its activities in the CPU sector, but for a company dedicated to building platforms (and that's the business Intel is pushing these days), all of these products directly tie together. Intel has previously stated that Menlow will draw far less power than previous UMPC/MID devices, and the company is obviously targeting all of its platform components to hit these targets without compromising on performance.

Update: I previously referred to Menlow as Merom (another Intel mobile microarchitecture) at two points within this story. The error has been corrected.