Hitachi has come up with a faster memory-based Hard Drive hybrid aimed at embedded applications.

Hitachi ULSI has combined NAND flash and DRAM memory to produce a fast replacement for optomechanical hard drives. According to nikkei.net, its existing NAND storage devices only have an access speed of 33MB/s, but a breakthrough will speed that up by a factor of three.
The report said that devices will be available this time next year in sizes up to 32GB but the devices will be expensive - as much as ¥100,000 (~$860). But Hitachi will be targeting the embedded market and specific applications, not you, me and the world+dog.
The drives work by storing data to DRAM and then to NAND flash using a proprietary design which uses far less blocks of data.

Hitachi designs faster memory based hard drive

Wow, that's an increadible access rate!
It'll be interesting to see who build devices with these things.

Sounds good. To bad my pockets won't be deep enough when they come out. But should be able to pick one up later on