Google is allegedly planning to make the transition from conventional hard-disk drives to the more reliable and energy-efficient solid-state drives. The change will affect most of the search engine's servers located at Google's US headquarters sometime during the second quarter of the year.

According to a news report issued by Chinese tech website Digitimes, Google will purchase solid-state drives from Intel. The drives will feature Intel NAND flash memory chips and controller circuitry manufactured by Marvell. Although the details are scarce at the moment, it is alleged that shipments will start during the second quarter of the year.

Google's decision of implementing solid-state drives at the company's headquarters might be related to the increasing price of electricity. Solid-state drives are more powerful than any hard-disk drive, but at the same time they are more energy-efficient and reliable.

Despite their increased popularity, solid-state drives are extremely expensive, given the fact that they are mostly built using single-level cell chips. Multi-level cell-based (MLC) counterparts are more affordable, but they are less reliable and wear out after about 10,000 read-write cycles. Although there is no estimation about the number of drives to be purchased, the deal would likely cost Google a fortune.

However, Intel might equip Google's SSDs with chips baked at its newly-established Numonyx memory joint-venture, as part of the company's promise to deliver cheap, affordable solid-state storage. No matter the price, Google will be able to cut on energy, which is one of the company's biggest issues.

The search giant plans to ditch its power-hungry hard-disk drives just as it did in 2006, when it updated its servers with more energy-efficient processors, after years of using Intel's energy-intensive NetBurst CPU architectures.