With a refresh of the MacBook Air seemingly impending the rumor mill surrounding Apple Inc. (AAPL) is once again heating up.  

According to Macotakara.jp, a Japanese Apple fan site, the latest version of the ultraportable will use cutting edge flash memory technology.  The site cites sources at unnamed Asian chipmakers as claiming that the latest Airs will contain 19nm flash memory chips soldered directly onto the motherboard for blazing speeds of up to 400 megabits per second.

Current generation MacBook Airs only have RAM chips soldered on.  The SSD for the laptops are connected using mSATA connectors.

Apple reportedly calls the new technology Toggle DDR2.0.  Aside from the rather curious title (ostensibly it involves NAND flash, not DDR memory), the technology is expected to be Apple's proprietary implementation of the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group's ONFI 3.0 standard.

ONFI 3.0 promises faster speeds and reduces the number of pins on flash memory chips.  These factors add up to nearly "instant" boot times and fast file copies.

If the rumor about the new flash is true, it likely comes from Micron Technology, Inc. (MU), Intel Corp. (INTC), or Spansion Inc. (CODE) -- all members of the ONFI 3.0 coalition.  Apple's current NAND supplier, South Korea's Samsung Electronics (SEO:005930), and the world's second biggest producer, Toshiba Corp. (TYO:6502) are not currently members.

A split with Samsung would make sense, given Apple's ongoing legal war with the gadget and component maker.

At times Apple has been on the bleeding edge of introducing new standards.  It was the first major manufacturer to push Intel's proprietary LightPeak interface, which it renamed Thunderbolt.  The refresh of the MacBook Air is expected to come packing Thunderbolt as well, which requires fancy chip-laden $50 USD cables to work.

OS X Lion and the refreshed MacBook Air are expected to launch on July 14.