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MLC?

Normally MLC means Multi Layer Cell, not Level. And it's a technique that increases memory volatility, not the contrary.

aafire

Nah... Just get a decent terminal, log on to a real computer and run aafire!

You missed the interesting part...

Supposedly the interesting thing with intels SSD is their controllers.

There is a pretty insightful article at anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

where they discuss the difference in wear-levelling and block management between Intels latest and the ubiquitous JMicron controllers used by everyone else. (Admittedly it reads like PR from Intel, but it still contains some interesting comparisons.)

The problem with Flash is that you need to erase a whole block in order to write a small amount of data. Typically the blocks are large (128 - 512kb) and erasing is slow. (On the order of several ms, up to hundreds of ms depending on power supply, memory contents and the phase of the moon.)

(Also noted at arstechnica: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-ssd-review.ars/1

and even by the reg: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/22/sandisk_ssd_vista_beef/ )

It would have been interesting to see how Intes new controller handles all these aspects. (According to Anandtech pretty well, but I'd love to have it corroborated by you.)

Even taking into account that it's the whole dictionary...

Even if you take into account that it's the whole dictionary that gets swapped out, 56Mb is a bit steep.

The full Moby wordlist (i.e. the largest list of English words in the world) is only 4Mb as a tgz:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060525214421/www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Moby/mwords.html