When the original x.25 came out in 2008, I held the SSD World speed record for a couple of months at 39,600 Random Read IOPS. The value of SSD is that huge RR IOPS number, together with a good (50%) random write IOPS, at least out of the box. $/IOPS is important provided the IOPS number is in the ball[park of the leaders.

SSD is a rapidly evolving business, with plenty of players. Failing to follow something like Moore's Law is a bad thing.

I must add, however, that the PCIe accelerator class products can beat discrete drives to their knees, performance wise. If local SSD is considered more as a DRAM extender than a disk drive, this is where the action will be. With storage appliances architectures moving to x86 COTS motherboards, the PCIe approach looks to me like a better place for Intel to focus. Perhaps a direct QPI connect flash device might be an even better fit for a storage optimized design.