There was a memo about the low clock speeds and disabled features at CeBit yesterrday:
...we are demonstrating our very first silicon spin for VSA-100, what we call internally our "A0" spin. Due to some silicon processing problems, the A0 spin has been reduced to fairly low operating frequencies, in addition to suffering some video ramdac problems. As a result, we opted not to show the VSA-100 in public at CeBit and showed it only to select members of the press and media. But some of the recent negative feedback on the net, in particular the disappointment on the frequency being run and the video quality issues, are known issues and are expected from the silicon processing problem inherent in A0. Now on to the good news. First and foremost, the processing problem is completely understood and has already been addressed. In fact, production wafers are now flowing through the fab for our final production version of VSA-100, which we believe will be the A1 silicon spin. In addition, from a functionality point of view, we are very happy with A0. The part is extremely functional and robust, with only a few minor bugs which will be fixed in the A1 silicon spin. All of the major new functionality is working perfectly, including 32-bit color rendering, texture compression, full-scene anti-aliasing, T-buffer capabilities, as well as all the multi-chip SLI and FSAA capabilities. As a result, software development has been able to go full speed and thus we expect software to be very robust for shipping product. We believe we are still on track for April production for the first VSA-100 products. While the nature of the processing problem with A0 is disappointing in that it makes early demonstrations less than spectacular, we feel very good about the health of the A1 product and as a result silicon production has begun...
This is VERY encoraging news. If this run is good, then full production will ramp up. Refrance boards and full card production will follow with production drivers. The refrance boards and eta drivers should surface within a month (hopefully). I want to see how this thing realy runs!!!
They are still sticking to the minimum 166Mhz core/memory speeds. With the resent drop in memory prices, the prices might be a little bit moe competitive. Also the chip size is still relitively small (even at .25 micron) and yeilds should be very high (driving the price of the chips down). Maybe the Voodoo5 5500 will hit the $200 mark. We can all hope. (of coarse a $400 Voodoo5 6000 whould be nice too.)
