I'm not ANTI-BFL, I just don't drink the cool-aid
I would never purchase a product that has not been publicly Demonstrated and performance specs 3rd party tested
If my understand ASIC chip production, you don't really prototype the chip, you do it all virtually and then make a huge BATCH and hope for the best.
Unless you use a Multi-Project Wafers (MPW) to prototype your Chip, not all Fabs offer this.
If BFL had a working Prototype with a MPW ASIC chip, they would display the shit out of it.
Plus you also have to take into account that there currently shipping product is just another company's re-branded FPGA, and they originally said it was a custom built chip until someone proved them wrong.
I'm currently a GPU Miner, that will purchase a ASIC products on the open Market once they start to ship and there performance is verified.
Until a 3rd Party Tests one, I still consider it VaporWare.
You pretty much got it...I work for a company that makes test equipment for wafer testing, they basically make a bunch then test. Had a really big company cancel an order from us because their initial yield was 1%
I really hope they arent having the same problems or people will be waiting a really long time.