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For clarity, the question is: Are the chips pictured in the article actual functioning BFL ASICs, or are they something else?
They look like prototypes of the design image BFL showed earlier in the year, which to my mind shows it's real, does it work, only they know. Would be nice if they could show a YouTube video of one working an shut up the doubters and I'm sure they would get more pre-orders.
Potentially a recipe for a manufacturing disaster.
Since there are 8 chips ALL relying on a SINGLE heatsink, a tiny variation in manufacturing could leave the chips at slightly different hights, resulting in chips that may not make contact with the bed of the heatsink, or worse!!, chips that are slightly higher and have the BGA connections compressed and fractured because they get compressed to be at the same hight as the surrounding devices.
Not to mention the "incursions" of the Ceramic capacitors UNDER the heatsink & at a HIGHER level than the chips requiring cooling.
(So HOW did they strap on a 'heatsink' to test the device?)
Don't EVEN get me started about the track routing around the heatsink fixing holes