......
Unless they foresaw a potential issue related to throughput and designed the PCB for 8 in the first place, and then once the Chinese started to bullshit, they thought "fuck it" let's fix both competitors in one go......... and fully populate....
It would have been a truly awesome move business wise if Tom was planning this all along. Now, people will have an easy choice for best bang for your buck ASIC if you have decent KWh rates.
It seems like BFL is too late in the design/production phase to change their design like this. The only thing they will be able to do are firmware upgrades. Firmware upgrades for BFL to match bASIC speeds kind of sucks, because the bASIC will certainly have firmware upgrades of its own. I'd rather have the faster ASIC right out of the box.