Hexus has posted an interview with John Bruno, ATi's ASIC design manager. Maybe he can give us some insight into why the R520's been delayed for so long?

"RS482, which is the 110nm shrink of RS480, we got that back in a full package, first silicon, and nine minutes after getting the package we had it up and running, running 3DMark05. That's nine minutes from being handed the package, getting it onto a socket on the board, getting the BIOS set and booting the OS, before getting 3DMark05 up and running on the core."