The initial design was based on the Freescale's integrated host processor MPC8245 where the core is a MPC603e PowerPC cpu. Due to time passing on, Freescale presented the successor MPC5200 with a core at 400Mhz that will deliver 760 MIPS and only consuming 1W. The chip has besides integrated DMA-controller and DDR-memory controller also 100Mbit Ethernet and USB 1.1. Later versions of the card will be using the 466Mhz version of the CPU, that will deliver amply 880MIPS.
Taken from
here.Thats at least one reason for delay. This is the same chip used by Genesi Efika board.
