Blackbird delayed to May

On Twitter Raptor is reporting that due to supply chain disturbances from the USA-China trade spat, the lower-cost POWER9 Blackbird's ship date has been set back again, this time to around May 15. Raptor states the parts are finally in and logic board manufacturing is beginning, so we can assume this date is reasonably firm. However, functional Blackbird prototypes already exist on this side of the Pacific as evidenced by their additional offer of remote access for software testing, which Raptor says are "identical in all ways except HDMI DDC wiring," and sounds similar to the prototype we saw at SCaLE 17x. That bodes well for good operating system support at launch, which will be particularly critical for the lower-cost "tiny Talos" and hopefully its resulting larger audience. Ours is on order for review; with any luck we're near the first in line!