As far as I can discern without reading TFA, this is just some new ARM system-on-a-chip
No, it's much sillier than that. This is the latest in a long-running series of Slashvertisements by the submitter, lkcl. They chronicle his journey towards creating an "industry standard" for swappable processors for tablets based on the PCMCIA form factor. Nobody asked for this, nobody wants it, and lkcl has next to no experience with hardware development, but he's convinced it's going to change the world! To help the world along, he's working on-- actually, it looks like various Chinese companies are doing all the work. Anyway, lkcl is the funding conduit for an example card based on an existing ARM SoC. Today's story is about getting the first samples of the "2nd revision" of this card. Future samples are approved for sale as a standalone product because "they boot", which obviously qualifies them to ship.
In our last episode, lkcl digressed from his main project to announce a funding drive for a totally unrealistic project to build a free software-friendly SoC with a custom CPU in six months without doing any "design" work. Except for speeding up the processor, adding a bunch of peripherals, and implementing it on a cutting-edge semiconductor process. And then getting to market by Christmas. Just a small side project, right?
lkcl is pretty prolific on his own stories, so I'm sure his dozens of comment responses will answer all of your questions.
Previous episodes:
Live Interview: Luke Leighton of Rhombus Tech Dec 11, 2012: Live interview that nobody saw. There doesn't seem to be a transcript.
Rhombus Tech A10 EOMA-68 CPU Card Schematics Completed Sept 7, 2012: PCB schematics (for the first revision -- prototype?) completed.
PCMCIA Computer Project Aims Even Higher (and Cheaper) Than Raspberry Pi Dec 17, 2011: Project announced? This is as far back as the Rhombus Tech news page goes.