>> I'm not sure what to think of IBM's idea to go backwards in time and turn the
>> memory controller into a separate chip again.

> I'm guessing that's to do with capacity and keeping the (gigantic!) chip size down.

Yes, this might be the reason. In compensation they integrated the PCIe controller, which was a separate chip with POWER7 ;-)

> I've heard it might have "VSX2".

Never heard of VSX2 (and in the slides they only mention the VSU with FPU and VMX), but yes, this link indicates that VSX is indeed there (most probably as part of the VSU like in POWER7).