What amazes me is that A0 silicon was demonstrated live, and fully functioning samples are already out in the field. To see this kind of fast pace generational cycling and deployment from an SOC developer is very impressive, and somewhat unheard of. Qualcomm recently announced its next gen dual core ARM-based SOC the MSM8960 will be sampling in Q2, with product availability in early 2012, while its quad core derivative the APQ8064 won't even be sampling until early 2012. This reminds me of the strategy Nvidia used to out compete 3dfx back in the 90's.
Besides the demo this early on, what impresses me the most about Kal-El is its video decode capabilities, and the fact that its processing performance is similar to a low end Core 2 Duo. 50Mbps 1440p h.264 decode, streamed to two displays simultaneously, one of them being a 30" desktop monitor, which means Blu-ray quality HD content is now possible. The big unknown is power consumption and battery life, but if Nvidia is to be believed then given similar workloads it should fit into the same power envelope as the Tegra 2. Given the relative success of the Tegra 2, along with its good battery life, I think I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Anandtech recently published a pretty detailed article about Kal-El if anyones interested...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4181/nvidias-project-kalel-quadcore-a9s-coming-to-smartphonestablets-this-year
It looks like the smart phone SOC will be the new battle ground of the tech industry in the coming decade, probably going to see a lot of rapid revisions and exponential increases in performance very soon. Hopefully they remember to keep battery life as a top priority as well.