Ever since Plaion announced it was working with SNK to produce a replica of the Neo Geo AES, there's been a fair amount of speculation about what's going on under the hood of the machine.
Plaion has already stated that the Neo Geo+ won't use software emulation and has told Time Extension that it's "powered by newly manufactured chips based on the originals." These chips have been "re-engineered by modern standards to accurately replicate the original machine's hardware and software".
Furthermore, Plaion has stated that the Neo Geo+ "natively plays game software from both new and old game cartridges for the most authentic retro gaming experience. Not emulation, not FPGA approximation, but true console reincarnation etched back into silicon."
While it hasn't been officially confirmed by Plaion, we now know that FPGA specialists Jotego and Furrtek are involved with these chips in some capacity.
That certainly bodes well when it comes to the potential accuracy of the final product, and Furrtek (in a now-deleted social media post) has stated that in their "biased opinion", the Neo Geo+ "has every chance of being the best since SNK themselves stopped manufacturing hardware. Perfect, maybe not, but certainly with the ambition to do better than emulation, to honour the brand, and to respect the fans."
Furrtek is something of a legend in the world of retro reverse-engineering and Neo Geo in general; they're responsible for the Neo CD SD Loader and Fusion Converter, which allows you to play MVS games on AES consoles.
However, not everyone takes the same view on the topic, and fellow FPGA developer Pramod Somashekar feels this approach is a case of "bait and switch" on behalf of the team behind the Neo Geo+:
"That means this is basically the MiSTer core, but instead of having the design on one FPGA, you break it up into multiple ASICs. It's a bait and switch, especially after the marketing page says otherwise."
Somashekar also points out a shortcoming with this approach:
"ASIC is a hard-wired configuration. FPGA can be dynamically reconfigured. So if the solution is based on this, it means you can't update it. So if a mistake is made, that's pretty much it."