There's the inevitable "is it a Sony or Nikon sensor" question thing that arises from another new sensor announcement. But it especially rises this time as the primary difference between a D3 and a D3x is the sensor, and Sony has a similar-sized sensor in a camera that's US$5000 less expensive. I think there's a clear assumption by many that if it is a Sony sensor, then either the A900 is a bargain or the D3x is overpriced.
In actuality, the origin of the sensor is, like virtually all Nikon sensors, more complex. There's a story going around Japan, for instance, that one of Sony's newer fabs was partially leased to another company making CMOS sensors. There aren't many companies making CMOS sensors that need a state-of-the-art fab on lease, so the rumor has it that Nikon is the leasee. Given that the steppers in the plant probably came from Nikon Precision and things get messy real quick. There have also been rumors around for some time that Nikon was either specifying or applying their own "toppings" (that would be microlenses and Bayer filtration), even when they were using a Sony generated sensor. To say that there is a lot of entwinement between Sony Semiconductor and Nikon Imaging is understatement. Personally, I like the way Nikon puts it: "unique." The D3x sensor is unique to the D3x, though it may share some underpinnings with other sensors.
So it seems clear to me that the D3x sensor isn't the A900 sensor. There are some obvious differences that can be gleaned from the specs and without access to technical data sheets. At the same time, there are too many coincidences for the D3x sensor not to be based on the Sony sensel (the light sensing area of the photosite). It also seems clear that the low-pass filter is handled differently in the Nikon version. So all those thinking that the A900 and D3x should be the "same" for raw files are probably going to be proven wrong. And for JPEG files, the EXPEED and BIONZ image processing ASICs are certainly going to produce different results.
