Maybe he realized that there is no way to compete with BFL and wants to get a job there, by showing how 'smart' he is. Otherwise, he'd just make something better himself

Well. I don't need job with them, but I may sell to them solution of course. Right now they have more than enough money just to buy some know-hows about sha256. And looking at their hash-rates I clearly see that they need it :-)
As for Spartan solution - it is already fastest, and if yohan's prices for board combined with my bitstream price per Mh/s would be $0.53 / Mh/s for FPGA (1200 Mh/s for $640). This already beats BFL prices. If my licensing per-spartan would be applicable ($25 per chip) - then it would be 1200 Mh/s for $740 - $0.616 - again beats BFL. But - yohan prefers 840 Mh/s :-) While our capabilities do not allow to deploy quickly and cheap solutions.
For ASIC solution it is tougher - because this sets stakes higher. And I don't like to happen competing with phantom like it was with 20 W / 1050 Gh/s single... Trying like crazy getting 500 Mh/s from single Spartan :-) And then seeing that no magic was there, just some marketing fraud. I think they did it with this intention as well, to make others spending time trying to compete with the thing you can't :-) And then simply say "oops" - it is 80 W but not 20 W :-) Sorry - this is the thing that I won't forget :-) Quite happy that mini-rig was done differently. :-)