Isn't the guy(s) behind AvalonASIC the same people that delivered Icarus and Carismore FPGAs?
I'm probably confused with FPGA they we behind BUT... they still designed an FPGA that could hash the SHA-256 encryption algorithm that Bitcoin uses.
That had no issues from shipping out of china...
But did they actually program the FPGA in China? I seriously doubt that.
Yes, Plug it in, turn your miner on... and go. Same with all the other FPGA's at the time.
Yes there were better bitstreams coming out to make them go faster, and JTAG was disabled on at least BFL's FPGAs (Not sure on Modminer, Icarus/Carismore.)