As a computer engineer (the kind of engineer that actually knows about the topic at hand), I call bullshit on pcm81 having any idea what he's talking about.
Sorry, pcm81, but the other camp's marshmallows are lookin' mighty tasty. I may have to head on over there to make sure they're not using any of my barn wood as fuel. That would piss me off.
Look on the bright side: at least get some mashmallows, since we ain't getting ASIC past vaporware phase anyways...
To build a real ASIC it will be $1-$2 million in startup costs. With current bitcoin design 25 coins per 10 min plus transaction fees, call it 30 coins per 10 minutes, 180 coins per hour at the rate of $20 per coin we are talking $3600 per hour for full network capacity. How long you think it would take to make $3million, which is what end user would endup paying for ASIC? We are talking about 1000 hours to pay for hardware
development cost alone with free power. And this is assuming that the ASIC will crush all other network capacity, which in reality it will not exceed 75%-90% of. The market is too small, it will simply not be worth the investment.