Interesting. Thanks for the detailed post, especially the last part where you share your results.
This is good news as far as I am concerned, the whole point of Litecoin using Scrypt was so it would be difficult for specialised hardware to have a massive performance edge.
Hi mr_random!
I think it's a good thing. Although Litecoin was made so that it could only be mined on CPUs, that has been proven wrong and now GPUs can mine it much more efficiently. This allows the evil bloodsuckers that are bot nets to feed off our Litecoin ecosystem, just like they did on Bitcoin for years.
Specialized hardware will make strides to push bot netters off the network and on to some other ALT coin. Once they can't compete profitably, they'll be outta here. I don't thing FPGAs will completely accomplish this goal, but ASICs will just like they have/will do with Bitcoin.
Also, custom mining hardware for a crypto currency is somewhat proof that you've actually "made it" as a currency, and you'll most likely be around for a while.