Thanks for the reply Puppet

I've kept digging - the penalty for a single mask asic isn't as big as I originally thought; it apparently ends up about 2x the size of a comparable standard cell asic.

So it's an interesting design approach, although I'm not sure that the window is large enough to get a return on investment - as it's still in pre-order, and there are more customised ASICs claimed to be arriving next month (KnC) and December (Cointerra). Plus Bitfury shipping 55nm product that seems to be performing well.

Overall, the whole asic space is crazy right now, but better than a soap opera.... grin