ArtForz has developed sha256 ASICs and let them (100 pieces) manufacturing for about $500/engine. This ASICs beats 5970 on hash/W by a factor of 6 but loses to 5970 on hash/$ by about a factor of 3, he said. These ASICs are not exactly a real standard cell ASIC but "metal-layer defined ASIC, basically FPGA without the FP part" (source: #bitcoin-dev).
What kind of ASIC is it? Is this a custom PCI card? Would higher production volumes improve the price point? I'm interested in this, as a purpose made PCI card would be as big a boon as buying an expensive GPU.