So just looking at the materials involved... what drives the price and how long before we see competition bringing lower prices? I imagine R&D, labor/personnel, maybe some factor for intellectual property is driving the current price. I also seem to recall somewhere that current prices are very low as it is with sales being made near cost. Then again, cost for that initial R&D can be quite high and cost for competitors -might- be much lower. The m.2 technology is well known with various articles on the topic. My guess is more pressure from Samsung and companies like Halong... Bitmain may remain in their comfort zone... or not.
GPUHoarder said pcie 3.0 versions of the acorns are being worked on.
Why arent all cars on the road lambos?
PCIe 3.0 Chips are significantly more expensive, this is the right place on the cost/value curve today. But it is being worked on.
I'd guess there will be performance improvements with V2 with stable or slightly higher prices.
Imo it doesn't have to be cheap, but it must be priced to beat ROI and risk/reward of buying more GPUs and the added cost of extra/more expensive mobo and cpus.