I've been following the discussion on the x11 thread (
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=556277.180 ) and there were two interesting highlights - at least interesting to me:
1. A guy estimates that it'd take a few months and a 50k cost to roll out ~300MH FPGAs for x11, with 2k per board cost:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=556277.msg6077250#msg6077250If this happens, diff will make block reward go to 5 pretty quickly (and reducing the number of coins perhaps?)
2. Scrypt-N is already ASICable with an ASIC miner that seems to be able to handle N-factors up to 35 years ahead:
Also from their faq:
Can Neon mine for Bitcoins?
No, unfortunately Scryptr is dedicated and optimized for Scrypt mining and does not have a dual-mode
Can Neon support mining for Scrypt Jane or Darkcoin?
Scryptr is designed and optimized for Scrypt mining and not a general purpose mining chip. For Scrypt Jane, only a small subset that uses a combination of SHA256 and salsa20 mix, but in general no. Darkcoin definitely not.
Years of experience with manufacturing processes, specifically new process development, force me to double if not triple every number that that guy said . . assuming he's telling the truth.
So that's a few months x 2.5, 50k development x 2.5 (probably more, but sticking with consistency), 300M# x 2.5, 2k x 2.5 seems more reasonable to me.
If that few months x 2.5 is even close to a year then that's not nearly as bad.
Plus getting that kind of hash out of my GPU's would easily cost me above $50k in just computer parts . . so in comparison thats a far cry more reasonable than the scrypt asic field.
Even more importantly though, is what was ACTUALLY said in the thread (emphasis mine):
Numbers out of thin air for FPGA route - I'd expect 300 MH/s X11 algo board with 6 Spartan 6 LX150 chips to be developed in half of year with 50000 USD development cost, production price would be something like 2000 USD per board. (Anyone with actual field knowledge is welcome to correct me!)
So he has actually no idea if those numbers are real, and frankly, while I am no expert either, they seem quite unrealistic to me.
A 300 MH/S scrypt asic goes for ~$2,500, so there is no way an X11 could go for the same price.
Additionally, at the moment, the market cap of scrypt coins is about 250 times greater than X11 coins. Even if the $50,000 development cost number was correct, that is 3% of the current market cap! That is an insanely high risk to reward ratio for a company to take.
tl;dr: I'm not expecting an X11 asic anytime soon. Whether it is good or bad is a whole other debate.