Probably this.

GPU have L1/L2 cache hierarchy just like a CPU.  SCRYPT only performs well if it is small enough to fit into on-chip memory.  If you have to go off-chip, it's going to be a turd.  But yes, most graphic cards have seemingly endless amounts of external memory.

The SCRYPT configuration used in Litecoin needs 128KB, which fits easily into onchip cache in a CPU/GPU, and into onchip block memory on many (not all) FPGA.

Let's put it this way: if you actually need external memory to run SCRYPT as used in Litecoin (you don't), then yes it is going to be a total turd performance wise.
It doesn't matter what chip you put out there.

Ignoring the suitability of that board for mining, it's about 3x the cost of the comparable DE0 board.

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=139&No=593&PartNo=1

If you just want to buy something to learn with, I would go with the DE0.

BTW: neither of those are good for running the existing open source bitcoin miner.

OK let's try this a different way:

what is the exact hash rate and power consumption reported by the tools for your current HDL design?

In other words, what are the exact numbers the tools are projecting for you right now?

In case you did not understand my previous post, you do not need real hardware to get those answers.   The actual real world numbers will vary a bit (small percentage), but certainly the tools provide enough information for you to figure out if the project is even worth building real hardware for.

(hash rate, power, unit cost)

Obviously, since unit cost is in several thousand dollar range, the hash rate and power consumption from your analysis would need to be compelling to be marketable.

Sorry, but for what it's worth, this is not customary and since you have already declared you don't have any experience developing anything (let alone HDL or boards with high end FPGA on them), asking for 80BTC in donations might diminish people confidence in you.

You may want to defer asking for donations until you have demonstrated that your plan is more fully thought through, and that you have the capability to produce something.  There is already a lot of people on here angry at multiple organizations for taking their money and not producing anything 6 months / 1 year / 18 months later.

Again, IMHO, you don't actually need to have physical hardware until you want to establish the (marginal) performance gains you'll get through overclocking/cooling in the real world.  Under normal conditions, the reports from the tools are accurate enough.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are saying.

I thought you were asking for donations of 80BTC to purchase (2) development boards for your own use during development.  Is that true?  If so, what development board do you want to purchase?

If you already understood my question, then I don't understand your response: can you rephrase it?

What board are you looking to purchase?

FPGA can be programmed to do (almost) anything you want them to do.  You can reprogram / repurpose them to do whatever you want them to do, if you know how to do such things.

An ASIC only does whatever the guy who designed it told it to do before the factory built the chip.

There is nothing stopping somebody from releasing updated bitstreams for already purchased FPGA hardware that would allow them to do a different algorithm.  But nobody has done that yet.
There is not any technical reason preventing it from happening.

Whether or not they would have adequate performance is a different topic.

No, it doesn't work with Google Sheets.  It depends heavily on Excel Macros.

I think that post is just (old) off-the-cuff remarks and has multiple errors (not fully fleshed out ideas).

It sounds like you have since sorted it out, but yes I was using a cloned DE2-115 project which refers to the common ../../src/xxx.v

I just changed the target device and created a new PLL.

For what it's worth, I used 5SGXEA7H1F35C1 and got 11% utilization (~8 cores?), and Fmax >200MHz.
The only change I made was a new PLL megafunction.

Thank you.  I found this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=98535.msg1081219#msg1081219

You could certainly start with a pure software approach and then gradually optimize it with custom instructions.  You wouldn't ever get the speed of a pure RTL design, but it's a good (rewarding) exercise.  With the reduced resource, utilization you could end up with the fastest implementation on the BeMicro.

Can you share a link to the threads with your bandied about numbers?  I haven't seen anybody say anything that outrageous here.

Yes, it does.

SCRYPT doesn't attempt to make it difficult for special hardware to have a performance edge.  Instead, it tries to make it more expensive.  Depending on RAM requires die area which translates directly to unit cost.

In the case of an ASIC, this is something to be considered.  The 128KB used by litecoin translates to 1 million bits of SRAM, which might multiply the ASIC unit cost x2/x4/x10?.

In the case of an FPGA, you already bought the RAM.  In the case of the popular Spartan 6 LX150 used in bitcoin mining, you already bought over 4 million bits worth.

So, whomever picked the 128KB size for litecoin didn't go out of their way to make it that hard for "special" hardware already in circulation.

You need to have product volume in order to get the chip vendors attention.

FPGA you can go to any number of distributors and buy them one at a time if you like (with discounts at various volumes).