[imtringued]

Most FPGAs that are viable accellerators aren't for hobbyists but they also are not as expensive as you think. I can't find it anymore but I once saw an online shop with a huge variety of 500k+ LUT FPGA modules (just the chip itself on a small PCB) for around 1000€ + 500€ breakoutboard/mainboard. At those prices it makes more sense as an individual to invest into more CPU cores or a GPU (if your problem maps to it).

Edit: Maybe its this one here. https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/de/TE0808-04-06EG-1EE-Ultra...

[gudok]

How much time would it take to synthesize 500K-lut design on a high-end workstation?

[nraynaud]

wait, we have an FPGA-based hardware module to accelerate synthetization!

(or even more ironic: an ASIC module)

[TomVDB]

Around 5 hours.