[ianstallings]

GPUs? It's ASICs or not at all these days. Start with an FPGA prototype that can be used to create an ASIC, like an Altera. If you want to muck around with this stuff for fun you can buy a Cyclone or Stratix for relatively low cost.

[astrodust]

It's an older article, but it serves to show just how fast these things swing. Just as CPU mining became worthless when GPU mining took off, GPU mining is totally useless now. Even with free power it's barely worth the trouble.

FPGA is still viable, the chips are fairly cheap and performance can be improved with better designs, but ASIC will absolutely crush it.

The good news is that getting your FPGA design taped out as an ASIC is actually not all that expensive, relatively speaking. Some will give you a few hundred samples for around $15K. Not cheap per-chip, but avoids the $250-500K setup fee you normally incur with most ASIC runs.

[ianstallings]

Yeah the main hurdle to getting an ASIC taped out these days is actually that most production lines are backed up. I think the sample route might be a good idea for what will hopefully be a small run.

[astrodust]

They sell surplus area on their wafers to those making small runs, and the yields are not that great as these are the less desirable parts of the wafer. Still, it's actually quite cheap all things considered, especially if you only want a few hundred units.