ArtForz already has an ASIC mining solution. Rumors have him at somewhere around 25% of the bitcoin network.
Another outfit is working on a freestanding mining solution. No words on pricing or capacity, but it's likely an ASIC of some sort. People crunching the numbers on chip production spinup costs peg it at about 5.6 gigahash for $1000-1500. I'm guessing it'll use some low cost SoC and be a miner-worker-in-a-box -- just plug it in, put it on the internet, point it to a pool and you're done.
Once FPGA and ASIC miners become more common I'm convinced the bitcion community and bitcoin usefulness will shrink, not grow -- both have been growing because anyone with an ATI card can get in on the fun. You'll see adoption plummet when in order to play with bitcoins you will need an expensive, single purpose piece of hardware. And bitcoins as a currency are just not viable yet.
TL;DR - GPU mining and bitcoins both should still be around for another 4-8 weeks. After that it's a big unknown.
Another outfit is working on a freestanding mining solution. No words on pricing or capacity, but it's likely an ASIC of some sort. People crunching the numbers on chip production spinup costs peg it at about 5.6 gigahash for $1000-1500. I'm guessing it'll use some low cost SoC and be a miner-worker-in-a-box -- just plug it in, put it on the internet, point it to a pool and you're done.
Once FPGA and ASIC miners become more common I'm convinced the bitcion community and bitcoin usefulness will shrink, not grow -- both have been growing because anyone with an ATI card can get in on the fun. You'll see adoption plummet when in order to play with bitcoins you will need an expensive, single purpose piece of hardware. And bitcoins as a currency are just not viable yet.
TL;DR - GPU mining and bitcoins both should still be around for another 4-8 weeks. After that it's a big unknown.