Bitcoin Forum

How long do you think the new devices will stay competitive? Is the next thing already in the planning stages by someone?

I imagine for about a year or maybe two at most. From here on it's really about developing ASICs using smaller and smaller processes, pushing down from 65nm to 32nm, 28nm, 22nm, and so on. It's not the easiest thing to accomplish either (or cheap), so the timeframe may be longer.

Let's focus on getting first gen devices out the door first :D

Depends on what you consider competitive.
For example, I consider Bitcoin a long term investment and don't care about "mining at a loss."
I consider competitive to mean relative to when I started mining, I will at least be making enough for my funds, in Bitcoin, to grow.
At this, I consider 0.1BTC/day expected to be competitive at a power consumption that doesn't make me have to worry about mining 24-7 and emptying my bank account noticeably.
Therefore, I have determined that competitive for me is 0.1BTC/day at under 100W.
Assuming a BFL 30W, 30GH/s unit, this would place me "competitive" until the network hashrate is a bit over 1.05PH/s. aka a difficulty of 146.68 million.
I expect us to approach this number, but not reach it, at the end of this year. I expect 800TH/s by the end of the year.
At 30W though, I'll likely keep mining because it's only 30W, assuming BFL actually delivers on numbers.

If we put that into a profit number, you can't really do that because the BTC exchange rate is changing and theoretically will be up year to year once it stabilizes. Both because of the deflation of Bitcoin and the deflation of other currencies.
Let's assume Bitcoin stays ~$30 indefinitely. In that case, you are looking at non-profitability at 2.75PH/s assuming an Avalon ASIC and a 0.10$ electrical cost.
I just calculated that briefly though so if someone sees I am off in my decimal point positioning (which would be pretty major), please let me know.
This, of course, does not add into the calculations the actual cost of the initial unit.

Slightly off topic but interesting:
At the current difficulty, you need 28.92GH/s to make 10.25USD/hour assuming you hash 24-7 but account for a 40 hour work-week.
At the 800TH/s, you need 388.44GH/s to make 10.25USD/hour assuming you hash 24-7 but account for a 40 hour work-week.
The federal US minimum wage is $7.25/hour
$10.25/hour (currently 10USD) is Canadian minimum wage. $11.28/hour (currently 11USD) is Canadian minimum wage if you work from home.
The UK minimum wage is the equivalent of 9.30USD/hour (£6.19)

Edit: regarding your title, there is nothing after the "ASIC" generation except more efficient ASICs. We'll be entering into an efficiency, performance and process race like with modern CPUs.

2-3 years from the ship date, at best. People will break even but the profits wont be much after that, and time=money so probably not the best investment.