Real nice teardown here. Gotta like teardowns.

www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/recent-teardowns/2012/02/inside-the-asus-amd-7970-graphics-card-tsmc-28-nm/

[Wed Mar 21, 2012]

I'm new to BTC and FPGA. I see lots of discussion and lots of good-intended vaporware. I see the real thing too in ztex,icarus,x6500,bfl. (I miss any?)

But has anyone actually talked with a company that is in the business of creating FPGA designs and products?
I know there are some companies that take FPGA designs and automate the FPGA design to an ASIC product.

I may look into it just for the experience and see what happens. I'm sure some of you here already know where this will take me so chime in.

I envision getting some quotes, settling on one and then crowd funding for that.
Part of the request for the quote will require that the entire design be free (as-in freedom). Will that change the price?

Has it been tried already?

[UPDATES]
Wed Mar 21, 2012 I have sent out three requests in the past week or so. No replies yet.

As you may already know reCaptcha uses that info you provide to correct scanned books/documents. You do the work for free. Those documents will
eventually drive traffic to them. I heard they may start paying in BTC for work submitted. Does anyone know more?

I would like to make a captcha that helps to solve a hash.  I'm not sure if it will work yet.

I've looked at some of the FPGA miners available and am curious to know how to determine if an FPGA is well suited to mining.
What characteristics make an FPGA suitable or not?