The future of ASIC mining?

[Reclaim3r]

Bitcoin mining has come a long way, starting from plain old CPU's to blazingly fast ASIC's.
However, Silicon will reach its limit ( albeit in a long time  ) and the age of ASIC just might be over.
So what is the future of mining beyond ASIC's? Are their any other viable options?
I've seen graphene, but it looks too new to implement a fully operable mining ASIC.
Quantum Computing looks tempting but that's really stressing a Venture Capitalists wallet.

[DolanDuck]

It appears that silicon will see another day. In an about-face move, IBM has revealed that graphene can't fully replace silicon inside CPUs.
A graphene transistor can't actually be completely switched off.

[Salmon1989]

Yup, the Moore’s law won't hold forever, due to the quantum effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtI5wRyHpTg
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04567410

[Harley997]

Bitcoin mining has come a long way, starting from plain old CPU's to blazingly fast ASIC's.
However, Silicon will reach its limit ( albeit in a long time  ) and the age of ASIC just might be over.
So what is the future of mining beyond ASIC's? Are their any other viable options?
I've seen graphene, but it looks too new to implement a fully operable mining ASIC.
Quantum Computing looks tempting but that's really stressing a Venture Capitalists wallet.

ASICs by definition is the last kind of mining devices that will be developed.

With that being said developers will likely develop ASICs that are much more efficient by today's standards. Just look at where we were less then a year ago in terms of hashrate and electric consumption by ASICs

[leoragraves666]

With 28nm we are hitting the limit for now. Besides that it is too expensive to produce.

[Harley997]

With 28nm we are hitting the limit for now. Besides that it is too expensive to produce.

Developers came come up with more advanced technology.

The most expensive costs of technology is generally the cost of R & D. As the 28nm machines are sold in more quantities they can be sold for less as this R & D cost is less on a per machine basis.