[ainarssems]

The prices should go down if they ramp up production. For now they have mostly been used for development/prototyping in relatively small numbers.. if they become mass produced costs will go down. at the moment single card can earn $40-50/ day with small selection of algorithms so not too bad for $4000 board if it pays back in less than 6 months. As more of them come online profitability will come down but as more algorithms are developed for them the hashing power will spread over them bringing profitability somewhat back up. I don't think they will make much competition for well developed ASICs like SHA256 o Scrypt but should be interesting for smaller networks and memory intensive algorithms with some new FPGAs with high speed memory bus coming out.

$4000 is a bit too much for me to at the moment and it seems they are sold out anyway, normal lead time is 2 weeks from Xilinx but at the moment it seems they are not available to order.

There are lesser FPGAs available from other manufacturers and at cheaper prices but with less performance and lacking a bit with soft development.

Could be a good time to buy some Xilinx shares or CFDs ( assuming they are publically traded) as they seem to be at the front of FPGAs and if the demand for they chips/boards goes up so should the share prices.