Open source fpgas cost up to $10 per chip, $17 if you want the big chungus 256 pin one with lots of extra memory and logic blocks. You can get pcb printing services for like $7 per board but I think I paid less than that last time I built something.
I’m pretty sure custom made ASICs cost orders of magnitude more than that.
If they never release the source, including all the fpga verilog files then this is pointless to the open source community.
You could probably fab it onto an ASIC, which avoids the non-free software part (aside from the fab itself). So still way cool.
Open source fpgas cost up to $10 per chip, $17 if you want the big chungus 256 pin one with lots of extra memory and logic blocks. You can get pcb printing services for like $7 per board but I think I paid less than that last time I built something.
I’m pretty sure custom made ASICs cost orders of magnitude more than that.