They know that really they are competing against old gear. Were talking like A2 gear it's been so long. No one puts money into scrypt gear.
Innosilicon has already announced tape-out on an A4 Scrypt chip.
THAT is what is going to absolutely KILL the SF100 if SFARDS doesn't get it's act together pretty soon.
No specs yet, but Innosilicon has this strange (for Cryptocoin hardware maker) habit of not announcing stuff 'till it's ready - the "tapeout" announcement was the first time I've EVER seen anything out of them before they were ready to sell it.
Thank you for pointing out I was not aware they had announced it. But as you pointed out they have a habit of announcing things before they are ready.
We are still waiting for them to show a SHA machine that they have announced specs for. I will put more faith once they have something to show. Seems they are a company who has announced a lot and produced little lately. And I hope I'm wrong in that I would love to see them put out some of the things they have announced, just seems slow on that side. I am a A1 and A2 machine customer so yes I would love to be wrong.
You must be confusing Innosilicon with someone else. They're the only company that has made Bitcoin gear with a track record of NOT preannouncing, and one of the very few that has never does "preorders" - perhaps the ONLY one.
The "announcement" was more of an off-the-cuff comment in that "response to bitmine" thread, where they mentioned they had tapeout on their next-gen A3 and A4 more-or-less in passing. I don't have a link handy, but it was here on bitcointalk.
Perhaps you're thinking of Lketc, which used Innosilicon A1 chips in their Dragon models and has announced a 5TH miner?
The speculation is that miner will be using A3 chips, given the long-lasting relationship Lktec has had with Innosilicon.