Like everything that Bitfury announces you have to read very carefully, I refer to: "We understand it will be nearly impossible for any older technology to compete .......". The 'nearly' is the giveaway, despite their strange announcement about 'every transistor on the new chip being laid out by hand' they know that ultimately their solution, for one reason or another, has not worked exactly to plan and that a good full custom 28nm design can beat the crap out of it. Such solutions exist.
How is every transistor on the new chip being laid out by hand a "strange announcement"? Hello, welcome to the definition of FULL CUSTOM DESIGN.
Care to explain how a full-custom 28nm design like the BM1385 used in the S7 can compete effectively after the halfing against a chip that has demonstrated over twice the efficiency and should still be PROFITABLE by then (it's looking more and more likely that the S7 is going to hit "unprofitable" shortly before the halfing unless you have VERY VERY cheap or FREE electric).
BitFury's real competiton for their new chip isn't going to be 28nm. It is going to be the upcomming A3, and at some point probably a 14/16nm full-custom chip from Bitmain, and possibly 1 or 2 others eventually going with full-custom at 14/16nm.
I discount KnC's Solar, if they had THAT in full production they'd be showing a lot higher hashrate climb than they've demonstrated since their last annoucement about the thing.
I also suspect BitFury's claim about "widely available" is STILL talking about that lightbulb thing of theirs.
