Thanks for the links! I'm mostly interested in 2012 and whether the claim of someone mining Bitcoin with ASICs in 2012 is actually plausible, because from my anecdotal experience it was incredibly hard to get your hard on ASIC mining hardware until at least the latter half of 2013. And that is assuming you even bet on the right horse and not on one of the many ventures that failed to deliver.
Friedcat and Avalon having specifications as of September / October 2012 means they still had to get the chips produced, as from my little understanding of the chip design workflow you're still working with simulations at that point (either software simulation or hardware-based using FPGAs).
So at least according to the public record there were no (SHA256) ASIC chips until December 28, 2012:
Update
After a long and anxious waiting, we have finally got our packaged chip samples at hand. Everyone would be busy in the following 2-3 weeks.
And even then the chips were still to be tested.
So in conclusion -- Am I missing something or does it seem unlikely that someone was mining Bitcoin with ASICs as early as 2012? Because given the technical challenges and capital requirements it seems weird for someone to produce ASIC chips without scaling production for either themselves or for sale to the public, either of which should have made a splash back then.
