I imagine there's a huge difference, legally, with black-box reverse engineering and then creating a very similar design on an FPGA (what I did here), and actually fully decapping the chip and cloning the gates.
Plus FPGAs add a lot of flexibility (e.g. multiple systems, enhancements), and they're really not that expensive. Especially in relatively low volumes compared to an ASIC.
Plus FPGAs add a lot of flexibility (e.g. multiple systems, enhancements), and they're really not that expensive. Especially in relatively low volumes compared to an ASIC.