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I tried to use FPGA in quick search of original Oracle RDBMS account passwords extracting their hash values from database.
Relatively simple hashing algorithm used there, involving DES crypto algorithm.
I used three FPGA developer kits for this.
Cyclone III FPGA Starter Kit, where EP3C25F324 chip is used. I achieved roughly ~12.5 millions passwords per second, that is about 2 hours for all 7-symbol passwords.
Nios II Development Kit, Stratix II Edition, where EP2S60F672C3 chip is used. I achieved roughly ~76 millions passwords per second, that is about 20 minutes for all 7-symbol passwords.
PCI Express Development Kit, Stratix II GX Edition, where EP2SGX90F1508C3 chip is used. I achieved roughyl ~109 millions passwords per second, that is about 14 minutes for all 7-symbol passwords or 9 hours for all 8-symbol passwords.
There also relative speed of software Oracle password crackers.
It was showed that using mid-range FPGA chips like Altera Cyclone is cheaper in terms cost/speed. Probably, Xilinx Spartans may show the same results.
Also, the interesting thing is that, although FPGA hardware is expensive, practically any board from ebay.com may be taken for this task, if it, of course, contain some useful FPGA chips + power supply + some memory for booting, etc.
I tend to sell source files, e.g., FPGA "firmware", then ready-to-use hardware.
Feel free ask me any questions.