Bitcoin Forum

Possible?
Same pcb/chip maker, all hitting similar specs.

They're not all the same specs. We know the SC Single is 60GH/s @ ~60W, with 8 chips. That's 7.5GH/s @ ~7W per chip.

As for all the other manufacturers, it's unknown how many chips they will each use, and at what power consumption.

Very unlikely in my opinion.

Odd that they all came in with a 60 GH/s model. Is there a magic marketing reason for this value?

60 first cropped up probably because the Avalon  makers wanted a 50% boost over BFL's initial single offering.

Considering that Intel facilities cost about $40 billion each and smaller chip manufacturers aren't all that much cheaper, I'd say the odds that the same chip fabricator is making all of their chips is approximately 100%.

I'd say about tree fiddy

You're gonna compare Intel to BFL? BFL only makes a handful of products, and  they all use the same chip. Cablepair only makes 2 products, and they both use the same chips.

They're also on the cutting edge of technology. The manufacturing process that is being used for the ASIC chips is several generations old.

He wasn't comparing BFL to Intel. He was saying that the production facilities that ASICs are made in are extremely expensive. Thus there aren't a huge amount of them (increasing odds), and there are even less of them that have the capability to do smaller lithography that they need to achieve the high density (further increasing odds). (that's at least how i interpreted it).

I wasn't exactly comparing them, as BFL does not make chips.  They sort of implied they do but now they claim they weren't referring to the chips.  They admit their chips are made in Asia.  Taiwan if I'm not mistaken and that's where most of them are.  You can probably count the number of high end and/or custom chip manufacturing plants in the world on 2 hands.  It's just that they sell to one company that sells to another that sells to another that sells to BFL.  The same goes for Marvell and Phision and SiS and even Samsung for example.  I think maybe Nvidia owns their own chip fab plant but I wouldn't be surprised if they actually didn't.

Maybe the 2nd gen ASIC's will be "more" custom then these first gen.

Can you link to this new information? I havn't heard of anything like that.

You typically don't have another generation unless you screw up. That's the point of ASICs. You hard wire everything within, create the masks and manufacturer processes and then you have incredibly complex chips that have a sizable upfront cost but very low production cost. Contrary to what a lot of people thing you can design ASICs to accept some parameters, which makes them in a way re-programmable (this is bounded by what you design into them though). It's also quite popular to include in the ASIC a processor like an Arm8 or something. (I don't think BFL is doing this based upon looking over the layout they released a couple weeks back).

Not so much difficult.  Expense largely in size of die and count of layers.  Many runs of small size that use netlist can share common layers and only etch custom code in one layer.

Mask much simpler this way.  I do not think any of current makers have sales to do any method other than this.

This is most common of ways of making ASIC from FPGA prototype.  I do not think there has been enough time to create four or five layer mask just for mining bitcoins.  Is too expensive in start up costs to go that way.

Could be wrong.  It happen once before.  ;D

The probability is exactly zero that anyone but BFL is using our chips, since ours are 100% original proprietary IP.

Yes of course they are using different chips/pcb design. Why do you think all the hush hush is all about.

Yea, it is China...

Yes, 100%

Well, I guess that depends on what your definition of "all" is ... But for the commonly accepted definition of 100% original IP, I would say yes.

Quickly?  We've been working on it for months...  I'd have to look at the exact date but I want to say we started around March or April.

Unfortunately, there is basically one way to make an ASIC.  It needs x amount of transistors and registerable cache in a certain ratio to run bitcoin operations a certain way and certain power levels obtain certain acceptable or unacceptable heat dissipations.  If you add double the memory that you need to run bitcoin operations, that just means you wasted money in the design so they're all actually going to be structured extremely similarly.  They obviously didn't invent a new way to actually build the chips' internals themselves, that's up to the Asian factories, so they're all just reinventing the wheel exactly the same way separate from each other.

This isn't like making an airplane where one guy does 2 wings and a propeller and the other does a jet engine.  It's more like making ice cubes, lol.  You hold water in something and drop it below 32F or you don't end up with ice :P

I agree with the OP, and i was thinking about this for some time. Suddenly tons of different ASIC producers appeared, they all estimate their product to be delivered for november/december and they all estimate their product to be similar in Gh/s. Hell, BFL even changed the hashing of the single from 40 to 60gh/s, wich is exactly the same of the Avalon ASIC.

Since making an ASIC involve designing the chip, investing a lot of money and then actually producing the masks and then the chips, wich take a lot of time, it's very weird that everything is so similar and comes at november/december  :)

Typically the ASIC company you work with helps with design and they handle making and verifying masks and chip production obviously. Most of the companies are obviously based in Asia and have many professionals that have an experts knowledge in ASIC design and production. And from what I have seen these ASIC company's only really make a lot of money if these chips are successful, because it costs them very little to create them after the masks are made. So it is in their interest to produce a great, fully working chip as well.

What? 1 way to make ASIC? Have you SEEN how many bitstream variations have come out? Even at the most basic level you have the decision between laying down a sea of hashes or a few pipelines per chip. Then you look at the various processes available. Is this a FPGA hardcopy which only really has 1 customer mask added to a standard FPGA-like common set of base layers? Is it a full-custom ASIC laid down transistor by transistor by hand? By algo? By using an HDL? Now take a couple dozen possible optimizations for performance, effiency, OR die size, and you have a few thousand different combinations that could be produced today.

It Is a lot more like making an airplane than you seem to realize, or at least like producing an engine, be it finely tuned, or a big lumbering diesel.

There have been some really good technical mudslinging threads about what constitutes a true full custom ASIC, but there is no question that more than one solution is really being produced. The chances of them all coming out if the same factory in China is not even remotely likely.

OTOH, the chances that there will be at least 2 ASIC options that have the same chip are nearly 100%. I've seen at least one reference to a design being shared, but I'm mobile so I don't have a link handy.

I think confusion comes from confusing chip etching and assembly.  Quite possible chips are etched in same facility, perhaps even same wafers.  Not sure if China includes other China (Taiwan) but is possible.

As for assemble units for sale, is very unlikely that same facility is making BFL, etc. boards.  Many PCB assembly in China, Taiwan, Viet Nam, USA, everywhere.  Not so many chip fabs.

Relationships much easier to establish with PCB assembly.  Send tech packs, request quotes and samples, test, good going.  Chip etching is much more expensive, so most relationships with intermediary trusted by fab to verify chip design so not to waste production run or fab time.

What is an IP chip? I feel stupid for asking, but google isn't being terribly helpful.