Bitcoin Forum

So I've been seeing a lot of stuff about how BFL hasn't shipped people's ASICs yet. This thread isn't about that.
I just want some info about this:
https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/5-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html

Am I incorrect in thinking that 5 GH/s is 5000 MH/s?
At $274 (assuming BFL ever gets their shit together) isn't that an excellent deal?

Also, it says it needs to be plugged into a host computer. What part of the host computer does it draw on?

It was supposed to be usb powered. It is an excellent deal if you can get one in your hand now, but not so hot 6 month down the line.

If it existed today it would be an excellent deal.  It would be like having a modern day Intel I7 back in 1990.

But hashrate is only as important as determining your percentage of the network.  If you hash 5GH, but 1 million people have devices hashing 60GH you'll make pretty much near nothing.

It's the bfl jalapeno, it's due to ship soon, but that's been said for a while.
It should be usb powered and hopefully it'll remain profitable when they ship  :o

Seriously, dudes! Given BFLs track record of failures you don't have to be a genious to figure out what BFLs next fail will be: Assembly.

I am looking forward to June or July to read something like this from Josh/BFL: "Due to [insert random reason here] we are unfortunately not able to assemble 400 units a day as originally planned/promised/hoped/guessed, but only 20. We are terribly sorry for that. Not.".

If you order now, you can be happy to receive your unit in 2013. Or 2014. imho.

Mining is going pro at this point, soon even 5 Ghash will be a drop in the bucket against others with larger more powerful miners and severely increased difficulty. If you intend to get into BTC mining at this point, now you need an investment fund and a working business plan to compete. I find that exciting myself.

But if that isn't your cup o tea, you could look into mining one of the altcoins like Litecoin which is gaining prominence as crypto-currencie's # 2. This is still in a hobbyist stage much like where Bitcoin was a couple years ago.

It was a better deal at $150 when I preordered mine.  I'm just ticked off with my self for using Bitcoin for the payment.  13.4 bitcoin is worth allot more than $150 now.
Sam

I've got a Jalapeno on order since September 2012.  The product was promised to be shipping in October, then November, then February, and now in April we still have no dates and BFL is having a lot of problems with power consumption.  Not good news for a USB based product. 

BFL has preorders since June 2012 to build, and they haven't built a fully working, ready to ship Jalapeno yet (as far as has been publically announced).  You may be waiting many months for your order to ship, and difficulty is likely to be dozens, if not hundreds of times higher than it is today.

Yes. Great deal. Totally. See my sig.

Some facts about the Japolino:

Jalapeno - 5V DC at 900 mA, using dual USB 2.0 or single USB 3.0*

-Using USB 3.0 will work but at reduced speed is only one USB 2.0 port is used or insufficient power is supplied. A powered USB hub may be required if your USB ports do not supply sufficient power.

and you'll have a nice little toaster for your bagel...or bread.

basically it just draws small amounts of power and bandwidth.

comparatively it is a strong miner. it used to be 120$ if i remember correctly.

it is what we all thought: wow what a deal! 5gh is 5000mh.

at this point though, you don't get a really good place in line so i would wait and see how fast bfl is shipping stuff out if they start shipping at all. it would be unsound of you to not take that into account. if bfl starts shipping stuff out slow, it is almost as bad as not shipping at this rate, because at 300 units a day it will take them almost a year to get out just the preorders.

i would sit and wait. other opportunities are coming. in 10 weeks about we will have avalon chips on US soil.

Victor Alpha Papa Oscar Romeo Whiskey Alpha Romeo Echo

LOL

Buy with credit card. In 3 months it will be clear if this deal is good or not. Request a refund through your credit card if the outlook will be bad.

It draws 30W from an external power brick, like a laptop uses.  It doesn't get power off USB.

yeah my main regret is that I paid with bitcoins.  At the value they were at the time, I spent 26 bitcoins for 2 Jalapeños.   I wish I had paid in fiat.

 
C'est la vie!

Couldn't help it. 5Gh/s is not 5000 Mh/s. Rather it is 5120Mh/s. Basic computer science:

1 Bit = Binary Digit
8 Bits = 1 Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte

Wrong! Hash has nothing to do with byte! Therefore, 5 GH/s = 5000 MH/s!

Please see this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

Yes

Yes, it is awesome deal. But BFL is constantly delaying delivery date, so their promises cannot be trusted. Nobody knows when this product will be shipping.
Also, new orders will be processed and shipped only after older orders. It can take additional months for your new order to be processed and shipped.

It is plugged to USB, but needs to be additionally plugged into A/C power socket.

Jalapeño is very spicy for summer dining. jajajjaja summer before had been very good, spicy spicy spicy now

I'm sure mega and giga are SI prefixes in this case, not the stupid made up byte prefixes used in hard drives.

This is correct.
When we talk about hashing, we are talking about frequency (each hash = 1 cycle), not bytes. In frequency measurements, 1 MHz = 1000000 hertz. 1 GHz = 1000000000 hertz. So 5 Gigahashes per second is hashing with a frequency of 5 billion times a second.  ;D

;D
You know this is 1st gen. BFL equipment, though, right?  So 5 Ghps could translate to 6.1, or then again, 4.7.  Either way, of the 10 types of people in the world, who understand binary or don't, I suspect your one of those.

It's such a shame that computer people use Mega and Giga so incorrectly -- leads to people like Balthozar thinking they know everything.  I'm sure one day some self-proclaimed know it all will incorrectly supply 2^20 W instead of 1e6 W to some poor device.

If you wanted to be correct, you should have used Kibibytes, Mebibytes and Gibibytes instead. What you have listed are SI prefixes of measure, which are always based on powers of ten, not two.

Further, all accredited standards organizations with which I am familiar (ANSI, BSI, IEC, ISO, NIST, etc...) are unified in stating that (e.g.) kilo is a prefix _always_ meaning 1000 (10^3) and _never_ meaning 1024 (2^10). It matters not one whit whether or not one is discussing bytes or onions.

Yes, the terms kilo, mega, giga, etc. have been MISapplied in the computer industry for several decades. And it was once accepted practice. No longer.

Using these kilo, et al prefixes to refer to 10^(n*3) is an anachronism that perpetuates a needless ambiguity, and must cease - before it kills again.

You want shorthand for 2^(n*10), you use kibi, mebi, gibi, etc.

The problem with kibi, mebi, gibi, etc... is that it will likely never achieve widespread adoption in US English (at the very least) because the phonemes used are very close to what us Americans perceive as "baby talk."  If they had gone with a less offensive sounding set of prefixes, they'd have likely had wider adoption by now.  Not that I disagree with the sentiment though.