Bitcoin Forum

29 May 2013 - ASIC Update



29 May 2013 - ASIC Update

 Almost there... I'm attaching a picture of our test board. We've almost got the firmware finalized, as you can see, we've brought power usage down quite a bit. This is a 50 GH/s unit with unbinned chips (meaning the chips were randomly selected, so some of the chips have non-functional engines. What this means is the unit can perform faster if you use binned chips with known good engines).

 I think the picture speaks for itself, and I apologize for the quality... just took a quick snap while we were working. However, you can see that our power usage is under 5w/GH/s. This should apply across all product lines. I plan on testing out the short boards tomorrow. We should be getting in many of the reworked short boards tomorrow as well as some long boards. Next week, we expect a much larger shipment of both long and short boards to arrive (possibly even this Saturday, but that's still up in the air.)

 In any event, we should have the firmware finalized by tomorrow night or Friday at the latest and ready to go.

_______________________________________

The picture included is of the 50GH miner mining at 52GH.  If anyone wants to post that pic feel free.

obviously this picture of the mining GUI should set everyone at ease

Jesus.  I know 50GH/s is a lot, but I never ran the numbers before.  Does that really mean Avalon owners are pulling in $10k/month at current conditions?

Click for larger images.

http://s11.postimg.org/dmeytktmn/IMG_20130506_130150_1.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/dmeytktmn/)

http://s11.postimg.org/5r4ferjzz/IMG_20130506_163619_1.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/5r4ferjzz/)

http://s11.postimg.org/4dcsjgkqn/IMG_20130529_192231.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/4dcsjgkqn/)

I heard it was 20K for Feb/March

This should calm a few people down. It may not be happening as and when they wanted, but it's headway at least...

Now they only need to ship in quantity...

Right. They've put such an emphasis on quality>quantity, but some of us just want the damn 60GH/s!

since this is the prototype of a 50gigahash I'd say just give it at least another 2-12 months.

I think that if they had the money (and chips in quantity, that should not be far from the truth), the should theoretically be able to ship every order in a short tf, like, 1 month.
They should simply outsource everything, from the pcb to the case/packaging...

However, i think that since that they lack liquidity, they will do it in house and as slow as possible.

Why don't they start selling batches of their chips as well? That could have a fixed delivery time...

Why is there never time/effort to upload a quality pic of their progress? All they can manage is a washed out screen, off center shot with a Kill-a-watt meter in the background that may or may not be plugged into their ASIC unit?
Anytime I see a crappy picture that is supposed to relate how awesome/perfect/sell-able and item is, I get the heeby-jeebies. I've got no stake in the whole BFL game, but it is readily apparent to me how bad they are.

Liquidity problems?! That one rig has scored them over $8k the past 30 days, it says so on the screen. That's their rent paid for at the very least!

Projected earnings without any difficulty increase.

76C with the case completely open seems rather high. Although I have no idea what type of heat is normal for them.

Don't think so. I think the GUI displays cumulative earnings. Besides, it's not as if they have much current competition or the hash rate has started it's real climb, they hold most of the projected hashrate in pre-orders!

$8k is a drop in the bucket when you start figuring 30+ employees, wafers, PCB, PSU, marketing etc. I bet BFL is burning over $500k a month easily.

How much is it mining though? You know, just in prototype rigs ::)

Did they redesign the board? The fan headers in the most recent pic look to be different. The second fan appears to be plugged in somewhere else. Maybe I'm not seeing it right.

You know.. their hardware looks pretty nice. Whereas the Avalon and ASICMINER boards look slapped together*, these things have some appeal to them. Now if only they could get them out the door at an acceptable pace.

*- love my Block Eruptor but hot damn is it ugly.

So last week's status update was all lies then?   ::)

That is about what I presumed. 7 months x $500K and they still have to come up with $3M-6M in parts to be able to manufacture their backlog of orders.
Once they start shipping in bulk, we will have a better feel for how much money they have left.

But they promised not to mine on mainnet.

Why would it display cumulative earnings?

Every bitcoin calculator displays projections not actual earnings.

If it was true then they were mining for what a month?

The fact that they used day, week, month IMPLIES projected earnings.

"I promise not to mine on the main bitcoin chain... ::)"

Evidence: Look at every promise BFL has ever made....therein lies your answer.

crazy temps I see :D this board die very soon

Every update is the same and follows this format.

Good news we have done xxxx and xxxx. Now we are just waiting for xxx which should be here in xxx days but COULD be here sooner, and then everything will be excellent.

Followed by; we aim to be shipping xxx units in 2 weeks.

Since when is 76C crazy?

I run my GPU's at that all the time mining for years.

Heat is also one of my biggest concerns! Josh once said the units run cool and quit in a "cool environment" (whatever that means).

It's getting summer here where I live, with temps ~30°C. I assume the units will go over 80°C under those conditions.

Ongoing high temps kill ICs pretty quickly.

I'm sure AMD/Nvidia use a higher quality process.

Proof?

Without knowing where and how the temperature measurements were taken on the BFL chip, it is impossible to know if the temp is too high.
AMD has several on die measuring spots, they then do interpolation to determine an "average" overall die temperature. They also profile the chip performance to know what temperatures begin to damage the chip.

BFL might have a diode to measure on die, they might be measuring from the chip mount on the PCB, etc. It also depends on how far from the point of measurement the hottest spots are.

Seriously? BFL does not even know what QA stands for! Their track record of failures speaks for itself.

You really wanna compare AMD and Nvidia with them BFL cowboys?

It's not like they have a bunch of seasoned photographers on staff. Oh, wait a minute... They do!

I find this situation fascinating from a psychological perspective.

If someone repeatedly lies to you, why would you suddenly think that lie #19, lie #23, or lie #58 might actually be true? What makes you think that this time they are telling the truth, as opposed to the previous 30 or 40 or 50 lies?

This company has proven that they can not be considered honest and trustworthy. At least to anyone who has done more than 30 minutes of research on the forums here.

Fascinating situation...

They don't have to know what it means. Just offer periodic examples: QA = Quantitative Abyss.

In fact, we are all part of a social experiment. They will make a paper on us.

If one miner is earning BFL $8k/month, why would they sell it, for $2500?

This is the epic question that everyone askes since last year. Yet, noone has a reply. We also have some proof as of now that hey, these money making machines actually never ships (if you don't take into account the AM blades, that are heavly overpriced).

Broken analog watches tell the correct time twice a day.

People keep saying this, but the prices were set by us, the free market.

They're clearly selling at the advertised price, and something is only worth what someone will pay for it. So how are they overpriced?

I used to work for NVIDIA. Believe me, they do.

The way AM is selling blades is something that makes sense - selling with a price a blade would earn (maybe) in a year.
BFL or KNCMiner model is something I don't understand.

I do. The idea is to distribute the network fairly amongst those willing to adopt the concept before one entity becomes so powerful it can claim ownership of the network.

Selling the price a blade would earn in year, when it is most likely obsolete is akin to lending BFL monies for a year to be given a product that is most likely obsolete. People in this forum seem to like this method when the chips themselves cost significant NRE, followed by pennies to a handful of dollars each, but then I can see why ASiC miner and Avalon welcome 5000% profit. Few industries will give companies such obscene profits and give you that time wastage and minimal returns...oh wait the current banking system.

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h148/Bigblock462/Spock.jpg (http://s63.photobucket.com/user/Bigblock462/media/Spock.jpg.html)

ITT fired janitor knows best.

Fortunately, ugly pays the bills.  Pretty stays poor forever.

Its not gpu and that is a open case. I guess what's a case closed.w

I don't know how you're coming to your conclusions regarding their QA standards. I think it's a fair assessment to say that their CS pretty well sucks balls, but the big complaint that I hear from most people is that they are spending too much time on QA, and delaying shipment as a result.

Just because a company is lacking in the Customer Service department doesn't say anything negative about their quality assurance. And conversely, having great customer service does not say anything positive about quality assurance. I never heard anything about any serious QA issues with their FPGA miners. In fact, pretty much everything I've seen was that they were a great product. Which refutes your assertion that their QA sucks (or that they're ignorant of it altogether).

Hate BFL as much as you want. But making statements about their QA standards, without a shred of evidence, is talking out your ass. Then again, talking out your ass seems to be one of the key tenets of the He Man BFL Haters Club...  ::)

Both of these comments are comparing apples to oranges..

This situation is more like "When your meth addicted friends tells you on a monthly basis that he "is clean now" and "I'm never going to touch that stuff again".  It may be true at the time... and it may be his/her intention.  But after the 4th, 5th, 20th time they do it, you just nod your head and say "Good for you" all the while not really believing that this will be the reality.  

..The people who did not order BFL, or cancelled their orders are the people who don't really have a relationship with that person, and say in a very blunt way "whatever, you'll fall off the wagon soon enough", and even at times would rather see them fail so they won't have to deal with seeing them later on.  The people who do have orders with BFL are like the friends or family of that person.  They don't really believe it will happen, or believe in the timing, but only hope that one day what they say comes true.

I personally think the company doesn't really plan for the setbacks, and when given an expectation by a vendor (say 1-2 weeks), they tell their customer base "1 WEEK!".  By now it is at the 7-8 month mark, but they are still going.  The way I figure it is, if the company was a true scam, they would have taken the money already and moved on to a new scam.  This is beyond the meaning of "long con".  The only thing that will tell is time.  I could see a possibility that they take too long, and only a handful of people getting these devices while they are still profitable.  That would be my personal opinion of a "worst case scenario".  At that point either they can get back several returns until they file bankruptcy, and at that point, everyone looses their money that still have not received their product.  Best case scenario is within the next 2 weeks they get anywhere CLOSE to shipping out to their reported amount of 400 per day.  I have this sneaking suspicion that the reality will probably somewhere in between.

EXACTLY.  I would put a V12 in a room in my house and feed it gas daily if it mined enough.  Oil leaks, exhaust and all.

And the carbon monoxide?

Easyminer  photo at 52GH/s showing 58C temp with case on.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/attachments/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1207d1369940031-may-29-2013-asic-update-discussion-thread-butterfly-labs-shows-their-asic-minner-bitcoin-2013.mp4.jpg


https://forums.butterflylabs.com/attachments/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1207d1369940031t-may-29-2013-asic-update-discussion-thread-butterfly-labs-shows-their-asic-minner-bitcoin-2013.mp4.jpg

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/attachments/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1212d1368903513-may-29-2013-asic-update-discussion-thread-riin6sz.jpg

I got my refund and I feel soooooo good  8)

LOL Oh man I can't believe people sometimes. BFL is priced too low, so they must be mining to compensate. ASICMiner is priced too high, but they are blatantly mining on the hardware before they sell it (currently at what, 30TH/s?).

Love it.

When people want to smear something, they will twist any feature or point to the negative even if it means becoming obviously hypocritical. Just watch politicians during an election campaign, all ethics goes out the window.

Erk got owned  ::)

FTFY.

It could be a more advanced long con.  Their CEO or whatever is a convicted con man, and spent time in prison for fraud.  It's possible that he has learned from his mistakes, meaning he is now a "better" con artist.  The "best" con men tend not to go to jail because they operate inside the law as much as possible.

Here's an example...  Let's say Sonny is drawing a huge salary and one day BFL announces that their venture has failed and that they are declaring bankruptcy.  It's clear where the money went - right into Sonny's bank account.  What did he do illegal?  Will they be able to put him in jail?  

Thats like comparing a multi-billion dollar...NASA engineered hardware with something some guy made in his garage with duct tape. If the wind blows, it will fall over immediately and explode.

Only if you are smart on how, when and where you mine.

It's safe to say that most Avalon owners are well into 5 figures. They should be into 6 figures by...a while from now.

To expand a little...

This happens all the time with stock promotions.  An example would be REFR (Research Frontiers), a long running stock scam where the executives pay themselves huge salaries despite the fact that this company has not had any revenues worth mentioning for DECADES.  The money comes from issuing new shares and unloading them on unsophisticated investors.

Now, in BFL's case they may be trying to follow this more advanced type of long con but failing because of one important difference...  I am not sure if it's legal to simply use the preorder money and then claim "sorry, we tried our best but failed as a business".  Legally, preorder money might be considered differently than a direct investment - i.e. you cannot just use it on salaries, consultants (read "friends and relatives"), materials (kickbacks) and rent (from a corp owned by a relative), etc. etc.

The lottery scams that Sonny was convicted of went on for a decade before the police finally made arrests. If BFL is paying Sonny $500K a year in salary, why wouldn't he want to string it out forever?  He wouldn't even be a very well paid CEO at that figure, but BFL could be leasing cars, houses, boats, etc. Who knows?

Money goes in, very little comes out in terms of hash rate. I remember in early April everyone declaring that the "BFL locusts" were coming. Then again in late April. Then again in early May, and again in late May. Now we have 1 more day till June. Maybe Smoothie or Puerto can collect a master list of all BFL shipping date promises.

I agree with your post.  The one thing I would say is that a CEO's salary should be in some way representative of the profit and/or revenue produced by the company.  In other words, being a CEO of a company with no history of profit nor success is a lot different than being a CEO of an established, highly profitable enterprise.  When a CEO is drawing a salary which is overly large in relation to his company's revenue, it can be a red flag that something is not right.

I would not be at all surprised if it comes out that Sonny is drawing a large salary.  Afterall, he is a con man and his father was likewise a professional con man.

[/b]

Any online poker players will recognize this from the Full Tilt poker days...

Basically the BoD of the company funnelled ~10 million a month in dividend payments to the owners (while the company was in the red!!!!!!), leaving the company upside down to the tune of a little over 300 million USD.

The person you are trying to smear,  posted a long straightforward explanation of the events on this forum last year, why don't you take the time to read it first?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110868.0

Who did I smear?  He is not a convicted con artist?  He did not spend time in prison for fraud?  His father was not a professional con man?

You don't even know the name of the CEO of Butterfly Labs do you?

Another troll.

What do you mean?  I have to know how to spell his last name?  ???    Or he is some other position?

What the fuck are you talking about?  Was Sonny V's father a professional con artist or not?

Another rube and/or shill.

This description of the actual scheme bears no resemblance to what I just read in the link you posted:

https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/radDocs/PressRoom/nr110114.htm


In the link you posted, Sonny V was claiming that he was simply allowing people to wager on the outcome of existing lotteries.  For example, betting that the NY pick 3 would be 4-7-2.  That would be illegal but not, in my opinion, immoral. 

If you read the link I just pasted, it appears he lied.  Again.

So this is his father...


http://www.mynews3.com/content/news/story/James-Ray-The-Silver-King-Houston-dead-at-66/PBuDmtPW60WSB9kDsWc3rg.cspx

http://www.reviewjournal.com/jane-ann-morrison/goodbye-scamming-scheming-silver-king-who-had-mettle-if-not-metal

http://www.lasvegasworldnews.com/notorious-con-man-james-ray-houston-dead-at-66/8172/


Erk, I hope this helps.  You seem really confused.

I would imagine most have read it. It is very old news.

You can read where he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud which you can read here:
http://ia600409.us.archive.org/34/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.383556/gov.uscourts.cacd.383556.136.0.pdf

You can read the indictment here
http://ia600409.us.archive.org/34/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.383556/gov.uscourts.cacd.383556.8.0.pdf

The name of the case was:
California Central District Court, Case No. 2:07-cr-00134:
USA v. Vleisides et al

as you can read here:
http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=1500526

He wasn't just mixed up in a betting company. He owned the shell corporations that funneled the money back to the gang.
They didn't buy lottery tickets, they used a little of the money to pay "winners" of small amounts. They kept and spent the rest.
None of the people who got scammed out of $20,000,000 got their money back.
They targeted senior citizens who were retired.

Every so often, an "Erk" shows up and tries to deflect and obscure Sonny Vleisides' history.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/cac/Pressroom/pr2007/065.html


Again, this description of his crimes bears no resemblance to his claims that he was just running "numbers".

Laissez Faire City was a long con led by Sonny's Daddy-O. Did they stop taking money after reaching a certain dollar mark? No! For there were many more marks to be had. Hell, James Ray Houston turned his back when all the chips fell on his lap to start operating LFCity as the founders envisioned it, knowing that more moneys would go into his coffers via the way he was doing things, all the while with Sonny Boy at his side.

The day BFL is no longer able to maintain the ruse, thus becoming less profitable FOR THEM, the doors will be closed. I predict that Jody will retire shortly before the announcement, if there is one, and that Josh, a few pounds lighter due to ?, will be stating in no uncertain terms that he was left in the dark the entire time.

Here's the kicker: Josh will probably be the one in charge of liquidating the assets alongside some lawyer handpicked by Sonny's cousin the lawyer.

And I'm sure it's going to happen just prior to their first require corporate reporting to the state/IRS. Can you even imagine what their books look like?

Is it too much to ask for one BFL thread to stay on topic? Unless this sonny guy is actually running the pick and place machine, i dont give a flying fuck. We are here to talk about the hardware or lack of it.

This thread is exactly on topic. Every time BFL posts another "two weeks until delivery" update people ask why it will take another two weeks. Then the speculation beings as to why BFL failed again to deliver on their promises. Then someone points out that this is the nature of a long con, they string you along until finally they run aground. Then some newcomer to the forums defends Sonny Vleisides and says it was either an IRS witch hunt or that we are smearing his name with these fraud allegations. Then someone posts the well documented history of Sonny's fraud conviction for lottery scams.

This cycle can be broken in two ways.
1) BFL could actually start delivering on their promises
2) People could accept the history of Sonny Vleisides and stop posting disinformation about him

It only seems tedious because BFL has "updated" like this dozens of times.

I agree!

Therefore, addressing the "lack of it" aspect, I'll continue.

Sonny's probation is up come September 15: https://sites.google.com/site/bitcointech/home/united-states-of-america-vs-sonny-vleisides/unitedstatesofamericavsonnyvleisides


Looks to me like the Probation Officer can have access to the business records simply by asking for them. I think it's to the best interest of the DA to make sure that people are protected from a potential ruse, for no DA wants to be on record in closing their eyes when info was presented to them. It's not like they have a trust thingy to put in place of a scam section because they are too busy to oversee everything.

If people want to hear about sony, they can check the other bfl threads since the history is rehashed in every one. It's rough to wade through this crap. It's like watching another superman or batman or spiderman movie, and they have to go through the origin again for half of the movie. Move on. bring up new info.

There was new info in this thread. Erk said people are smearing Sonny's name and that he forced to plead guilty. Others responded with Sonny's trial history.
The history is only rehashed because someone is trying to re-write it.

M'kay! New info. To get a better idea as to what's going on at BFL, check out their forum.

Here's what the founders of LFCity, of which Sonny was one, published--or simply changed the cover.

http://cgiwsc.enhancedsitebuilder.com/extras/public/blog.cls?accountId=AENDU0INVCLJ&instanceId=11608&action-getImage&img_id=56e360c2543f1f564f7ebd65094c7692

Fine then my message is to him too. I'm an equal opportunity crotchety m'fer.  Start a new thread in the legal/general/butthurt forum.

If all BFL threads turn you off so much, stop clicking on them. You can go to forums.butterflylabs.com for more carefully moderated views of BFL.
This thread says BFL ASIC Status 5/29. We are discussing that. Please stop your off topic complaints and attempt at thread derailment.

So they have 2 production lines, one for selling to customers, and a second line for assembling themselves and solo mining? What would be the point of that?

Why would there be two lines?  Every day when the asic truck rolls up from the factory, wheel off your pallets of boards, send the number that people bought to packaging/shipping room, the rest go out to the datacenter floor.

(ASICMiner is currently expanding rapidly at the moment)

Pretty simple :)

Dont bother he only pushes the BFL band wagon

The truth hurts does it not ... u seem to be 100% BFL PR department ...good for u ..I really wish u would remove the Aus logo because dont SMEAR australia with your BFL bullshit !

^ ^ ^
http://files.myopera.com/JanetB/albums/3694872/Haters%20Gonna%20Hate.gif

Only if they sell at actual price... saving those coins and selling them at 1000 U$ would be more wise !

They don't. Or better, they sold the miner but do not deliver.

Because currenty there is a huge uncertainty of difficulty. Theoretically you could make a ROI in a couple of weeks, but in reality it might take 2 months, and after that first month any further gain might diminish very fast, so eventually it could take 3+ months to get the investment back, and there is also an exchange rate risk, the price might drop

I think after the network reached 1PH, the further increase of hash power will not be that fast and ASIC pricing will back to the traditional 3 month ROI standard

That is choice. They are excited about missing their targeted power spec by only 500%. WTG!

If BFL is being stalled or overtaken by a CIA black-op I don't think we'll see many of them in jail (if alive).

(food for thought)

I see that argument over and over about why not mine with the gear instead. If it takes an hour to build a single and get it out the door,  how much could you mine with a single in that hour? I doubt if you could get much over $10 worth of BTC in that time, but you can get $2500 if you sell the thing and get it out the door. It's far more lucrative to sell the hardware then it is to mine with it. Sure once sales drop off then mining becomes an option.m But the sales orders would have to drop off to less that one single every 10days before mining generate more revenue at the current difficulty.

They already have the $2500, getting it 'out of the door' has no effect on their bottom line.

I agree their incentive to ship is virtually nil. They can mine anonymously until preorders start dropping off, ship some units, preorders pick back up, mine with those new machines.... rinse repeat for a year, then announce VERSION 2.0! Only $5k for 100gh/s at the lowest watts/hash yet!

Ding ding ding. WINNER!  ;D

1000 shipped just recently... woah wait... did you want quantity in April or October I am confused?

BFL reckon they have shipped over 10,000 units, considering they are only shipping March/April orders still they must have had a lot of orders. I know April was a big order  month because that's when their chips finnaly arrived and they did that youtube video of the first tests.

Considering their first chips arrived from the foundry in April 2013,  your claim is laughable. Typical troll.

I can just see a mining rig with several thousand Jalapeno systems all cabled up ti a raspberry Pi to make more profit.

Laughable.

I reckon they mined with every one of those 10,000 units and shipped them late on purpose to reap the bitcoin and even now they are still 6 months behind. I bet you start seeing a flood of units flying out the door as soon as they become too costly to earn. That is what I reckon happened and it would nice to see the AG in KS take them to task. Fingers crossed BFL gets dragged to court.

They shipped how many units late? All of them were late.
They shipped how many units to spec? All of them were under spec.
They still have to ship how many units? 6 Months worth.
They still have to tape out the Monarch chip? 2 months late already.

Ya I am the one being the troll.

It never ceases to amaze me how many simple facts can add up to the reality of BFL being one if not the most shady company in the bitcoin world. Ethical companies do not behave this way.