Bitcoin Forum

As many of you are aware, BFL has announced (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3014-butterfly-labs-announces-bulk-chip-sales.html) that they are going to begin bulk sales of their ICs. The Product Page (https://products.butterflylabs.com/65nm-asic-bitcoin-mining-chip.html) has the description of the chip as well as the updated pricing ($75/chip).




Unfortunately, the minimum quantity while lower than Avalon is still higher than many people would want to put down on their own.
The basic idea will be similar to the Avalon group buys. I (or an escrow if it is demanded) will collect the initial 50% required and purchase the ASICs through BFL.
*Please note, BFL's products are priced in USD, not BTC. Thus if you want 100 chips now, you would have to put down 50% of the USD equivalent in BTC.

Group Buy Terms

• Payment will be in Bitcoin
• The chips are expected to be of the mix stated by BFL. It appears that the chips will not be binned prior to shipping by BFL, so it will be a lottery. Some chips in the batch will be tested at verify the batch is function prior to shipping them out, but QA for each chip to determine its grade is up to you.
• Lead time is 100 days. This will be foundry and package dependent, while it shouldn't depend on BFL I don't guarantee it is accurate.
• 50% of the chip cost will be due prior to the placement of the order. When the chips are ready and the final 50% is due to BFL, the remaining 50% will be due.
• I am not responsible for taxes/duties on your end.

Cost, Coupon Codes and Escrow

• Price for each chip will be $81, inclusive of tracked shipping. This will be fairly basic; if you want something extremely fast the extra cost will be on you but we can work that out.
• If you have chip credit codes, those can be applied and will credited at full value as long as you purchase that number of chips. IE, if you transfer credit for 16 chips and purchase 16 chips you will pay $56*16=$896 for all of them. You can't purchase send a 16 chip code and expect to apply $400 in discounts to an order of 6 chips.
• I have a limited number of codes available for people that are interested in the group buy. If you don't have codes I am willing to accept a limited number of chips at $65 per chip. This number is quite limited though, so this line will eventually disappear.
• Escrow: At this point, I have more than enough people to do a large group buy I'm not willing to jump through too many hoops in order to set up an escrow. I have spoken with JohnK about doing an escrow and he's expressed willingness depending on the conditions. If you are uncomfortable with me, I am perfectly willing to allow you to escrow the funds through JohnK if you cover the cost of it.

BFL has now provided the source code for the microcontroller (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3282-bitforce-sc-firmware-version-1-2-5-a.html), and a design document for the chip (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3014-butterfly-labs-announces-bulk-chip-sales.html). They have also said they will release reference schematics in the future. My own design can really begin in earnest, and so I will actually open up this group buy to people.

Timeline
I will begin accepting orders and securing the deposit (either direct or through JohnK) starting right away. I plan to place the order on Friday June 21st, so all transactions will need to be done before then.
Once this group buy is done, I may do another.

Shipping Options
At this time, you have 3 main options for shipping.

• Shipment direct to you
• Shipment to someone else to get assembled for you
• You decide to go with our design and have the chips mounted onto PCBs, which then get shipped to you.

Obviously there's be extra charges associated with the third option.

If you're interested, post in the thread. For those of you that have already expressed interest, I'll be contacting you through PM. Feel free to ask any questions, I'll try to answer them and stick them into the FAQ.

Reserved - FAQ and Other Information
We are based in the US and Canada.

DIY ASIC Design

I have begun preliminary planning on a miner design using the BFL ASIC chips. While details are still being worked out and the concept is not entirely finalized (pending the release of documentation and code from BFL), some basic points of the first unit will be below.

• 4 chips - nominally 15-16GH/s depending on grade
• Dynamic clock and voltage control
• USB control, 12V 6pin PCIe for power
• Hole spacing designed to allow standard CPU coolers to cover the ASICs
• Designed for high density
  • Each module will be designed to be run stand alone, or chained together
  • Module form factor will standardized to allow easy mounting in a 19" rack case
  • Preliminary size ~ 100mm x 150mm max

This will probably be spun off into its own thread once it gets more developed and linked to from here, along with any other community designs.

I'll be holding off until there's actually a real plan in place, including chip specs/reference design, and the chips are ACTUALLY for sale.

If you ask me, you're putting the cart before the horse. They're not even officially selling the things yet.

i LOLed at the TITLE.  :P

Translation: "Let's put our money together and get scammed as one!"  :D

Ignoring the OP and this thread. Silly to buy from BFL just silly

Can you clarify this?   This sounds pretty damn important.  JohnK would be the guy to go to for escrow, and he doesn't want to do it for anything involving BFL?

TBH, I have more faith in Bitfury than BFL at this point.  ;D  Needs documentations for the chip, only then I might consider.

The idea is to start the process and get interest in place early, so that there isn't and delays in organizing once move information is available.

I'm not going to defend BFL, their track record speaks for itself.Thjs thread is for people who are interested in buying BFL asics, not people who want to debate whether they're a scam or not. I think their FCBGA package opens up interesting enough new board designs that I want to make a.few, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

 :D That's what I thought too.  Interesting typo here, "1/10th the silicon area per GH as the closest competitor"
For a lot of folks, they would say it's about "0/10th the silicon area per GH."

Wise words.

John stay far away. You don't need gray hairs at your age.

 :)

Bumping this up now that BFL is live with chip sales.

At this point, I am in for in the range of 30-50 chips.

Also, from talking to Josh it seems that now that they are shipping a limited number of Singles and close to volume shipment, Nasser will be working on prepping the documentation for the units. While some work is happening now, I really expect design work to take off soon once preliminary documentation gets out the door.

Put me down for 32 chips.

There is nothing in this thread about board design.

Great, sounds good. I am currently awaiting some more information from BFL on their timelines, but hope to be able to place an order sometime in the next week.

Third post. The design is being slowly worked on doing things like getting the overall purpose nailed down, building packages for the chips that will be needed, and getting some work done on the DC/DC. Unfortunately even a prototype won't be possible until BFL releases more information on their chips and design. At this point it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend a lot of time on work that might either be invalidated with more information, or just duplicated by the reference design released by BFL. Ideally we'll be able to get really serious about it next week if and when BFL starts releasing documentation.

I read something about "2 weeks" for Docs and samples to Devs on another thread About BFL chips. 100% escrow or something. Who knows, but it'll be hard to convince people until they "put up"; if and then, the race will be on for Avalon 2.0

I haven't heard any details about a second generation Avalon chip yet. That's not to say it isn't in the pipe, but I would love a link to some technical details if you have them. The Avalon chip sales were extremely successful even before any information was released; some community members released preliminary layouts even before knowing the pinout of the chips. While BFL hasn't exactly been prompt compared to their original deadline for mining devices, the chips are proven at this point and there shouldn't be any reason why the issues that BFL has ramping up after redesigning the Single PCB and hardware will significantly affect chip timelines.

I won't say I'm not worried about the 100 day timeline slipping a little, but then I'm worried about Avalon being able to deliver chips to the April 16th orders within the next week and a half to meet their 10 week deadline. I would say that people who buy BFL chips have more to worry about from Bitfury, KnC and Avalon V1 than Avalon V2 at this point.

Is there a datasheet on this BFL chip out already?
A pinout and a chip package would be enough at
this point.

intron

i wll follow this Thread,
i would also buy 10- 50 Chips,  50  Chips for 3750$ by Wire
nice would be if we could share the first Payment 2x 1875$ to proceed faster,
but this depends on the Plans from BFL when and to whom they show it ?


In the Moment we got someone who can produce the PCB's fast, i'm so in (but then its probably too late)

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3272-customer-appreciation-chip-credit-program.html

Anyone who has a pre-order with BFL gets a discount on chips, down from $75/chip to $50/chip. Might be worth grouping a bunch of discount codes and buying a batch!

Finally, the news is released.

The chip credit program will be a huge boon for chip sales. The BFL chips are now $12.5/(GH/s) for people that have chip credits, which is by far the best price available.

Codes are transferable, so they should be fine to use in the group buy once they are aggregated together. If you do not have chip credits but are still interested, I am looking to acquire codes. Obviously the price of the chips if you don't have codes will end up being somewhere between $50 and $75. Where on that scale it ends up will depend on how easy codes are to come by.

The wording of inaba's OP at bfl doesn't suggest that the codes can be grouped:



I suspect there are a lot of people who will want to cash in their chip credits, but few who will want to pay the $50 cost. Anyway, I am interested in providing $1200 in credits to anyone that can return 8 chips mounted on a PCB that will mine.

His wording doesn't exclude it at all, and while it's not explicitly stated it wouldn't make sense to make the codes transferable if you can't use someone else's codes along with yours.

interested

watching and very interested

Maybe I could help, did the CAD of S-HASH within a week.
It's the 16 Avalon board we are working on posted earlier:

http://imgur.com/s7vQDzi

Need the pinout + package style first then. Spec
and samples can follow later.

intron

Hey Josh just released the chip spec sheet on the original post. You'll need an account there to download it.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3014-butterfly-labs-announces-bulk-chip-sales.html

BFL BitForce SC Firmware source code Thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=235312.0;topicseen (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=235312.0;topicseen)
 

I've got some chip credits to put toward a group buy and am interested ~32 chips. Is this the only BFL chip group buy thread at the moment?

Excellent news. Time to get to work.

I have 64 chip credits, and am interested in this group buy (as well as any project to build rack-mount ASIC blades).

how will the credit program be incorporated into this group buy?

Well, there's this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=223571.0 , where the OP was trying to hold BFL's feet to the fire with regard to delivery and terms.  Seems he was making some progress, too, but now, with ones accepting the original 50% pre-buy maybe but probably not escrow terms, BFL has no reason to accept those more customer-safe terms.

That's okay, IMHO, because there are enough horses coming onto the track that nobody has to pick one they don't think is the one that's going to win.  

I have 34 chips credits and I'm interested in this group buy. How would be the credit transfer?
There is an estimate price for the production boards?

Major changes to the OP in light of the new information from BFL. I am now officially opening this group buy to the public and will begin taking orders.

What will the cost be for PCB assembly?

Unknown at this point, though we should have an answer soon. We're still getting quotes on things like the PCBs and assembly. It should be very competitive on a per hash basis with other board offerings though.

I'm interesting. Please add me to the list.
Assembled them in Taiwan would be cheap!

Update:
Have 32 chips credits not 16.

I'm interested... I'll jump on board if/when chips are proven to be shipping.

I have 32 credits for sale at 6btc. PM me.

I'm extremely interested in the board designs... willing to share costs and workload to help this eventuate...

Interested but I would like to see faster units. Using CPU coolers is a great idea. I've got chip credits for over 1TH.

What country are you based in?

Interested in a small 8-12 chip buy.  But would like to see more concrete movement on miner design and manufacture.

I will. As I said, I am investigating options for assembly. It's a balance between getting a better price and the extra time it would take to ship the chips to Taiwan/China and then have them shipped back to us for distribution. It will depend on the savings, I don't think many miners would want to save $5 or $10 on a board if it adds a week to the leadtime.

Interested. Are there any shipping limitations? Slovenia, EU?

EDIT: not sure if you have this data but how much is necessary to pay at once? Full or half price?

PCB scematics released
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3295-bitforce-sc-pcb-schematics.html

Anyone figured out how expensive it would be to build and populate a clone board?

Looks like they did via in BGA pad. Why?
Heat propagation?

intron

Yes, heat transfer would be my guess.

It also looks like they leave the chip thermal diodes unconnected, perhaps there is an issue with them.

I have been reviewing the documentation as well as my own plans, and it seems like the cost of assembly and parts for a 4-6 chip miner with good headroom (similar to the power delivery capability of BFL's reference Jalapeno or 1/2 of a Longboard) would be in the range of $200, plus whatever heatsink is used. Commodity heatsinks capable of cooling 60W without a problem aren't terribly expensive though, a CM Hyper212 or similar is overkill and those are easy to find for less than $30. The exact price will depend on quantities, but I would estimate that at this time that price won't be off by more than 50%.

I should know better on the price as the design gets finalized and the number of people becomes clearer.

How far are we from taking the orders? And what about shipping to EU?

Hey MrTeal, I'm in for atleast 40 chips and have ~168 Chip Codes for sale for anyone interested $7.50 each


EDIT: 8 BFL codes sold to Lucko. Great transaction

i'm in with 16 chips. looking forward for more info./news.cheers

I'm in for putting my chip codes towards this, and purchasing a couple of devices. I have codes for 32 chips.

What country are you based in? +1

I believe he's in Canada.

So... +1a ?

I'll be here all week... try the veal!

Is there a thread/list somewhere of the people currently working on BFL 'clone' boards/designs? (KlondikeBFL anyone?)

Typo, fixed the spelling and inflection pause for you.

What is the state now?

You would transfer the credits to my email address, and the cost for chips would be lowered.


Half price for the chips now, the remainder later. There aren't any shipping restrictions, but I can't speak to what your country will do for duty/tax.


As MXRider said, I am in Canada. The actual procedure for getting the chips is still up in the air (pun partially intended). At this point, the group buy is getting serious enough (a couple thousand chips possibly) that I might end up flying to the US to acquire them and for those that are interested in having the chips assembled get that process underway immediately. For those that aren't, chips would be shipped out from there to avoid me having to import them into Canada.

I've actually been swamped with work getting the group buy together. Work is slowly progressing on the PCB, though it's been sped up by BFL releasing the documentation of their chips. The plan is to submit the order to BFL on Friday and arrange for samples to be shipped out, and get the design finished and test boards under construction the week following. If revisions need to be made the schedule leaves time for that, and then production boards can be ordered with a longer leadtime to keep costs reasonable while we're waiting for the chips to arrive.

Once chips arrive, they'll go to the assembly house for anyone who's interested in having a board made, or shipped directly to you.

I have 4 chip codes that I would like to get in with.

If I can find 4 more chip codes available from some one I'd like to get in for 8. That should make a nice little mining rig to play with.

PMed

I've already mentioned this over on BFL forums,

but I'm for 96 chips.

My only concern is, these need to be fully operation when I get them (apart from power supplies of course).

I am not interested in receiving these, then having to source my own stuff to complete it (ie. heatsinks etc).

If these can be ready, I plug them into power supplies, and off we go, I am in, and would consider purchasing credits off sellers to increase my already 96 chips.

I have 32 codes that I would be willing to put forward to this groupbuy if there is a real chance (as in "100%") that there is a EU-based (preferred: burnin) assembly that provides "ready to run" rigs/boards/blades.

I've contacted burnin(no answer, yet) and I've been also talking with some Finnish PCB design companies. Haven't got any solid offers yet.

If you got any good contacts in Germany we could order the chips straight to Europe and buy MrTeals design and have everything assembled here. One option is to just make clones of the BFL's existing products. The PCB designer who I talked with said that BFL needs to release more info about some component libraries (Altium schdoc) and some firmwares too.

Are you planning on producing the board that BFL released gerbers for?

BFL released just the PCB for the 5Gh jalapeno

Its in Altrium format.

The problem is you can only mount two chips on it (it has pads for 8 I think) otherwise it will get to hot and fry.

They are 10 Layer boards and they are NOT cheap to have manufactured even in 1000 lots they are like $30 a pop

I have already converted the Altrium files to Gerber files, pick files and Bill of materials files.

Yea, BFL also released the gerbers on their forum. I was surprised at the amount of layers. And bypass capacitors.

Someone needs to redesign a bigger board with less layers to get the price down.

Last thread hijack I promise but have you priced out the BOM yet? Some pricey support componentsit looks like. 

Is this assembly house in Canada? I ask since I am also Canadian.

I'm offering sample chips from my personal orders to reputable board designers: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=236103.0

I'm interested in getting in a group buy after BFL announces a shipping timeline for these chips... I don't want to end up getting 100 chips in january. I have 16 credits if that helps. Also it would be dependent upon the development of an affordable pcb to house these chips. If there is a PCB design project, is there any way I can help? I am a EE major (although no PCB design experience yet) it would be nice to contribute and learn.

It took me a minute, yeah that's pretty funny!

The board alone in quantities of 1000 would be between $20 and $40USD per board.
I have 5 quotes to support this number.

No idea on cost to populate.

what would be the production time estimate? Please don't say two weeks.

4 Weeks $26 each quantity 500

Really depends on when chips arrive.
If no chips are ordered, timeframes won't help.

why don't we just ask BFL about who produced boards for them?
that place can easily produce them again since they've done it already, no?

Similar situation, I have 32 codes that I would be willing to put forward to the group buy if there is a real chance (as in "99%") assembly that provides "ready to run" rigs/boards/blades.

Cheers

Is the firware or when there is a FPGA the FPGA object file
available from BFL? Otherwise you end up with just the
bare metal and not a functional miner.

intron

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=235312.0

Put me down for 12 chips

Not sure why you want to redesign their 8 chip ref. board.  All is there.  I can't find BOM, I guess you can get it from PCB+schematics, but it would be nice to get the actual part numbers+sources.  

4pcb.com would do this board. I have not run a quote, but I'm guessing $15
 

Any updates on the progress? Friday is fast approaching...

You probably want to redesign the board because it's supposed to support 8 engines but only actually supports 2.

4pcb probably could build the board for $15 if you order a run of several thousand.

Not sure I understand.  Each chip supports 16 engines @ 250 MHz, there are 8 chips on the board.
Where did you get 2 engines from?

The board release was the design for the SC jalapeno right? as far as I know more than 2 chips on the board melts the traces...hence why the Jally has open slots right?

There's some word mincing in their chip spec. One chip contains 16 engines and the board design released is supposed to support 8 chips. Now I was under the impression that the board design released would only support 2 chips even though there is space for 8 because more than 2 generates enough heat to melt traces. Let me know if I'm incorrect in that assumption.

You are right:
from BFL forum shoutbox:
BFL-Josh: "The point of us releasing the design stuff wasn't so people can just go make their own BFL stuff... it was so people can make new stuff.".
 " If you are planning on designing off that Jalapeno board, you should consider different mosfets. Those will overheat with more than 1 chip." .
"Even two chips drives those particular mosfets really, really hot." .
"Well, I'm not sure I'd drive 300 watts through that board, if that's what you mean..." .
"We have a number of 8 chip short board units that have been working for quite awhile, but I wouldn't trust them without some changes and additoinal cooling. With a waterblock you'd probably be golden."

No, not unless they release the longboard. The Jalapeno board has some issues and I don't think it would be worthwhile duplicating it.

Those 0201 capacitors aren't actually populated I don't believe, although I'm just going off memory and I don't have a Jalapeno board here to check. It would be pretty strange to have a bunch of actual capacitors under the back plate though.

LOL... Two weeks? Unfortunately, it probably will end up being something along these lines. Getting the chips to the assembly house and then doing a super rush couple day run would drive the cost way up.

PMed

Looks like about $200 for the PCB, assembly and components. That isn't set in stone yet, but should be close.

Hi

May I know how many chips will fit on the estimated $200 board? 8 chips?

I am trying to price this out

Are you still looking at 4 chips per board? Or considering more?
I ended up with 96 chip codes, so I might buy on my own now and wait for a good board design to come about.

Well they might be on the back plane. They are listed on the BOM. All 450 ish of them. Also, I believe that there are only 6 layers on the board.

Wouldn't it be feasible to mount these chips on some ASICMiner Block Eruptor-like USB Stick?
Power consumption should be manageable (< 15 Watts!?)  heat dissipation... maybe?

It has also been stated that you could run 8 chips,on it with proper cooling, and word has it the design they released has the mosfet's that generate too much heat. The same ones that they swapped out when designing the longboard.

Perhaps but there's currently a lot of "larger" support chips required in the BFL design to manage communication and queueing with all 16 engines. These could probably be designed down or out if only using one chip. The current spec doesn't even come close to using all the pin outse.

IIRC, cooling was not the issue with putting 8 chips on the board. The issue was that the board couldn't give enough power without frying itself. The board was only originally designed for 60W, and the current Jalapenos are pulling 30-35W. You could throw all the giant heatsinks you want at that board, and it won't handle the 250-300W it would take to power 8 chips without frying itself.

I'm interested on getting in for 4 chips, and I have 2 chip codes, let me know details via PM if there is still room.

I'm would like to get on board for some chips if it is not to late ...

Count me in.  I've got 4 chip codes I'd like to put towards a finished 4 chip unit.

Let me know where to send them.

Thanks.

I have BFL chips ordered. What's the word on assembly options/costs? Would love to get some opinions from other buyers on the best way to use these chips!

Could these, apart from the power supply, be operated with an (almost) passive cooling solution? <15 watts/chip... open boards, huge heatsinks??

I have 32 vouchers I'd be willing to put into this effort. Are there any plans to make boards that can hold more chips? Any rough idea on what assembly would cost? I can't commit to 32 chips worth in BTC right now, especially since board design isn't set in stone, but I would be interested further down the line.

I'd like to buy in for 8 chips; I do have codes to go with them.

crazyates,

So the PCB that BFL_Nassar released is for Jalapeno?
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3295-bitforce-sc-pcb-schematics.html (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3295-bitforce-sc-pcb-schematics.html)

Put me down for 32 chips with codes.

Got 160 Chip discount codes only 0.05 BTC each as many as you need.  Also accept LTC/NMC/$$

I'm interested in 2 chips, and I have 2 coupons to go with them.

Correct. They haven't released the specs for the "Long Boards", which have the improved power distribution. They just wanted to give people something to work with.
Source: 1 (https://twitter.com/BFL_News/status/347390581560967169) & 2 (https://twitter.com/BFL_News/status/347390605053292544)

The new transistors have moved back to OptiMOS series devices in the cooler running Jalapenos. I don't believe anything else has been done to the power supply circuitry.

Hi MrTeal,

PM sent: What's the deadline of the payment? Should I send by MtGox's market price?

[edit]
What's the order status at present? How many 100 chips batches filled for now?

Teal, you know its extremely risky putting money into this without any idea when the DIY boards available right?

Look at all the preorders from ASICs + Avalon chips, you dont have much time left.

I have enough chips credit so i dont need a groupbuy, i'm only interested in the boards.

ps. PM me where are you located in Canada.

In for 16. Codes and BTC sent.

If this is still open, I'd be interested in 4 chips and have a two chip credit.

Hey guys, the chip buy is closed. Please don't send me any more BTC or codes, unless you want to make a donation. :)

The buy was done today, so we're in the queue to get chips on their way. Thanks to everyone who participated or expressed interest.

Hi Mrteal,

will you also be accepting orders for board assembly with chips supplied directly to you?

By the way, when you ordered, did the credits apply to the 50% deposit, the final 50%, or split between?

Thanks

Peterepeat, the details of that haven't been worked out, but it is something that will be in the cards. When ordering, the total cost is reduced by the $25, and then you pay the 50% deposit on the $50 ($25).

Thanks MrTeal.
I havent yet made the order as I would prefer to get them shipped to whoever is doing the assembly and not to Australia to avoid unnecessary delay and costs. I will wait on the sideline for now.
Cheers

Can I just clarify that the cost per chip is $75 and each chip gets 4GH/s.
I am trying to get my head around the costs and potential revenue.

That is a hard one. What will happen with difficulty in 100 days? Who knows...

I run at just under 8Gh/s with a Jally (which I believe has 2 chips) and mine about about .2 BTC per day. So one chip would be about .1 BTC. In 100 days who know what that will look like.

Difficulty is estimated to be ~200%+ higher in 100 days (using historical 10% weekly difficulty increase (https://docs.google.com/a/roperweb.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc#gid=0) as prediction). If my math is right, that means the same hash power at that time will be minting only 0.029 BTC per day.

I really can't imagine it's going to be worth it at all to run most of this equipment after another year. Assuming the 10% weekly increase holds, difficulty should be about 2.4 billion at that time (http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=1qgxyrdZ) and even Avalon 70 Gh/s miners will fail to mine half a bitcoin per month.

Shits a changin'.

There are two options though, gpu miners will quit, btc price will rise as it already has.

Or BTC value will fall,  when the GPU miners ( the largest user base) stop using BTC.

most of gpus moved to LTC mining by now and I moved my gpus to LTC mining.

I am sure that most GPU miners will move to litecoin. A good chunk probably have already. The hobbiest is being squeezed out of bitcoin.
I wonder how many GPUs you will need to keep up in LiteCoin... maybe 50 - 100?

I started mining about 3 months ago with GPU's.
I mined BTC for about 3 hours and then switched to litecoin.  Have not mined BTC since.
And based on the pricing of all these group orders I question whether
it's worth it even if they actually deliver on time. 
Constant increases like 18% in difficulty will put us at 250,000,000 on 1/1/14.  At 5 GH/s you will
make about $8 a week.  And based on the pricing/estimates for these BFL chips/boards/assembly/delivery
I don't think it's going to show a profit.  At least not for a few years.  I could be wrong.
I ordered two Jala's late (April) and did an analysis of revenue based on 18% increases.
Here is the result if anyone is interested.  http://tinyurl.com/llahjrd (http://tinyurl.com/llahjrd)
It's not pretty.

Using those numbers it looks good for folks that have ASIC in hand. My units mines at nearly a constant 7.8 Gh/s and has earned back about $120 of its investment. So with your numbers it should produce maybe 1000 bucks in profit by the end of the year. Wish I had preordered 50 of them.

It will stoup increasing so fast I'm sure...

Yeah but you instantly exchange ltc to btc.

Once the price crashes and the hash rate stabilizes, we won't see large increases in hash rate without a corresponding uptick in prices.  But we have to reach 50x the pre-asic hashrate before this is likely to happen.  ASICs have already been way over ordered. 

I am interested. I have some chip credits I wish to potentially use. Avalon chips are already my self-assembly challenge and especially considering the BGA, I have no interest in assembling miners myself with their chips.

I think this GB is finished... But you can join my...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238052.0

Mr. Teal, how many chips you ordered, can you put Orders list?
Number order Butterfly labs? ???


Estimate date chips arrival...  

Hi Doken,

Estimated arrival for the chips is 95 days, IE I haven't heard anything other than the 100 day lead time.
The order number with BFL is 1000679XX.
We ordered 1200 chips. I am not going to put out a list of individual orders within that, as I haven't asked if people are willing to have that disclosed.

Thanks MrTeal!!!!  ;)

Thanks for putting in the work to get it done. 1200 is a good size number!

I hope BFL follows through with the sample chips at a reasonable date so PCB's and components can be tested and worked on w/o someone having to tear apart their Jalapeno to scavenge the chips   :P

For the Heatsink&Fan, are any AM2 HS w/ 92mm Fans going to fit?  Can get some great deals on them these days even for the Direct contact heatpipe versions.  The DC Heatpipe w/ 92mm cool better then most 120mm fans w/o DC pipes.  I wish I could remember the the brand of HS&F that some other Group buy was using on their boards...Think they were able to order direct and get a nice bulk discount.

Any new info on how many chips per board will be used?  Hoping for 6 if the board design can handle it.

I would actually recommend staying away from most DC heatsinks, it should have an entirely flat base and direct contact heatpipes often have small gaps between the base and the heat pipe. It's not an issue with a CPU because the die is coupled to a large heatspreader, but with the ASICs it's possible you could end up with localized hot spots under where the gap is.

Just bumping this up for all of us who participated in this buy.

Chipgeek posted on the BFL forum 2 days ago that they should have a board design to share in 1-2 days.

I am hoping that means today sometime we might see an update on progress from both Chipgeek and MrTeal.

There was also a post from Josh about the sample chips... sadly, the person they had in charge of that has left BFL and apparently was not on top of sending out the sample chips. Josh stated he has remedied this so chips should be on their way to MrTeal and Chipgeek so they can move along with these boards.

MrTeal and Chipgeek, TY for putting this together... any updates on progress this week would be greatly appreciated.

Also, MrTeal... when do you anticipate needing the second half of the chip deposit and at what point will you be asking for the remainder of the cost for the board and assembly per option 3?

~Daemon

Can I assume this GB is closed, or did you order extras?  Looking for 16-24.

MrTeal,

Did you receive the samples?

my sample chips shipped out  yesterday

As a quick update before I post a dedicated thread for the board development back in custom hardware, things are going well. Sample chips are here, and the test PCBs and stencil are in manufacture and should arrive early next week. As well, all the components for the test boards are on the way and should all be here this week.

We should be (as far as I know of) the first group to have a non-BFL reference design up and running, so I'm pretty happy will progress thus far.

That's awesome!!

I agree. This is all very cool.

It should almost be time for these chips!

Just bumping this up. I will be PMing everyone individually, but it's now time to start collecting the remaining 50% in order to pay BFL for the chips. I've spoken with BFL, and the reels of chips are scheduled to ship on Sept 30th.
I'm going to start collecting the balance immediately, and I will be paying BFL on Thursday Sept 29th. As such, I need everyone's final payment by 6pm UTC (noon MDT), one week from today.

For those that are going to have the chips mounted on boards, I should have an announcement on that either later today or tomorrow.

Thanks

BTW - Sorry for the impersonal form PMs. It's the only way to keep the process down to a reasonable time.

Thanks MrTeal. Payment has been sent.

Payment sent.

Also, what happens if people in the group buy don't want to pay the final payment?

-Brim

Well, the deposit is non-refundable, so I guess I'd contact BFL and have them reduce the order by X units. I don't see that happening, but it might.

For people who are interested in MrTeal's soon to be ready boards and want to get the product soon, I have 96 chips worth of chip credits invested with original group board/chip buy, 1st and 2nd half of the payments paid. I am willing to sell my share for less than the price I paid in BTC. Basically you get the hardware for 1/4the price of what BFL sells so it is a big win.

I paid ~48BTC for 1st and 2nd half for 96 chip. I am willing to transfer my boards for 30BTC if you want all 96 chips... (this is hashing power equal to 7.5x 50gh units that BFL is selling for $2500 each, it is a bargain!)

If you are interested in using escrow (although it is quite trivial for MrTeal to transfer my purchase to you), I have put my slot on sale on Bitmit!
https://www.bitmit.net/en/item/61563-380gh-bitcoin-asic-miner-slot-for-30btc

You can PM me if you are interested (I can go even lower on the price but not much more) or buy from BitMit.

THEY ARE SOLD, THANKS FOR LOOKING

Someone may get a chance to buy half price chips I would guess!

You can already buy it almost half price. I am selling my 96 chip slot in this group buy for 35BTC. MrTeal approved that I can transfer my slot.

I am selling my 96chip slot for 30BTC right now:
https://www.bitmit.net/en/item/61563-380gh-bitcoin-asic-miner-slot-for-30btc

As bonus, I can bundle 256 chip credits (although it is not mentioned on BitMit, after purchase you can send me your address to transfer the credits to).

THEY ARE SOLD, THANKS FOR LOOKING

I am selling my 4chip slot for 1BTC right now, 1st and 2nd half of the payments paid.
This is hashing power equal to 4 x 4 GH/s = 16 GH/s

You can PM me if you are interested.

 

MrTeal, did you get the chips from BFL already?

Nope, not yet. Friday.

did the chips come in friday?

Any one more is shelling its chips?
I am interested buying arround 6 or 8.

I have 48.  BTC5.5 for 16, or BTC15.5 for all 48.

PM if you are interested.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=303224.0

Yep, they did. They are now at the assembly house.