Bitcoin Forum

Hello !

What do you think about this company: VMC http://virtualminingcorp.com/ (http://virtualminingcorp.com/)  ?

What do you know about VMC? Can be trusted  ? Had problems with deliveries ( like BFL Labs, Avalon)?

I found the VMC's ratio performance-price is better than others like KNC, Bitfurry, TerraHash, and they will deliver in December if you buy now.


VMC (aka Virtual Mining Corporation) - Fast-Hash-Base-Units Silver Edition: 384 GH/s expandable To 6.144 TH/s
KNC'top product  - Jupiter: max 400 GH/s
Bitfury (aka Bitfurystrikesback)  - Full Kit: max 400GH/s
TerraHash - BabyJet: max 400GH/s

Terrahash is likely a scam at this point, they owe 100's of thousands to people on this board.

Bitfury is shipping now, KnC expects to ship any moment now. Its only logical that anyone shipping a few months later will have better price/GH.

That said, Im pretty sure VMC/Activeminer is no scam and their published partnership with easic makes their claims pretty credible. If you manage to understand their product line and feel like that kind of hashpower/$ will be profitable in december or january, go for it.
I wouldnt, but hey, I wouldnt order any asic.

The bit I don't understand with VMC is that their press releases suggest that their mining rigs are based on a single mask asic.

As I understand it, a single mask asic uses a standard base cell design and the mask sets up a metal layer which hooks the cells together so that they will perform the required function. The advantages should be much lower mask costs, and faster time to market - but the disadvantages seem to be that if you're competing with a full custom asic, it must feel a bit like the classic "turning up with a knife to a gunfight" situation. 

Does anyone know any more about this? Best case, won't the VMC chips have a much lower density, and so they will require more of them to equal the hashing power of Cointerra/KNC/etc?

maskset doesnt have anything to do with it being structured asic, standard cell, or full custom. You need a mask set for each of them.

AFAIK, VMC are using easic nextreme 3, which is much like a structured asic. Upsides are lower NRE and faster time to market. Downsides are worse performance/power efficiency and higher per unit costs.

In the current market situation that seems like a good tradeoff. NRE for 28nm full custom is astronomical and time to market is everything, just 2 or 3 months could make the difference between earning a small fortune and making a loss.

In the long run, those chips wont be able to compete with cheaper to produce, and more efficient asics, but by that time, when prices have dropped that low, as a potential buyer today, either you will have made your profit or you never will.

Thanks for the reply Puppet

I've kept digging - the penalty for a single mask asic isn't as big as I originally thought; it apparently ends up about 2x the size of a comparable standard cell asic.

So it's an interesting design approach, although I'm not sure that the window is large enough to get a return on investment - as it's still in pre-order, and there are more customised ASICs claimed to be arriving next month (KnC) and December (Cointerra). Plus Bitfury shipping 55nm product that seems to be performing well.

Overall, the whole asic space is crazy right now, but better than a soap opera.... grin

Slides on easic's website claim that the point where custom asic get cheaper than their nextreme structured asic, is volumes above  300K- 900K chips. Thats a large number for one vendor. You do the math, and tell me if you think its bad trade off in todays market. 

As for ROI; if you mean from a miner perspective, I dont think there will be any with any of these products. Maybe early KnC orders if the do deliver this week and if the other vendors all slip a bit, but even then I wouldnt be too sure. So yeah, grab some popcorn and keep the coins cold :)

I agree with this, putting money to preordering miners is very risky bet  :)

If you look at the VMC company products it looks like it use a lot of power consumption. 1400 watt if you get 1.536 TH/s.