Bitcoin Forum

From Joshie:


Just to update everyone on where we stand with the Monarch at the moment.

Current chip production has an expected delivery date in early/first half of December. We expect to have chips at that time and hope to have our first units shipped out the door by the end of December. We did not reach our goal of November delivery. Unlike our first generation ASIC devices, we already have the vendors in place and ready to go, along with the substrate design and manufacturing slotted in and geared up. Right now, we are not anticipating any issues but unexpected things do pop up. If they do, I will let people know as soon as I have definitive information regarding that, otherwise we are on target for a December release. If anything changes, I will let everyone know, via this thread, as soon as I have the information.

Let me reiterate that if you are uncomfortable with pre-ordering for cutting edge, custom designed technology and all the risks that it implies, please do not place a pre-order and wait until the products are shipping and available. If you do choose to pre-order, please understand that unforseen problems and delays can and do happen and we will do our best to alert everyone to them when we encounter them and have had time to assess what the impact will be on the timeline.

Our production capacity is geared up and ready to go. With the extreme simplicity of the Monarch compared to our 65nm product line, we do not anticipate any difficulties in getting units built and out the door in a rapid fashion. Compared to our current generation, assuming no parts shortages, we should be able to product more than 1000 Monarchs per day. For reference, the Monarch should use ~12 screws and two discrete parts (board and HSF), compared to even our most simple device, the Jalapeno, which has over 20 discrete parts, assembly is trivial and should pose no issues.

The current expected date for our chips out of the foundry is early December. Obviously nothing will be shipping in November. Projected target is end of December but that is, as usual, subject to change. When I have more info I will share it.

quote BFL forum:
"Hello BFL,

Yes its november. Is prototype working?

People who have invested a lot and investing would be very happy with the current state of monarch.

Thank you.
"

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/monarch-discussion/5441-status-update-please-3.html#post63733 (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/monarch-discussion/5441-status-update-please-3.html#post63733)

http://s18.postimg.org/ey3tfj7i1/monarch2.jpg

 Initially it was infuriating watching the bullshit fly out of his mouth, then it went to just plain pathetic and sad, and now it's just comedy gold watching him pontificate (as the forum poster so accurately noted) while failing yet again.

god damnit BFL ... u want to at least have a chance of getting some of ur customers back.... you need to start adding a few realistic months to ur projected dates.... from the start.... theres an idea!
Instead of "if everything goes perfectly we should get the products shipped by x.y.z, so lets announce we will ship this new asic x.y.z"
try "if everything goes perfectly we should get products shipped by x.y.z, so lets announce we will ship this new asic x+4.y.z"

then everyone will be amazed u actually delivered on time!

Delivery in Latember,  Nevuary and  Nay

Exactly the same BS they said after finally delivering their delayed FPGAs and trying to pitch their new 65nm ASICs. "Yeah, we fucked up with that last one, but THIS time..."

I feel sorry for anyone who falls for it, but I hope they learn something from the experience and become all the wiser for it.

Tapeout?

Did the chips even tapeout?

"unforseen problems and delays can and do happen and we will do our best to alert everyone to them when we encounter them"

So problems WILL happen, but they're unforeseen? That's called retarded planning. Every problem - bar natural or macro disaster - should be planned and accounted for.

Thats ~12PH per month for BFL alone. Damned if they ship, damned if they dont.

I guess they did not. from a previous announcement:

Late August/Early September Tape Out
There are two processes with this step that we are using. The initial process is what is called a bullet run, it will allow us to get a finished set of wafers in approximately 24 days from the date we tape out. This will result in a limited number of chips available.
The second process is the standard run, which takes between 75 and 90 days on average, and this is where the bulk of our chips will come from

If they had taped out, by their own schedule they should be getting their hot lot by the end of November and they would not claim shipping only one month later. Also note that  by their own schedule, the bulk shipment can only start 50-65 days later. End of december +~60 means early March instead of the "January/February" the are advertising. Of course on BFL's calender,  January has 65 days.

From a typical tapeout... how many weeks to chips to a prototype board?

Guessing as you are putting it they are lying already. Here is a good read.

http://www.samharris.org/images/uploads/Lying3.jpg

http://www.samharris.org/lying

 :o

Good, there is no point in preordering then, all preorders should be send the same week I guess

In the bitcoin realm, there is no difference between a working prototype and a shipping product.
BFL claims the hot lot takes 25 days, and that sounds about right for the asics themselves. Packaging, testing, binning, assembly etc if done right with a proper supply chain in place should only add a few days to that. KnC did it in less than a week, so its not impossible, but with BFL who knows.

They are not KnC that is for sure.

Not to throw gas on the fire, but nobody predicted the earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan a few years back.  Major disruption that hurt a lot of manufacturers.

At least they are admitting shit can happen and throw things off.

Thing is, if you know unpredictable things not only can, but will happen (read the quote carefully), then you try to account for them. That still means a schedule can change, but it should be able to change in both direction. For obvious reason, in the bitcoin mining realm the only schedule changes are delays, nothing ever happens ahead of schedule because the schedules they publish are the best case scenario's that could only theoretically pan out if absolutely nothing goes wrong. Whatever date they publish must therefore be interpreted, not as a real estimate but as a "no sooner than" date.

"No sooner than" is a good one for this industry.  But on the flipside, look over at the KNC thread (almost 1000 pages now), how many of the last 100+ pages are people giving one another tech support because KNC rushed things out the door so folks had crappy packaging, firmware hell, etc., etc.?  It's a bad precedent in either case because you either get plagued with delays or start shipping untested/lightly tested hardware and software and hope customers are understanding while you fix your shit while they already are sitting on hardware and cringing at the next diff hitting before their hardware works as advertised.

Very, very tricky business.

 So nothing has changed then over the last two years, is what you saying ?

 ... Waiting for Josh to stop by and pontificate about how Bitcoin works ...

Yeah, but the terms are pretty clear about the risk involved:

"This is a Pre-Order product which is not yet shipping.  If you're uncomfortable waiting until the development is complete and the product is shipped, do NOT pre-order this product. Perhaps undesirable, but this is a pre-order market.  Customers flatly demand to get in line for the new technology before it's finished development.  This has created a lot of drama for the manufacturers but it's something we simply have to deal with.  All manufacturers in this space have experienced some degree of delay with their first generation ASIC.  Every last one of them, so we're reluctant to give a specific delivery date.  However, this is our second generation, so we have much greater clarity on the process and we feel our timeline to begin shipments towards the end of the year is solid."

(Underline added for emphasis, bold is from BFL site)

In other words, do not order if you can't afford the risk of pre-order, experimental hardware being delayed.  Plain and simple.  So for however much people want to bitch and moan, BFL has plainly stated that they have an estimated timeline, they may not meet the timeline, so only order if you are okay with that risk.  Otherwise, BFL's public record is quite public, so if people want to order then let them. Same for Avalon, I still see posts of people asking about hardware and refunds, so it's at your own risk to order from either company as their past is plainly known. 

They never seem to mention the possibility of the silicon failing testing and needing a respin.

Their 65nm chips needed 2 respins before they were able to ship anything.

Logically 28nm is a good bit harder to get right than 65nm.

Thanks for posting - I guess we'll see how it goes!

I agree, first unforseen problem is you guys bought from BFL. .... Haha i Kill myself....

PSA was released to the public:

HashTrade is the company who bought $1 million worth of products from BFL. buy their contracts at your own risk

Do you have a source for that? Not saying its not true, I just never heard it. For the record, a respin means redoing one or more of the masks in the maskset.
what I read was that they had issues mostly with the chip packaging,  but you can change packaging without redoing the mask, you can even do it with wafers that are already produced (but not yet packaged).

http://www.hashtrade.com/
appears to be the site

Their FPGA took about as long, if not longer to materialize. Yet I doubt they "respun" someone else's FPGA :).

BTW, IIRC they received their first silicon (which was wirebonded for testing) in late February or early March. A respin takes 6-8 weeks at least, its basically redoing the tapeout, and waiting for new wafers to be processed, and thats after you diagnosed and fixed the problem. Realistically, more like 10 weeks.  It would have been impossible to do 2 respins in that timeframe. Even one seems impossible.

Bogart speaks the truth.
From Josh words I count 2 respin, but I suspect 3.
Josh like to exaggerate things and spread news all over the place 24/7.
At one point he was quiet.
The engines didn't work as planned.
Long time no news in this period
They hoped the engines will work at 500 mh/s at a certain power envelop.
It turned out that the engines will max at 250 mh/s with a greater power usage than the final product.
So I suspect another respin here.

Originally they hoped to design a chip with 16 engines running at 500 mh/s each. 16*500mh/s=8Gh/s.
8 chips per single 8*8=64 Gh/s. at less than 1 watt per Gh/s was the plan.
We all know now that they need double the ammount of chips at a greater power envelop.

Any updates Josh gives always add 9 months to it and that's much more accurate of a timeline. So he says January, try next september.

You may suspect it, but Ive not seen any evidence (what "Josh words" are you referring to?) and your own logic argues against it, since the chips were delivered at 250Mhz, the same speed they observed in first silicon in late February. More over as I argued above, the timing just doesnt leave room for one, much less 3 respins, unless you want believe they received silicon back in 2012 and didnt talk about it.

Bitfury and Asicminer did it in one time.
Avalon I don't know, but I think also 1 time.
Asicminer and Avalon use older and proven technology.
I have to applaud for Asicminer, they have just slight more than 100k to pull it off.
Bitfury goal is probably 5 Gh/s per chip.
Although they didn't archieve that, the chip works good enough, no need to respin to save time.

 Respectfully, experience and history on these forums will clearly illustrate that the only thing that is solid, is the density of their bullshit.

You can re-read all of Inaba and BFL_Josh posts. I don't have time to search all the messages

You know how the singles originally suppose to look like?

ITs all here:
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-3.html

First hashing around early March as I remembered. No mention of a respin or anything that could be considered a respin. No 8+ week gap either. No time for a respin, let alone 3. Just a long list of fucking up missing design parameters,  packaging, firmware, PCB's, supply chain, software, pretty much everything else you can fuck up. Maybe they did one or several respins for later products, as is often done to improve yields or tweak stuff, but the ones that shipped in April must have been made with the same maskset (ie, no respin) as the one that they published in February/march as their first prototype.  Thus, that is not what caused the delays.

The first respin would be from their "diffraction issue", incorrectly called a "refraction issue" by Josh in some earlier discussion:

It's kinda hard to dig up the quotes now, and it doesn't help that BFL's forums keep giving me the CloudFlare 504 error.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/690-13-jan-2013-asic-update-discussion-thread-9.html#post10463

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/251-more-jalapeno-pictures-shipping-update-17-print.html (second post quotes Josh's statement.)

The second being where they claimed to be "adding clock buffers", and at the same time they changed package types:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128019.msg1363605#msg1363605

Thank you Bogart for digging it up.

They also did another respin once they had working chips, I'm not sure where they switched but revision A chips couldn't use engine 0 and revision B can. Their stock firmware would actually underclock some of the revB units because they would run at >70GH/s but would overheat badly.

Ok, the first link to BFL-engineer's post is clearly pre tape out. The same with the refraction issue, thats something that would have shown up during the tapeout process. The last link doesnt contain any relevant info from BFL, just someone inferring a respin and BFL not responding to that, just to the "who pays for this" non issue. Josh just didnt want to go on record saying they hadnt succesfully taped out yet.

Its clear to me that BFL's full custom design didnt pass validations tests by the fab, and they were sent back to redo their homework. Thats a fuckup allright, and could be a big part of the delay in 2012, but its not a respin and couldnt have taken place after they (allegedly?) received first silicon.

To be clear, respin is a fairly specific term. It means you produced masks and wafers, and then have to change the mask (probably throw away the wafers). Failing a tape out process is not a respin.

That sounds entirely plausible to me, and frankly, not unexpected. That would have been a respin, but it would have happened after they started shipping and wouldnt have affected their schedule. You can still produce, dice and slice the rev A chips and mount and ship them while the revised mask for rev B is taping out.

Anyone planning to preorder a Monarch?

Yeah, about the time hell freezes over, or Obama gets a 3rd term.

Don't hold your breath on either one of those.

... and volume.


http://www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/compost_pile_tractor

And all the above was predicated on the initial and subsequent Monarch orders prior to HashTrade placing their multi-million dollar order (the $1M mentioned in the press was only for a down payment, so I'm assuming at least half down which would equate to the multi-million dollar figured I sued).


Thus, according to Josh's own figures as elaborated on, HashTrade shouldn't expect delivery no earlier than late March, with all subsequent pre-orders placed after that wall purchase not being shipped till mid April, at the extreme earliest.

There is no way that BFL can sugarcoat an earlier shipping date, for it would 100% negate the already timeline stated by Josh, now push backed proportionally.

~TMIBITW

You know BFL will just gut a ton of early Monarch orders and ship them out to the guy with 1 million dollars.

Besides....they never told anyone what their initial lot size was to begin with. We will call it...shrinking the Lots expectations to cover the first Monarch customers.

Ol' Josh is already saying December/January when before he was saying November/December.

November seems to have gone poof and no one can get him to remember...apparently.

Ok, so we are helping Josh with a realistic March 2014 shipping.

What will be the projected network hash rate?
What would will an under performing Monarch make in March 2014?
What are these Monarch's going to need PSU / PDU and control or back plane wise?

Given what we have seen in the past from BFL there is a lot of unanswered design questions here and with little or no guidance on what the finished product will be able to do, what it will cost in terms of 'accessories' to get this Monarch hashing for the user seems to me to be a good place to question this design.

Failure to plan.

LOL  :D

Plus,you know BFL will miss thier power targets by at least 3 fold,a leopard can't change his spots  :D

In this case the leopard had his spots burned into it's body.

Time to get a new pelt. (or a peltier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect))

http://s24.postimg.org/hw63s132d/Bamboozled_Monarchs_Reign.png
Thanks Josh! You keep the competition STRONG~!
(...and customers [money] tied up...and very weak.)


Link: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/4414-monarch-information.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/03/us-technology-bitcoins-idUSBRE9A209P20131103


And there's still tons (literally) of gear ready (or about) to be added to that processing power before the Monarch makes its debut.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=235422.msg2488483#msg2488483


So, a multi-million dollar Monarch order was placed.

Gotta love the front of the building.

https://i.imgur.com/BjvTK9xl.jpg
Honey, how much hash did you want me to buy? I'm there now.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyhdxjqQhb1qcvteuo1_500.gif
Not hash! Hashing power! Hashing power! And you call yourself a nuclear psychic.

Meet the Jacobson Brothers: http://www.hashtrade.com/about.html


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15672.msg470429#msg470429




Funny how nobody has yet to produce the tx showing the $1M transaction.

Speaking from experience, I really can't say anything nice about the Québécois.

Honestly, these guys and Butterfly Labs are meant for each other.

Birds of a feather, and so on and so forth...

Poor Joshie, never remembers to include the year in his statements. Month of a unknown year only goes so far.

Jake.Hobson reads similarly to Jacobson, of which he is since he state in a post that he does own the building.

Jean-Marc and Remy, of http://www.bizapedia.com/fl/BIDS-ON-GOLD-LLC.html.

http://www.secinfo.com/dr4ur.639m.htm

http://biz.yahoo.com/e/040518/osgl.ob10qsb.html

Fool me once
SHAME ON YOU
Fool me twice
SHAME ON ME

I will NEVER buy from BFL
I will NEVER buy a BFL UNIT. USED or NEW
I will NEVER buy a product with a BFL CHIP in it.

Josh needs a big black dick constantly up his ass to be able to empathize what his customers have felt over the past year.

The GUY is a CON man's CON man.

I am a Quebecois... nothing nice to say about me?

 :'(

 If you are one of those fruits that turns their noses up to people who speak English, or if you are one of those people that wants to separate from the rest of Canada (even though Canada wants nothing to do with you, and would gladly show you the door) ... well, then I guess you're the first nice one I've met TBH.

 I don't genuinely hate many things in this world. In no particular order; Scientology, Smug Atheists, Quebecois, Butterfly Labs / Josh Zerlan, Woman Beaters, Pedophiles, Rapists as examples, but yeah, don't like the Quebecois very much :(

EDIT: WRT to dislike of Quebecois, I should qualify that as separatists, or other radicals who don't wish to interact-with or integrate with the English speaking populace. I recognize in retrospect, my usage of "Quebecois" was applied too broad and inaccurately. FWIW...

Anglophone... Quebecois. ;D

My Canada includes Quebec.

Never met a separatists or French Canadian I didn't like strange world.

Its not About hating people or races. ITS About hating stealing BFL and asshole josh !!
Lets hate and kill BFL and not make war...

You have a right to your opinions but stereotyping and generalizations of people does not reflect kindly on yourself. There are bad apples in every crowd. Just because BFL are a terrible asic company to do business with doesn't mean we should pigeon hole every other BTC Asic company as the same.

 I don't think anyone would disagree with this ASIC company comparison at all.

 With regard to stereotyping in general, what can I say. Nobody is perfect. Our life experiences shape who we are. But yeah, a little bit of "foot-in-mouth" due to having a degree of respect for Bick. If you've never been rudely shrugged off by a Quebecois IN MONTREAL because you lack the ability to speak French, and they refuse to speak English, then, well, I guess I'm the asshole...

 Sorry for derailing this thread.

I hate people who apologize for derailing threads. http://www.turkeycentral.com/public/style_emoticons/default/harhar1[1].gif

~TMIBITW

 I hate people who... ahh... fuck it... ;)

I hate people who hate people ergo I hate that I hate myself.

ROFL

KNC NEWS :::: https://www.kncminer.com/news/news-63


So BFL ... you get an Update ?
KNC too but knc think about an 16 / 20 nm Structur

"Currently almost 70% of all Bitcoins mined today are being created upon KnCMiner hardware, distributed to customers in over 120 countries globally." - KNC


Hmmm.... wonder what Josh would have to say about that?

With that time, i will never hit my ROI

"Butterfly Labs has shipped more units than all other ASIC manufacturers combined.  Twice over."

Here is Prototype #2

Seems like lots of little chips

https://i.imgur.com/BBzEOv8.jpg

They are "far from home" ...

http://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/u/jon-snow.gif

Since this is a Monarch update thread, who here wants to hear a little story about HashTrade? You know, HashTrade, that new company that just placed a $1M USD down payment of a multi-million dollar Monarch order so that the little guys could mine without owning any Bitcoin mining equipment, for they'll be hosted elsewhere like, I don't know, maybe Missouri?

It's been all over the internet, and guess what? There's millions of smart people worldwide ready to get in on the action. Smart people like, I don't know, maybe like...

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/observations/samaritansnare/46-samaritansnare.jpg
Geordie, me going give you Special Olympics hug!

Is that Josh in the "snow" having his winter of discontent?


"Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of Sweden." - Josh

You know what, seems like it will be their bitforce ASIC die shrunk, tweaked and tuned up running at probably closer to 1Ghz.... Which implies to me that they will have very few teething troubles with it, compared to a completely fresh design.

More junk... nice. Evidence to support that?

Use your eyes and your math skills.

I'll just leave this here.....

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/5412/dtbu.png

LOL!

Has it hashed?

Evidence... is not picture... we've been down that road with BFL remember?

Be they ASICs or nay on that test board, the number and size will be the same, therefore same inferences may be drawn... i.e about half the size of 65nm chip, implying same number of logic elements at smaller node size, divide 600 Ghash by 48 chips, you get 12.5 Ghash/chip, which when 65nm is nominal 4-4.5Ghash at 270-300Mhz-ish implies same number of engines running at 3x the speed.

LOL what?

Did you not see what KnC did to test their modules?

I don't even like arguing about Butterfly Labs "Chips" based on their past records

https://i.imgur.com/4pQeikh.png

Keep drawing your own conclusions though...

LOL Inferences...

I am talking reality. Real proof. Not a 2 week promise to deliver that turns into 12 months. Nor some sketchy vaporware pics.

KnC showed people the prototype right?

They opened up the lab if I remember correctly?

The amount of misinformation on this board is astounding.

The KnC "Prototype" was an FPGA so no there wasn't an "actual" prototype of the ASICs.

They did have an "Open Day" to show off this FPGA Prototype. Correct.

Just stating the facts in this thread, not speculation based on emotions.

Ya well a lot more than just a fucking pic and what Josh says. Monarch is vapourware until they have something other than a picture given their history.

Personally, I call shenanigans.  5PH currently on the network, 70% = 3.5PH.  ~23% or 1.15PH is on the Ghash.io site, leaving .35PH for everyone else.  BFL has shipped more than Ghash.io at this point, meaning KnC couldn't have more than 54%.  So sad even the haters can't do proper math.

LOL! Amazing you have a one way shenanigans detector right? Where is your evidence to SUPPORT your claims they shipped more?


Let us focus on do they have the Monarch chip taped out... right?

Have they now in November taped out the chip they promised tape out in August?

That would be much more relevant a discussion. Have you called shenanigans on the Tape Out for the Monarch chip yet? Didn't we see something similar with the other ASICs?

Since I can neither prove nor disprove tape out, I cannot make a call on it.  I laugh at you and your broken record bleating daily.  Personally, if I were Josh, I woukd never release the information if I had Tape Out 2 months ago just because people like you will keep the company name page one on here bleating about it.  You provide far more advertising due to lack of information than the ads you and others whine so much about being on the forums here.

As to evidence, use your common sense dude.  From the website where people had input their orders, it's clear that March/April were ~50% of BFL's total order book.  Since they are 1/2 way through April on the largest order items and many have already agreed that BFL's total orderbook was in the neighborhood of 3PH, simple logic shows that KnC's claims are complete and utter BS.  Several months ago people kept ascribing the hash provided by BFL to Avalon until they learned that Avalon failed to deliver.  Now KnC is making claims that are so patently false that people like you should be raving like the mad dogs you are over their lying, yet you take it in stride because your stuck on your favorite hate target.  Face it, you have a closed mind and can only hate on one target, so continue your free advertising and I'll continue laughing in the background.

Common sense?

Ya that is proof.

Pfft.

Yeah I'm sure pure irrational hate gets you by a lot better on a daily basis.

Anyway...

KNCs math is bad, but not sure about BFL shipping 3PH, the orignal lot of wafers were good for about .8 originally, then they had to double up the chips, and those ran out on about January orders, which was probably about a third of the way through. They re-ordered a LOT more, to cover the rest and the chip sales, but I'm thinking maybe only double the previous batch, which I'm thinking is gonna be in the region of 1.5PH altogether.

It's entirely possible BFL has shipped less then 350Th/s.  That's about 6k 60Gh/s singles 70k Jalapenos.

Also, pretty much every claim BFL has made about shipping dates has been a lie, why would you belive their statements about shipping quantities?

BFL is still over a year late on huge number of orders, and most of their customers will never ROI.  KnC shipped me my Saturn 15 days earlier then promised, and I'm pretty sure it's already paid for itself in USD (which is what I used to buy it).  I know which company I have more confidence in.


[citation required]

KnC bad math? I'd like them to justify their claim of 70% of the bitcoin being mined but the real issue here is that BFL has no CHIP for the Monarch. Given the limited specs they claim that this new offering will have, significant problems are already inherent in the design they propose specifically with the board and power and given what they faced already with the first ASICs they have made... well let us say BFL do not have the brainpower to avoid the obvious let alone the hidden problems at 28nm. The fact BFL has not taped out yet... oh boy this unit is a dog before it even gets to prototype testing sometime in what... February or March? Pissing away $4.6K USD on this unit is foolish and people need to be warned off it. Let us not worry so much about about bragging rights for the network let us just poke the Monarch with a stick and call it DOA already.

Then don't pre-order.  Anyone getting into Bitcoin can see that mining is a toxic industry and you would do much better for your money 90% of the time just purchasing BTC direct.  As-is, our mini-single is on track to ROI even with delays, so a big thanks to BFL for delivering. 

The sad fact is that everyone wants to bitch and moan about people lacking information - well shit, last I checked this is a competitive market, so generally speaking you never want to tip your hand to let others know where you are at (like AM, who seems to like to provide next to zero information before they drop overpriced hardware on the market).  As is, haterboi logic aside, BFL has delivered on every generation of hardware they have sold.  So the bullshit claims that you need to keep posting and starting new threads is absurd, if that were the logic we'd get a new Avalon thread every day or a new "My KNC doesn't work as promised" thread.

Some people have nothing better to do with their time than beat a dead horse.  If nothing else bitcointalk is evidence of that while the rest of the Bitcoin world evolves and grows up.

Josh has claimed to ship 40k units, so I'd take that to be an upper-bound on what they've actually shipped.

"unit" could have a lot of meanings.  It could mean a finished miner, or it could mean one 65nm chip.

Looks great. But the main advantage of Monarch had to be small number of of assembling steps. But with such amount of little chips it might be problem?

50% of ghash.io is knc, i'm mining there too...

Let's look at what they have said.



24 days + a few days for packaging, resulting in early December delivery. Sounds like they might have actually taped-out. In November. 3 months late!

The writers of south park must have pre ordered....(from last nights episode)

Eric Cartman: Pre order doesn’t mean shit.  Ok.  When you pre order X your just committing to paying for something that some assholes in California haven’t even finished working on yet.  You know what you get for pre ordering ?... A big dick in your mouth.

If it were only that bad...

No its worse...

BFL current prices for Monarch reflect the long held average of BTC at approx $100-150

You can bet your bottom dollar that they will delay and mine all they can with your monarchs @ BTC > $300.

If and when BTC crashes back down shipping will magically start! 

Knowing BFL I doubt most orders will be delivered even by February lol.  They're still trying to ship mini rigs from August 2013 now so anybody who thought they would be shipping Monarchs in November is a nutcase. 

We'll worry about bfl hash rate in 2015 lol

troll trolllolo ltrolooltlr ool tlrololollol lol lol

http://gifs.gifbin.com/042010/1270751973_trololo-guy.gif

BFL wont survive 2014, their customer retention rate is probably now below 5% and they are a running joke in the Bitcoin community

Hence why they always bid on forum advertising, even though josh says this forum is a waste of time and full of assholes, they have to lure newbies before they know better.

+1

+2

I just noticed they're now offering a "little" version of the Monarch:

https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage-new-products/300-gh-bitcoin-mining-card.html

Did anyone add up the weeks?




+ No tapeout yet... so they have not started the clock yet so give them a few weeks = about 3 to 4 not 2 as we know BFL few weeks means.
+ 10 weeks foundry
+ 2 weeks to bump
+ 3 weeks to to get any out the door in reasonable numbers.

So let us add that up:

4 weeks + 10 weeks + 2 weeks + 3 weeks = 19 weeks

Nearly 5 months.


December, January, February, March and April.

So... 300 GH/s at $2800 delivered in April or most likely a lot later for anyone ordering today?

That is over $9 gh/s for delivery in April....

Magic Eightball at the Genesisblock says http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/a/84e78b04e0

LOSSES.



Ooops forgot all the extras... More losses.

Can't wait to release our Wasps... and go head to head with this in December, January and February with 4 different chips.
We might even be able to put out a 290 Gh/s BitFury Wasp and Hive modular miner in December that could match that price and that is 4 months earlier than BFL projects.

Again,don't forget,power consumption will be 3 times what BFL states  :D

Anyone who still gives money to these scammers deserves everything they get, you have been warned! ::)

What's sad is how a lot of noobs who wanna get into mining aren't going to see these warnings.

All they see are BFLs ads and promises.

If anything, BFL's marketing is good for the rest of us who know better.  BFL keeps new people from mining by holding funds hostage and constantly fucking up their designs.

The new BitLicenses that ASIC developers in the US will have to abide by will surely jack up hardware costs as well.

America does not want you to buy American.

That's a pretty selfish way to look at it.

Welcome to the bitcointalk custom hardware subforum.

Can you provide more info on BitLicenses?  I've yet to hear about it.  Link to the info would be grand.  I am having trouble seeing why someone couldn't just design and sell a chip or miner outside of any "agency".  What bite would they have if a manufacture told them to pound salt?

Latest Monarch update (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/4414-monarch-information-2.html#post77863) from Josh:

04 March 2014 - Monarch Update

Power & Performance better than expected
The initial power consumption numbers for Monarch are in and they're about 20% better than anticipated, meaning we expect the Monarch to consume 0.45W/GH at the chip level. This translates to about 300W per 600GH at the wall.  Chip performance of all systems is as good as or better than predicted. To put this in perspective, this makes the Monarch chip nearly twice as power efficient as compared to our 28nm competition whose products operate between 0.9 and 1.0w per GH at the wall. 

Chip Delay
The initial batch that we currently have in hand is not suitable to ship to customers. This is due to a problem in a top metal layer of the chip that prevents some engines from initializing when the chip is first powered on. (With ASIC design, there are a number of layers to a chip; most of those layers are in silicon, but the last few layers are in a special type of metal. Subsequent batches were held in wait just prior to the metal layers so that we could affect any necessary changes and proceed with chip production from that point, drastically reducing the time it takes to bring a new batch of chips to life.) The problem was positively identified and the fix is already in progress; however it will take approximately 5 weeks before we get packaged chips in hand, meaning the deployment of the Monarch will be delayed about 5 weeks from now. The specific date is still being determined, but I wanted to get an update out as soon as possible.

Refunds & Delay Compensation

Because of the delay, we're offering several different forms of compensation that vary based on order pricing and order date:

$4680 600GH Monarchs

Free performance upgrades
All customers who ordered 600GH Monarchs prior to the price decrease on November 28, 2013 will be upgraded to the Imperial Monarch product, which is a new, high performance version of the card.  The Imperial Monarch will operate at 1 TH/s (+ / - 20%).

Six Month Refund or Double Shipment Guarantee
If you’ve been waiting in queue for six months or more, you qualify for either a full refund in USD, OR double the hardware you ordered. This latter option will come in the form of (a) first shipping you the new Imperial Monarch, giving you an expected 160-175% of your ordered hashrate, and then (b) an additional Standard 600 GH Monarch at the end of the queue, giving you another 100% hashrate boost, totaling an expected 250+% of your ordered hashrate once all products have shipped. (Note: Electing the refund cancels the Imperial Monarch upgrade offer in the first section above.)

50% off Voucher
If your paid order is less than 6 months old but you paid $4680 for your Monarch, you will instead receive an Imperial Monarch as described above, as well as a 50% off discount on an additional Standard Monarch at the end of the queue.

Full Price 300GH Monarchs
For 300GH Monarch orders, similar but slightly different offers will be extended. Customers will be contacted with specifics via email soon.

Mining By the GigaHash
If your Mining By the GH paid order is more than 6 months old, you will receive 2x the hashrate purchased.

Reduced Price Orders
Individual orders that are less than 6 months old and that paid for the reduced price 600GH or 300GH Monarch will likely not be delayed past the expected delivery date.

.  Details specific to each of the above order categories will be communicated to eligible customers via email in the next few days.  We hope everyone will remain in the order queue and take delivery of these extremely power-efficient, super-fast miners.  But, cognizant of the feedback of our earlier 65nm customers, for those qualified buyers who desire a refund we will gladly issue you one.

Ahahaha, the IMPERIAL monarch... joshie...

Ahahaha, April due date... BFL...  ;D

In lieu of the Imperial, I would hold out for the Nymphalidae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphalidae).

5 more weeks just for the chips... woohoo.

Wasp Eating Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNPiJbHJ5_E


http://www.butterflyfunfacts.com/images/wasppupawing6.jpg


The chips don't work.


Take your MONEY AND RUN or maybe even build some Wasps.

Two words.

Déjà vu

Hey Bickfailski, how your PCB design business is ?
Man...you must speed up...

Already near 6 month you started this and we barely see a PCB ?
Hopefully you don't design the chip...

Can i remind you, Marto74 have already designed Bitfury board and Coincraft A1 ages befores you and "your experts" ?  ;D

From the original post in the topic quoting Josh:

Current chip production has an expected delivery date in early/first half of December. We expect to have chips at that time and hope to have our first units shipped out the door by the end of December. We did not reach our goal of November delivery.

Today we find out the chips won't be ready for another 5 weeks.
BFL ran the exact same scam as last year, and may have made even more off it this time around.
Meanwhile difficulty is at 3,815,723,799 and growing.

BFL ran the exact same scam in 2011, 2012, and 2013.

How long does it take for some people to catch on?

At least the power consumption looks ok............for now  :D

well unacceptable i may have to come to the conclusion via 'logic' that 'pigs are indeed flying" according to this

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/4414-monarch-information-2.html#post77863

march 4th announcement....you can according to the below quote from the above link

quote:

Six Month Refund or Double Shipment Guarantee
If you’ve been waiting in queue for six months or more, you qualify for either a full refund in USD, OR double the hardware you ordered. This latter option will come in the form of (a) first shipping you the new Imperial Monarch, giving you an expected 160-175% of your ordered hashrate, and then (b) an additional Standard 600 GH Monarch at the end of the queue, giving you another 100% hashrate boost, totaling an expected 250+% of your ordered hashrate once all products have shipped. (Note: Electing the refund cancels the Imperial Monarch upgrade offer in the first section above.)

unquote:

well anyway according to the above (when they get around to showing us how) I 'supposedly" can get a FULL REFUND for my August 22nd 2013 monarch upgrade of my 65mm brick equipment to the last gasp monarch (which up till like 3hrs ago seemed very very stupid)

so if the above is true (hmmmmm....).....as being that early an order ...full price....and it has been a bit more then 6 months when I count on my toes....

I 'supposedly' should get a full refund on my 600gh monrach of 4900 bucks or whatever it was

(still looking out window for one or more of the following ...'pigs flying" ....jennifer love hewitt flashing me from the sidewalk...alien saucer....bill gates with BBQ delivery and out for drinks.....any of which is more likely to be true then me getting a frigging refund finally from stuff from last april 12th with all the 'adjustments' to my order since then...

a  very confused

Searing

I'll let you know what other lame excuse may or may not come up so that above does not come to pass

( i mean really there should be some pigs flying around here soon...i mean i did feel the 'universe' lurch to the left on this annoucement!

er then again I still am in their (bfl's) clutches have the last of my non-refundable 65mm asic stuff upgraded to a 10/19/13 300gh monarch....if i can just wiggle free
from that I will be free I tell you free...(runs down street looking for flying pigs peeling clothes off making choo choo sound and yelling "choo choo bitcoin" .....

Six Month Refund or Double Shipment Guarantee
If you’ve been waiting in queue for six months or more, you qualify for either a full refund in USD, OR double the hardware you ordered. This latter option will come in the form of (a) first shipping you the new Imperial Monarch, giving you an expected 160-175% of your ordered hashrate, and then (b) an additional Standard 600 GH Monarch at the end of the queue, giving you another 100% hashrate boost, totaling an expected 250+% of your ordered hashrate once all products have shipped. (Note: Electing the refund cancels the Imperial Monarch upgrade offer in the first section above.)

Hey psychologists if you want to see the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment run against Bitcoin miners now is your chance!

bfl'd again. monarchs out by end of summer and worth nothing close to cost

its the noobs...this is a scam for noobs by bfl ......the constant ad's you do a google search for bitcoin and bfl ad comes up

alas bfl noob trap

Searing

It's not going to be 5 weeks. Every single time something gets pushed back they take the most optimistic, unrealistic, out-of-their-ass date they can come up with. If they say 5 weeks, it's safe to at least double that number.

I'm going to go ahead and speculate that the chips they received are a disaster. The "power consumption better than expected!" and "we'll compensate you guys for waiting" parts are just to sugar coat the news that, in fact, they can't use the chips and will not have chips any time soon while diff is at a point where everybody who bought a Monarch fucked themselves just like we predicted all those months ago. Minimalizing issues is a tactic we've seen before from Fail Labs.

If it wasn't so predictable it'd be funny.

FYI, everyone who ordered from BFL and has not yet received their equipment is eligible for a full refund. If they don't give it to you, take them to small claims court and get a judgement against them. Then get that judgment enforced in Kansas. You don't need a lawyer, shouldn't cost more than $50.

I will say at least they gave the customers a bunch of options for compensation.   I have a hosting client that has a large order of these and he wasn't happy but was happy they gave him options.   5 week delay is major in ASIC-land.

masochists.

How are you going to handle putting more than one card in a case if they require water cooling?

Curious, not trying to troll.

They are controlled by USB and don't need to be installed in a computer case.  Apparently BFL are designing a stand that they can be mounted upon.

How can you put enough of these units in stands or cases or racks to make it worth your while to mine and cool them. If you are not building something like the allied controlled / asicminer solution you are simply not playing to win. Crappy and seriously inefficient after market cooling water blocks are not going to keep pace with the density of the system in the videos. Mining at home is pretty much dead and the idea that the Monarch is a design innovation is ludicrous.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=346134.0

http://www.allied-control.com/immersion-2/video

I agree completely... at-home bitcoin mining is dead.  But I didn't foresee density and cooling becoming such a hindrance so soon.

I have 3THs at home (here in the US southwest) and it's already much to hot during the day.  I don't know what I'm going to when the last of my preorders are finally delivered.  Depressing.

you know anyone that has won this in the way of an actual check from BFL?...I know a bunch of guys won in small claims court but BFL I heard has appealed them all and it is still tied up in court (this was a couple months ago so maybe this log jam has been fixed?)

only place I heard that BFL has  paid was some guys in Europe because of tougher 'enforcement' of their consumer laws (we have such laws but no enforcement..if you get a
product here in usa even if it is 9 months late enforcement wanes...and lawyer's have passed on class actions because in that you did get a 'product' even though it was very late....told not worth their time unless you want to pay up front

anyway would be nice to hear that BFL has actually paid some folks in the states



As to the MONARCH REFUND ANNOUCEMENT of a couple days ago:



as a side note I have an email from BFL saying they will give a refund on monarch full on the early monarch orders (mine is Aug 22nd... a force upgraded of all my 65mm stuff)...they say it will take 30-45 days to get it and they will contact us about details with what we get per customer situation...er me thinks that email will likely be another 30 days coming.....

ie.....if it is 45 days and everyone refunds (which is what I'd expect ...most of us) then likely that will be the day bfl declares bankruptcy and pulls a GOX on us!

I mean if it is a bet between getting a date with Kate Upton or BFL gives me a refund I'd have to go with the date (I mean the odds are better I'd win a contest for a blind date with Kate Upton before BFL gives us any money back right?)

so I am going to do this

(ie get used to disappointment.....) to save my sanity..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZIlAExvneo

I am NOT counting on BFL's good graces to follow thru on this for a full refund (ie I JUST missed the bullet run by 1 day or so...if I don't get a full refund in my position Aug 22nd 2013 order..(more then 6 months already according to what they said is eligible ie more the 6 months full refund) then that would mean it was another scam and or email of stall by Josh.

anyway keeping expectations in check (hope I'm wrong) still have another forced update of 300gh monarch oct 19th 2013 so I will still be in their clutches even if above 600gh is refunded...I just can't wiggle away fast enough.

(need to escape I tell you ...frigging BFL ASIC Death Star for crying out loud...)

Searing
  

Criminal intent to defraud maybe present based on prior repeated actions/behavior. Good prosecutor can build this case easily in my opinion. Yet it is also up to consumer to exercise some due diligence when doing biz with such vendors. 

If this was the Stanford Marshmallow test I'd have 1 miner now.

Clearly not the case :)

Come to think of it, the whole of bitcoin is a Stanford marshmallow test.... $100 now, $200 later.... $500 now, $1000 later.... $600 now $1200 later...

Best get your head examined, CBH!  ;)

I haven't seen any wattage draw yet,show me & I'll be VERY surprised if they came anywhere near their projected draw  ::)

<was just agreeing with you in my own special Drama Queen (donning a pink tutu) way>