Bitcoin Forum

What is your estimate of when they will actually ship? They were always gonna be late, we ALL knew that (apart from maybe some newbies who did literally zero research before they sank a few thousand bucks....)

Question is....how late? A whole year like last time? Or maybe 4-5 months this time? Like if I ordered one now, do you think having one by say....April is out of the question?

Not taped out. 2 to 3 weeks for that.

15 weeks minimum from tape out was based on their website till they removed the information.

Order today best case scenario?

18 to 20 weeks. Up to 5 months.  April? But can you trust them to make that deadline? Really you are much better off avoiding BFL.


Why bother? So many other units available and shipping before that with PROVEN designs.

While they haven't shared details of the foundry process, they apparently get the chips back in 4 weeks.  So the 15 week thing is old news now.

 Last week, we met with the foundry to go over details of the delay and reach a definitive conclusion. According to the foundry, we should have the first chips on January 9th (still determining specific quantity), but we will be taking delivery of more wafers every week after that, so it really shouldn't affect anything as far as wafer availability goes, regardless of how many come on the 9th.

At that point, chips are shipped to slicing, packaging and bumping, which is estimated to take roughly a week. After that, they are sent to our ASIC design team for testing. This may take up to a week, possibly longer but we believe it will be less than a week for chip bring up. Once the chip(s) are verified working and properly binned, they are sent to our facility in Chicago for mounting on boards and send to several places for more testing and final firmware programming. This should take another week or so. Once that is completed, we will begin shipping product - during this entire time, more wafers will be rolling off the line and going through the same process, so we should have plenty of chips available and ready to go by the time the units are actually ready to be shipped. I don't yet know what that count will be specifically, but it should be a fairly significant portion of the pre-orders. At this point, it looks like the only hold would pose a problem is if the chip didn't work properly for some reason, but we have no reason to believe that is going to be a problem, as the chip is based on our proven 65nm desgin.

As usual, all of these times and dates are estimates only. It may take more time, it may take less time for each step, but that is the timeline we are working under right now, but it is subject to change. Right now, the plan is for everyone that has a current pre-order, you will be upgraded to the water cooled version of the Monarch for free to compensate for the slight delay.

Bicknellski, if you wouldn't mind, could you name some alternatives? KNC have stopped making the products I would buy, the Neptune is too expensive for me. Xtrememiners looks to be a scam.

TY for your help.

I'm pretty sure they taped out some time ago.  I think the last I heard was February delivery.  But you know how that goes!  ;)

I'm not sure I trust black arrow. How do you all feel?

While they haven't shared details of the foundry process, they apparently get the chips back in 4 weeks.  So the 15 week minimum thing is old news now.

Even though BFL is known for delays it's quite likely this will also happen to their competitors.  Look at Hashfast for example.

Bullshit.

Post your references that makes you believe it is 4 weeks, otherwise I call Bullshit/False hope.

There isn't a single manufacturer out there who can have their chips pop out of the factory in 4 weeks. Especially at 28nm.

Last week, we met with the foundry to go over details of the delay and reach a definitive conclusion. According to the foundry, we should have the first chips on January 9th (still determining specific quantity), but we will be taking delivery of more wafers every week after that, so it really shouldn't affect anything as far as wafer availability goes, regardless of how many come on the 9th.

I don't think anyone is claiming 4 weeks from tapeout to wafer.  Simply that BFL claim they will have wafers on 9th January (i.e. approximately four weeks from now...)

Clearly they must have already taped out for that claim to be credible.

Right there in the monarch information thread:  https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/4414-monarch-information.html
If they haven't taped out then I would certainly agree with you.  But I'm not sure why you would assume this hasn't happened.

 Not sure if trolling or drank the Kool-Aid...

 *mumbles something about history lessons*

Right there in the monarch information thread:  https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/4414-monarch-information.html

If they haven't taped out then I would certainly agree with you.  But I'm not sure why you would assume this hasn't happened.

Not to mention BFL's seemingly fictitious bullet runs.

They started the bullet runs before October 2012 and didn't get their first -->sample<-- prototype until April 2013.

January 9th is the same as people being told in Early November of 2012 that they would be getting their first batch just a few days away. This isn't incompetence, it's just plain lying.

I always assumed this was because the chips from the first run didn't work, and they had to do a respin but chose not to go public about it.


I see no reason to disbelieve that they expect to receive some chips on 9th January.  Whether those chips will work, or need some modifications and another run is another matter.  But that's just the nature of chip design - these things don't always work first time.  And from what I've read pretty much all the Bitcoin ASIC vendors are producing their chips on compressed timescales which are quite aggressive by industry standards, so I would imagine that  increases the risk of failure.

So yes, it probably is the same as November 2012 in that no one knows yet whether they will be lucky and get it right first time.  But I think that applies to every ASIC vendor who doesn't yet have sample chips in hand.

roy