Bitcoin Forum

A lot of people are questioning Butterfly Labs' commitment to the Bitcoin community, and a lot of people are even coming right out and calling it a scam or a long con or the end of Bitcoin.

I cannot help but agree with these people.

Without a second vendor producing hardware just as efficient and cheap as Butterfly Labs claims their new Bitforce SC hardware is, I do not believe Butterfly Labs is being completely honest with potential customers.

Because of how Butterfly Labs has handled customer relations, Diablo Mining Company will never purchase Butterfly Labs hardware. We will pursue high-efficiency FPGA and ASIC hardware from alternate vendors only.

Diablo Mining Company will be the largest Bitcoin startup in the world, and we will do it without the help of Butterfly Labs.

Diablo Mining Company main thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77469.0
Diablo Mining Company on the Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange (GLBSE): https://glbse.com/asset/view/DMC

So if butterfly labs does come with an asic and the difficulty gets 100x as high, diablo mining is out of the market until another company comes with an asic?

Your shareholders will be thrilled once again.

BTW, abusing your moderator status to sticky posts like these and other anti BFL trolling is just shameful.

SPOT ON! either you fall in love with BFL or you're out of Business.

I agree, this is an abuse of mod privileges.

Im not saying that Im a fan of the way *** does business, but there is a more diplomatic way to start a discussion.

This is definitely trolling.

what are the procedures for other ventures to sticky their posts on top?

talk about shooting yourself in the foot.   fail in the making.




+10   this is total BS using mod privileges for own personal agenda and vendetta. 0 respect

Not at all. Butterfly Labs has yet to prove their BitForce SC products exist and are what they claim they are. Also, using Virtex 7 XC7V2000Ts over Spartan 6s could lead to a 23x increase of performance per chip, which really takes the wind out of BFL's ASICs.

28nm FPGAs may make it to the Bitcoin market before SCs ship in October 2013.

This plan was discussed with some of my largest shareholders. They agree.

Also, this post is not stickied.

See my previous response, 28nm FPGAs will take the wind out of BFL if they aren't careful.

I have not stickied this thread.

BFL has ultimately refused to speak with their investors (ie, everyone who preordered a BFL SC rig), so it is BFL that has refused to be diplomatic about this.

This thread is not stickied, although I'd like to see GLBSE companies stickied in the securities sub-forum.

I do not have a personal agenda or vendetta. The original Diablo Mining Company plan was to buy BFL hardware. It is BFL that talked themselves out of a sale with their unprofessional behavior, I have no control over what they do or do not do.

This thread is not stickied.

I am not posting this with my mod hat on, I'm posting it with my DMC hat on. Unlike some people, I can keep my duties in the Bitcoin community separate without conflict of interest.

LOL so why did you sticky it in the first place then? 

I didn't, and I don't see it stickied right now.

Now your lying about it being stickied in the first place?  Sheesh dude.

Now your justifying your position with more speculation about the state of the industry to justify your stance against ***'s speculation?

Lastly, you have accused others of trolling threads when it was mere discussion, now your clearly abusing your mod status and actually trolling.

Bad form.

Have a screenshot? Because I haven't seen it stickied, and it is currently not sticky.

i can vouch that this thread was indeed stickied

DMC refusing to do business with BFL over poor customer service concerns is trolling? Back in my day we called that good business sense.

I can confirm this thread was stickied at the start.

While performance could come close, Virtex 7 2000 can never compete with the price of BFL's ASIC, and at the end of the day, the main concern is how quickly can you pay off for the hardware.
-----
Also I don't know what they did to upset you, but if you thought you are entitled to some special treatment because you are a mining company, than that's your problem, BFL treats every customer the same regardless of their order size, and we all have to spend time waiting for responses etc..

And lets not mention power consumption. 'per chip' is an utterly meaningless metric, particularly when per GH costs and power efficiency of asics can be two orders of magnitude higher for any given process.

Anyway, there is no point trying to talk sense in to D3D.

good thing i didn't invest in your "mining" company

solely based on this thread and your damage control with making it seem that it was never stickied, you can't be even trusted with mod privileges much less with other's money.

PS btw reason i didn't invest in the first place is you set unreasonably, overoptimistic high goals and then when i sow you started trading your shares for other mining bonds figured you wouldn't be able to get for them same value you traded them for initially.

and with statements in OP you are even further devaluing your stock. good luck.

I would not go as far as saying D3 is pure trolling.  

I do think that while D3 has a right to represent his mining operation and express his opinion publicly, using his Mod account to do so can be seen as a biased move where you'd hope to have impartial mods.

So, it's a conflict of interest and should have been posted under a mining company account.

There has been growing discontent due to BFL's lack of transparency and CS fumbles while customers wait quite a long time for BFL to produce.  It's no surprise people are worried and speculate about BFL's intentions.
Miners are currently BFL's only market.  Due to continued slow performance with a customer base of only a few thousand scrutiny placed on BFL is intensifying.  Since BFL is, by far, the market leader in custom bitcoin hashing gear and already positioning itself as a mining monopoly, if even indirectly, a symbiotic relationship between BFL and the mining community is developing.  With such a potentially close relationship - and the technicals of mining profitability - a nearly sole vendor-market business with pure business interest could result in a parasitic effect on the mining community.  With mining financials indexed to the same revenue source the mining community is at the same time BFL's investor and a form of lame-duck competition.  Once BFL represents 80%+ of mining gear capacity it would be difficult for any vendor-side free market competition to arise to help establish a climate of self regulation and less risk.  In a monopoly environment a lack of a mining community association, one that would represent interests and with negotiating power, shows we have no desire for power and we are willing to have terms dictated with no real recourse for poor performance or adverse action.


I don't think D3 deserves your hate as some have expressed, but I agree D3 delivering company announcements under forum mod is wrong.

Edit:
You can look at what D3 did and not be impressed, sure.  Even take it up with Theymos or whomever.  But I look at a lot of the responses here and across the forum and I just see a lot of flaming.
I've done some flaming myself and I'm trying not to engage in doing this anymore.  It's just so unproductive.

ZZZZZZLOOOOLLL

Its not what they did to me, its what they did to everyone else. They expect us to act like normal consumers, yet they ask for 100% of the money up front. Either treat people like the investors they are, or learn how to run a business.

Was the public announcement necessary?

Fake Edit: more cheap shares for me!

As numerous people have confirmed, I can also confirm this thread was stickied. I really don't know why there is a reason to lie about that. But it doesn't make D3D more trustworthy, that's for sure...

BFL has not stated the power consumption of their SC minirigs, and their chips might be 130 or 90mm fab, while Virtex 7 is 28nm.

Even if Virtex 7s or Kintex 7s cost 3x more per mhash to what BFL claims theirs do, so what? At least the vendors of existing Spartan 6 products actually have shown to be committed to their relationship with the Bitcoin community, and these will be most likely the ones that are making Kintex/Virtex 7 products.

I haven't seen it stickied, so I'm not lying about anything.

I have no idea how much they cost, but judging by the real cost of BFL's FPGAs in the MiniRig, and the fact that 28nm is very new so will be very expensive with no 2nd hand market, I would estimate at best you are looking at $1500 for 5GH Virtex7 vs $300 for 7GH with 2 ASIC coffee warmers.

I do not maintain separate forum accounts, as that is a form of sockpuppeting. If I want to do mod actions, you will clearly see me doing mod actions. I have not used my mod powers to promote DMC.

People will use anything they can get their hands on to troll with, including attacking someone based on how much of their time they donate to a community.

Most likely BFL will miss the October date.

Lets say the Virtex 7 is 13x more usable slices and can be clocked 2x what Spartan 6s are stable at, thats around 7.2ghash. I think someone on the forums said they'd cost about $1000 each, so we're looking at, say, a $1200 product price. Thats only 4x more expensive per mh.

Rolling this as a SASIC could drop the price even more and also increase the stable clock speed 3-4x over Spartan 6s, or 10.8 - 14.4 ghash for, say, a $1000 product. Thats in the same ballpark as what BFL is claiming.

Well, agree with DiabloD3 - PRE-ORDER == INVESTMENT... Just in hidden form 0%-interest for company and without any shares to investor...

And also these investors have very few rights, as I bet they even do not know which ASIC they are truly going to implement. Say they can promise "full-custom" ASIC, but produce structured ASIC, that will be blown off when someone else invest into cell-based ASIC or big 28-nm FPGAs deal.

4 times can mean the difference between 1 year to pay off, and 4 years to pay off, so still quite a gap in my opinion.

---
Or even with half price FPGA resale value, still 2 years to pay off before profit comes rolling in, assuming power consumption can match the ASIC.

I still think attacking a company based on speculation is a douche move.  Wait until they fail to deliver (again) exactly what they promise and then discuss.

Otherwise there are plenty of *** speculation threads here already. 

Now amazingly the thread isnt sticky and the *** trolls enterpoint thread is also no longer sticky.

Hope that was the other mods stepping in and curbing the misuse of moderator status.

It was clearly a troll move as the speculation about *** is already available in other threads AND his shareholders were already aware of his position (he alluded to this already)
SO the only reason was to incite some form of reaction, the very definition of trolling.

Can we get this moved here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=81.0

Or somewhere else besides the hardware forum?

Wow..


Agreed.

:o ::) :o ::) :o

I smell brain fart...

Edit : Agree on :

Any bold statement of disapproval is likely to illicit a reaction.  You can't categorically label this kind of speech as trolling without giving up the fair right of publicly expressing disapproval.

I think people here are defining trolling in an overly vague way that is out of context.

The only problem here is that he used a mod account (and sticky was a bad idea - but I haven't seen proof).  

Its categorical, the information he has already posted in his mining company thread, plenty of threads already contain speculation about ***.
There could be no other reason to post this thread and make it sticky other than by definition being a troll, then to be dishonest on top of it ....

Im not defending *** but I think for a mod to take this kind of action is a bit much.  Its not freedom of speech, its overuse of privileged mod status.
Hopefully, in the light of the threads being made non-sticky and no doubt other mods being informed, he learns from this err in judgment and is more appropriate in the future.

kind regards

Who is Diablo Mining Company ? And why should i care ?  ???

The OP wrote DiabloMiner, and also the Diablo kernel for CGMiner. DMC sells mining bonds.

I never knew it was him that wrote DiabloMiner, I respect that program very much as it gives the best GPU mining performance. He obviously has skills, he can maybe he can design own hardware ?

Since when a software programmer can design hardware?

Does Microsoft make best computers in the world?

Does Microsoft make the best software in the world?

;D I just had to, sorry.

Once you get spoiled by a MBP, you automatically think software company = great hardware!

No trolling here. I respect this guy for what he stands for in the first place.

Forget about BFL and their "venture capitalists" and their 0% interest free loans that are totally unsecured.

What happens if the ASIC has a problem ? All BFL sheep lose their money ( I would so LOVE to see that and all the FPGA guys get back on track ).

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hats off to you DiabloD3 !

At least he has the integrity to stand up and not fall for this BFL greed craze / speculation and their long con ...

Too bad not a lot of people / bond sellers are that honest.

And he has not abused any mod powers because I never saw any sticky on this subforum today.

Please stop trolling ... what do you have against DiabloD3 and why do all of you seem to love the BFL god so much ???

Seems that the money promised by BFL has corrupted most of the miners here. Will be a landfall when they fail to deliver, yet again. I will laugh my socks off !

Woah, there's NO way the V7-2000 part will cost $1000.  As you may know, the price of the chips really depends on the so called "relationship" between Xilinx and your company.  The company must negotiate a discount based on its sized, volume and other "factors".

I work for a large company that is a huge user of Xilinx FPGAs (ranging in size small devices to large devices).  We're currently using Kintex 7 devices on a few projects.  For example, the production device cost of a Kintex 7 480 device for us is about $900 in quantities of at least 1000 per year.  This price goes down as the device gets older.  The price to a small time company will probably be higher because their overall volume of all devices combined will be much lower.

However, based on this pricing Xilinx has shown us for the Virtex 7 devices, I would expect the low volume price of the V7 2000 device (their largest ever) to be at least $10,000 in low volume.  The low volume price for the largest V6 device right now is over 12k.  I'd guess once the V7-2000T finally goes in to production, even if you could get the deep discounts, you'd probably have to pay 3-5k each.

The other problem is that the bigger the devices get, the harder it is to get a good yield.  The huge V7 2000 is 2 to 4 (I forget the exact number) separate devices glued together.  The yields can prevent this chips from being produced in high volume, so supply can also be an issue in addition to price.  Usually these chips go to the biggest customers first, since they are the most important accounts.

I believe that the best we can hope for from FPGAs is to find the sweet spot in price/performance and use multiple devices.  This is how all the FPGA mining products are setup today.  I believe that the price/performance ratio won't get much better than what is available from the FPGA mining solutions today.

The Xilinx hardcopy equivalent, easypath, costs $300k in upfront costs right off the bat for a %35 cost reduction over your current FPGA pricing...  So even this path can be difficult.

What do you think that Kintex 7 480 would do Mh/s and Mh/W? Any insight into Artix 7s? They are supposed to slot into the Spartan 6 space once available in good volume.

I haven't tried mining on the 480s, only on V6 240s.  The reason behind this is I have a handful of unused boards that have V6s on them, while the K7 boards are all used for my real work.

I made an entry in the mining hardware comparison long ago:

The V6 240s run at 375 MH/s at about 16w.  This isn't optimized (other than to use some DSP48s), so I guess you could probably squeeze another 50-100 MH/s out of the devices with some effort.

The MH/s based on the size of the device breaks down as follows:

375MH/s / 240 = 1.5625 MH/s per "size unit"

Based on this, I would estimate the 480 could do:

480 * 1.5625 = 750 MH/s

I haven't used Xilinx's power estimator for a K7 bitcoin design, but Xilinx claims 50% less power than the V6.

So, you could assume your worst case would be 32w, best case 16w.  Somewhere in the middle will probably be your actual power.

BUT!!  You may think the Kintex 7 would be better for mining (price/performance) than a Spartan or Artix device, but you'd be wrong!

Take the Mod miner for example:

840 MH/s @ 40w in 4 x Spartan 150 devices

840 MH/s / (4 * 150) = 1.4 MH/s per "size unit"

So, the S6 is a little less efficient in terms of size/performance (partly because I used DSP48s in the V6 example to reduce logic usage, but there are other factors), but the price difference is huge.  I think the S6 LX150 is ~$100, so there's no real good reason to buy the K7 or V6.  The K7 and V6 provide more advanced functionality (high speed serial, more internal memory, more DSP slices, more pins, etc) that aren't required for bitcoin mining.  You'd end up paying for features you don't use.

Once the Artix devices come out in force, I suspect they will be similar in price/performance to the S6.  Power consumption will be somewhere between 50% less and the same as the S6.  However, they are the last devices to go into production (after the K7 and V7).

Diablo, dude, I love your mining software, I use it, but man you come off as sour-grapes with this post, and being overly melodramatic given the fact you are a moderator of these forums.

What's the going rate for 0.5mg of Xanax on SR ? I might suggest placing an order for one and calm down.

EDIT: Shit dude, I will GIVE you the BTC for 0.5mg of Xanax to calm down. Please don't flake out on us.

This forum is such a mess.   

BFL still refuses to quote power usage figures, and they're probably in the realm of 28nm or SASIC anyhow.

Except there is no speculation here. DMC will not buy BFL hardware. I do not care if they deliver exactly what they promised, they already burned that bridge. This is purely based on their current and past actions, and has nothing to do with what they will or will not deliver.

This is not a speculation thread. DMC's ban on BFL hardware is based on what they have already done, not what they will do.

Okay, so, the forum had V7 and K7 pricing a magnitude wrong (thanks guys), so what is the cheapest way of getting SASICS? Power usage isn't an issue if we go 65 or 90nm, and BFL is going 90 or 130nm on "real" ASIC (which has yet to be proven).

I think the ideal device would be an FPGA that it just all slices, no DSP slices, no high speed serial, no large gobs of memory, etc, and on top of that offers SASIC migration.

Does any company offer that, no matter the node size?

Quoted because reeses is a pussy that deletes his posts.

I am not that familiar with Structred ASICs (SASICs).  I'm mostly a Xilinx person, and they offer "Easypath" devices which aren't Structured ASICs.  They are more or less FPGAs that only load one bitstream.  Xilinx only promises a 35% cost reduction and requires a 300K upfront fee.  I don't believe Easy path devices are offered for the Spartan 6 family because the cost is already pretty low.

Altera offers actual structured ASICs for many families, so the price per unit can be reasonable for a larger device.  However, since it's an actual custom ASIC, the setup/up front fee is probably pretty large.  In addition, you have to budget time and money for "oops" mistakes which would require a second or even third turn of the ASIC.

Anyway, to answer your question, Altera offers 4 different structured ASIC options.  Two of the options offer the stuff you would use for mining (mostly logic, not features we wouldn't use) without extra fluff.  They also offer sizes that range from small to large within the different families.

I do not have any pricing information on this scheme because I've never gone down this path as part of my Job.  I still think the cost is non trivial since you're actually making a custom device.

There are other vendors you can work with that will help you convert create and ASIC or Structured ASIC, but Altera offers an end to end solution for SASICs.  That probably makes them a good choice since you only deal with one vendor.  However, I have never dealt with that type of design flow before, so I have no first hand experience.

In the end, it's all about up front money.  Upfront money for manufacturing a PCB (not too bad), and upfront money to create an ASIC or SASIC.  I am curious as to what route (ASIC/SASIC) BFL went for their "upcoming" products and what the upfront costs were...  Time to market for any of these options is pretty long, so they had to have started a while ago.

IIRC BFL started advertising their SC products (without revealing they were ASICs) at least 6 months ago. Assuming they have been working on them for that long, they will have put 10 months of work in them by October.

It was WAY before that.

Their 'Super Computer' products were advertised right next to the single and rig-box from the outset.

Was it really known back then that the 'super computer' product was in fact a future asic or did that happen later?

Nothing specific was mentioned about it other than the name. From the inception of the website, there were always 3 products showing.

Yeah, that is what I remember as well. I guess I just assumed that the super computer was just a bigger rig-box ;)  for more money, heh.

Originally it may have been that, but times change...

The point it they've been working on the asic for a year or more.

Where's the proof?

Huh? What you need proof for?

Or do you take issue with 'working on'.

I'll change that for 'planning'. Happier now?

Uh, or they changed their plans from using fpga sometime between announcing SC and announcing future ASIC products? If I'm remembering right the mini-rig is a bit shrunken from initial announcement specs, suggesting that trying to get more BFL fpga units into a reasonably managed single unit would be quite a difficult engineering challenge.

Edit: Looks like my memory was correct, originally they announced 50GH/s at ~$25000. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53530.msg638003#msg638003

Oh, that reminds me...

I wonder if they'd be willing, in addition to the coffee warmer, make one with 2 or 4 asics in it, that doubles as a hot-air popcorn popper... .. .

-- Smoov

 Or I'm sure a ceramic-coated, PFC-free, metal pan would act as a pretty tremendous heat-sink for use as an oil-based popping solution.

 Either way, I think you are onto something with ASIC-based popcorn makers.

 I would buy at least one ;) I'm sure the guys over at /r/subredditdrama would buy them in droves.

The BitWok! For those of us who love our stir-fry...

-- Smoov

Why did you post that you are now waiting for 25 BFl SC Units ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92244.msg1016511#msg1016511

I would love a popcorn maker asic.

I didn't.

This is an insurance product that will pay out either in the situation that BFL ships 25 units, or that they do not ship 25 units, depending on which insurance you buy.

 Great. So if it wasn't bad enough that some moderators seemingly have no sense of objectivity, we now have a moderator endorsing and organizing gambling ?

 Diablo, it's time to step down. Your jimmies are way too rustled over all this BFL stuff.

How is this any different from say "bitcoin speculation"?

It's not. So much for thinking we should hold moderators to a higher standard.

</high-horse>

That double standard:

I will never buy BFL products but I have ordered 25 units so if they ship you get this, but if they don't ship you get that, but I will still never buy BFL product.. EH?

After reading this thread, I have to ask myself.  WTH has happened to the mods on this board?  D3 seems to have gotten butt-hurt somehow, lied about sticky-ing this thread and is seemingly abusing his mod-powers to trash talk another member (BFL) and another (possible compeititor?).

One would think a Mod should be unbiased and can use proper judgement. I guess not. 

> "In the event that Butterfly Labs fails to deliver at least a sum total of twenty-five (25) units composed of all three products offered described exactly as above to customers by the end of October 31st 2012"

> "to customers"

-> any customer, not him

The post you linked to does not say anywhere that Diablo has ordered anything from BFL. It says "to customers."

Ya I read that, and I never got the impression that he ordered 25 units. It sounds like he's making a bet whether BFL can ship ANY 25 units to ANY customers before the end of October.

What does me providing an insurance product have to do with me being a moderator? If I never became moderator, I would have still done it... and the reason I was made moderator was because I wrote DiabloMiner. Should I step down from developing DiabloMiner because I do a lot for the community? You don't make any sense.

It doesn't come accross as a "insurance product". It looks a lot like a "put your money where your mouth is" gamble.

Yes, this is what I wrote. No one else seems to have had any other interpretation.

Insurance is gambling with statistics. Life insurance, for example, is where you gamble that the owner of the insurance will pay in more money (pre-investment) than is paid out on the policy at the time of death (post-investment).

Insurance isn't just "gambling". Its a customer paying money for the transference of risk (of any kind) to the insurance company. For someone buying life insurance, you pay a monthly due, and you receive the reduction of risk that if you die, your family will not go into debt. You pay auto insurance as a protection of the CHANCE of you getting into an accident, and having to buy a new car.

For someone who has purchased a BFL ASIC, the DI.BFLSC.Fail could be seen as an insurance. They are paying more BTC now, in case their investment doesn't pay off in the time frame allotted. They pay now, as a reduction of the risk of potential future failure.

However, the DI.BFLSC.Succeed does nothing to reduce risk. It's a risk for risk's sake, which is a gamble.

Nope, DMC is going to own 16 BTC of Succeed, it needs to insure against the outcome of BFL not being a long con.

It can't be way before that. Their website didn't even exist before November-December 2011.

They also claim/did claim that their singles were ASIC, so to say they meant the super computers were always asic leaves quite a bit open for discussion.

http://www.butterflylabs.com/november-production-update/

Update 4th Nov 2011.

They produced the prototype there in 4 days?

First mention on these boards August 2011:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38922.0

So yeah, some time ago.

Lol I did a quick google search of Butterfly labs and came upon this thread. Read the first few pages, and it looks like DiabloD3, you just damaged reps for you and your company.

BFL SC Single: 40GH/s @ $1300USD
bASID: 27GH/s @ $1069USD

The bASIC is 68% as fast as the BFL SC Single and 82% of the cost. Granted the BFL SC Single still has ~20% MHs/$ advantage, but it's pretty close. Any updates on your original statements?

I included them in your quote, in bold, tycho announced ASIC's today : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108375.0

I saw that this morning as well. The fact that it can run without a computer is very attractive, and it is very competitively priced compared to a pair of SC Singles.