Bitcoin Forum

Hey you Jerks, what are you doing announcing 28nm gear while you're still shipping 65nm? I want my Single!
A

65nm products are shipping in great volume, but will be out of production long before the first 28nm Monarch cards are through development and ready to be shipped.  If you haven't already received your 65nm product, you will very shortly.  The ASIC engineering team finished 65nm development long ago and turned it over to production.  Chip development is traditionally a 12 month process, so ASIC engineering teams have to be forward thinking in order to provide the best technology to the market.  28nm development began a long time ago.  Please don't think that this means production of your singles ever lost a second of focus.  They are different teams and we've put enormous resources into building our supply chain & production capacity.  Nothing is more important than shipping your order as fast as possible.

QCan I transfer my existing order into a 28nm Monarch card ?
A

Yes.

You can apply the purchase price of any undelivered product towards a 28nm product by paying a 10% transfer fee.  That will close out your old order and credit your account towards the purchase of a 28nm Monarch pre-order.  However, we do recommend you keep your remaining 65nm orders and take delivery because you'll get your mining gear much sooner.  28nm products won't begin shipping til year end and the difficulty is expected to be much higher at that time.  It's also worth pointing out that FPGA era products were still very valuable well into ASIC generation rollout, and the relative power difference between 65nm and 28nm is much much less.

 

To see how much transfer value you have, log into your account dashboard and follow the transfer instructions if you would like to jump Queue.

QCan you host these for me?
A

Yes.

Cloud hosted mining makes it all easy.  Although Monarch cards have a USB plug so you can run them outside as a computer peripheral if you want, they've been design optimized for PCIe use in rack mount data center servers, or any standard ATX motherboard.

 

To make it easy, Butterfly Labs has arranged to provide cloud hosting of your Monarch cards.  Six or Twelve month hosting terms can be purchased.  Your cloud hosted miner will be set up and made accessible to you online.  All maintenance, hosting, power & software setup will be provided.  All you need to do is configure your bitcoin wallet address and hit 'go'.

QWill the power & performance really be that good? What makes you so sure you'll deliver when you say you will?
A

BFL began in 2011 with the announcement of it's first FPGA bitcoin miner, the now famous 'Single'.  The delivered speed was in range of expectations, but the power consumption was greater than design simulation indicated.  With that experience under our belt, we set out to raise the bar again with our second generation FPGA miner (The original Mini Rig).  That chip was on target and perfectly matched it's expected speed and power consumption.  Why were we so accurate?   ...because we were able to baseline our development models with the results of the first generation FPGA chip.

 

With our first generation ASIC chip, we delivered the speed promised, but again the power consumption was greater than simulations indicated.  That caused delay for re-engineering the PCB to accommodate additional power.  That 65nm ASIC is now powering the majority of the bitcoin network.  It's a very good chip and we've gained valuable real life test data to baseline our design models for our new 28nm chip.  As with our FPGA 2nd generation, the 2nd generation ASIC performance can be expected to be extreemly accurate.  The value of a 2nd generation chip based on proven technology can't be overstated.

 

The bottom line is that BFL is the only 28nm chip manufacturer on it's 2nd generation ASIC.  If you want to lower your risk profile at 28nm, there's only one choice.

QWhy should I place my Pre-Order with Butterfly Labs?
A

Butterfly Labs is the pioneer and has remained the leader of the bitcoin mining hardware industry since 2011.  We are the only 28nm hardware manufacturer with a proven ASIC design.  We have 45 employees, a mature production capacity and supply chain.   Our 28nm competitors have never deliverd a single product.  Their manufacturing, supply chain and engineering are all back of the napkin ideas.

 

    Shipped more ASIC than all competitors combined
    2nd generation ASIC
    4th generation bitcoin processor
    Largest production capacity
    45 employees strong with an experienced management team.

QWhen do the 28nm Monarch cards ship?
A

We've been in hard development for approximately six months.  We're now we're in the final stage of the process which is wafer start at the foundry.  However, we aren't shipping anytime soon.  This is a Pre-Order product, so if you're uncomfortable waiting an indeterminate length of time for the final phase of development, do NOT pre-order this product.

With that in mind, our current schedule is on track for shippments towards end of year. 

Here are the timeline milestones:

    Tapeout (Initialization of wafer production) . 
    Foundry production takes 10 weeks.
    Bumping, Slicing & BGA packaging takes approximately 2 weeks.
    Initial shipments begin and ramp up to full capacity over the following 3 weeks.

Since this is our 2nd generation ASIC chip, we're largely free of risk from the pitfalls normally associated with a new chip design.  Testing systems, Bumping masks, Substrates & under fill engineering are all carryovers from our proven design so they're complete and ready for high volume production once the wafers are ready.  The importance of this can't be overstated when considering schedule risk & reliability

We are pioneers of the industry - having manufactured the first commercial Bitcoin mining hardware.

Butterfly Labs has shipped more ASIC products than all competitors combined

Our facility in Kansas has the largest production capacity of all Bitcoin hardware manufacturers.

Also auf gut deutsch brauchen sie mal wieder neues Geld :D

Form Factor:

Butterfly Labs: Professional and expandable card design
The Competition: Bulky Case design

Klar, 3 stellig pro Tag? Man munkelt sogar von Gabelstaplern

...
28 nm Lieferzeitpunkt November Dezember
...

Haha. Die Fabs, die das können kann man an einer Hand abzählen. Die werden garantiert nicht sagen, sorry NVIDIA für euch machen wir gerade keine Runs mehr, weil irgend eine Minifirma als Entwicklungspartner von BFL ein paar Runs braucht.

Daneben hat 22-28nm ein paar "kleinere" Herausforderungen, die weder der Entwicklungspartner von BFL (noch ORSoC) so schnell auf die Reihe bekommen dürften, wenn es um Standard Cell geht.

Hat Bitfury einen 28nm Prozess?! Nein!

BFL hatte mit den FPGAs Probleme, BFL hatte mit 65nm noch grössere Probleme und die Herausforderungen bei 28nm sind nochmal ganz andere und vor allem viel komplexer als bei 65nm und 45nm.

BFL hat bis heute keinerlei Erfahrung mit Chipherstellern oder dem Herstellungsprozess. BFL hat bei einem Entwicklungspartner (Chronicle Tech) eingekauft - und dazu noch bei einem der in der 65nm ASIC Entwicklung keine Erfahrung hatte (Stichwort OPC).

Yifu und sein Team haben tatsächlich mehr Ahnung von der Sache. Warum sie wohl bisher die Finger von 28nm lassen?!

Wann möchte Yifu die 28nm auf den Markt bringen? Doch sicher nicht mehr 2013 oder Anfang 2014?!

We will take this time to fulfill a promise to announce the next generation chip 2 month ahead of schedule so potential buyers can make a decision. Soon we will be disabling the pre-order of Avalon Gen1 chips and only sell the remaining stock as we phase out old technology for a new 55nm, which goes on sale for immediate delivery at mid October 2013. This 55nm will retain the same physical dimension as the 110nm Gen1, only few pads were changed so getting them up and running requires very little change to existing design.

In addition, there is 2 more chip designs in the pipeline, we have decided to proceed developing Gen3 and Gen4 in parallel due to the long R&D time of low processor nodes, both of these will be a Full Custom ASIC design.

Ohje, jetzt fängt Yifu auch noch mit dieser Full-Custom Scheisse an. Full-Custom auf 20-28nm in 2014 lieferbar - das muss ich morgen meinen Kollegen erzählen, die kriegen sich sicher kaum noch ein.

Wieso? BFL schafft die 28nm doch auch bis Ende des Jahres  ;D ;D ;D

Richtig , warum auch immer .
Denk daran wenn du vorhast das Original Netzteil zu verwenden auf 230 Volt zu stellen sonst riecht es seltsam .

Für den Dauer Betreib sollte es schon ein 80+ Netzteil sein , die Original Netzteile scheinen sehr sehr Billig zu sein und machen einen miesen Eindruck

Das hatte ich bei den FPGA´s damals auch gedacht, die haben aber anstandslos durchgehalten.

Davon gehe ich aus, da beim Single SC auch eins dabei ist. Allerdings hat das Kaltgerätekabel gefehlt, dafür war aber ein Adapter US auf EUR Netzstecker (2-pol) dabei(?).