From a technical perspective we do not have any updates at the moment. The Chinese team is running more verifications on the 65nm/ 500Mhz/ 2~2.5WxGH design, all these computations take hours or standard workstations.

We should get a reply from TSMC within 12 hours, otherwise we will contact them by phone, or worst case our Chinese team leader will reach out to their sales offices in Shenzhen. 
A plan is expected to be sorted out within 24 hours, but it will still need some refinements probably.

We will disclose those figures in detail as soon as we get all the costs of the operation panned out.
 


We are still waiting for a final quotation from the fab, in order to evaluate the real possibility of going for an IPO.
Every other logical step will follow. By the way, you will find our certificate of incorporation somewhere in this thread if you want to take a peak at it.
Risk, definitely is also a factor to consider in the equation, and we're not ignoring it.

We will get exact numbers directly from TSMC Shenzhen office, hopefully tomorrow or the day after. This is an important question definitely.

To reply to your technical questions :

Just some optimizations on the HDL by our engineers, no cooling as there's no actual chip yet. Only simulations and post-simulation verifications that were successful with a 500mhz clock.
Power estimations are about 2~2.5W per GH but they will definitely be optimized.

Yes, but we haven't taken yet a final decision, regarding if that initial batch of ICs will be used for producing USB miners and those put up for sale, or  use the IC for private deployment.
We are still trying to figure out costs and price for eventual sale for having a better idea, but the best probable strategy as some of you suggested is selling the devices with escrowed pre-order and do an IPO. We are not very inclined familiar with an IPO model, as this wasn't our initial plan, but we'll start running numbers.
Indeed we think that the only way to gain some kind of  hedge on the competitors now, is going big, possibly for a 100.000 ICs order.
From the initial feedbacks from the community, it looks like there's interest to share the risk and thus, the profits of this eventual move.
We look forward for further discussion, time constraints are strict, so we would like to pan out a definitive strategy as soon as possible.

Labcoin Team

EDIT : Typos and phrasing

Ok guys, thanks for the feedbacks.

Here is today's latest update from the Chinese team :

the IC version @ 65nm succeded post-simulation at 500 Mhz instead of 400 Mhz with some more optimizations, and still room for further overclocking.

 
 
We find this is the best option for our interests and those of the eventual shareholders. This way we would have a product relatively fast on the market and fund the 100k chip order, which will yield about 50 TH, even considering deployment costs, and various factors, we think it woud still be worth the investment.

The gen 2 chip you are referring to is the one the Chinese team is working on, or are you referring to the European team work ?

Advices are appreciated about the private IPO as well, how do you think this should work ?

We don't have experience with IPOs but have some financial background as well.

As for now we will go ahead with our plan and  the 8/22 July tape-out. Everything is almost ready for going to final  tape-out.

Can you be more specific ? there are various sites for doing the IPO, but we are more prone to a "private IPO" approach, if we should choose this way.
In addition, we would like to keep all the proceedings from the IPO on escrow, until we have a contract signed with the fab for the final tape-out.
We would be talking about a quite large sum of money.

Thanks for your feedback.

As promised, here is an important update about our progress, and some changes to our initial plan.

First thing to say, while the team in China was developing the first 180nm iteration, it was simultaneously exploring a 65nm IC design as well.

Few days ago, the team was carrying on with the final preparation steps to put our 180nm design out  for final tape-out with UMC fab.

Briefly after hearing about the latest news regarding ASICMINER new deployment of 800-1000 TH within the year, the management decided on a strategy shift.

We stopped at last minute the tape-out of 180nm first iteration test-run, and further development stopped as well.  

The Chinese team is now optimizing the initial 65nm design to work at 433Mhz, with over-clocking possible;
we expect to release final estimated hash rate and more precise estimations about power consumption data for this IC in 24 hours.

If all the post-simulations are positive, this IC design will go on tape-out, without test runs but with minimized risks, in a few days;  TSMC has a 65nm CLN65/CMN65 on schedule for 8 and 22 July.
Should we miss the 8 July shuttle we will go for the 22 July one. After about 50 days the deployment will start.

This IC could be used for a high-powered USB mining device, as preliminar tests shown power consumption is in the range of 0.7~0.9W

The version 2, which the European team is working on, is progressing as well; We got the whole I/O IC interface HDL code ready and it will be adapted and used for the new version 1 interface as well; The version 2 will still be a 65nm IC design with an expected higher hashing rate, in the range of 4~5 GH/sec, and lower power consumption but real progress is expected in September/October.

We need to take another decision now, since ASICMINER dominance is getting worse day by day, we are at a turning point, we have enough funds to finance a initial batch of 10.000 version 1  IC at an approximate cost of 700,000 CNY, or about 88,000 USD. This would output about 4.5 TH of power. Accounting (estimating) for a tripled or quadrupled mining difficulty during our deployment phase, we estimated that our initial investment could be recovered in about 1~1.5 months.

The other choice is opening a public IPO and going for a larger run of IC, 100.000~200.000 and mantain our previously announced marketing strategy. We want to hear the community opinion about this.


The Labcoin Team

EDIT : Photos of the new 65nm IC design with on chip PLL will be published as soon as they are ready.  Typos.

You will learn the news tomorrow, it's really late and i'm heading to sleep right now. I work 'round the clock to keep up with all the time differences between the teams... I understand your points about customer service, but this is not customer service right now. I'm merely posting updates about the project. Stay tuned for tomorrow update. Thanks for your intervention.

Sorry, but i don't have much time for the forums yet. A mailing list has been built and will be added to the site tomorrow, contextually with an update.

I have just finished a conference call with the Chinese team, we are shifting strategy from our initial plans, in light of the latest ASICMINER news.

Expect a very important update tomorrow.


Labcoin Team

A busy week passed and some messages and emails piled up. I apologize but i will get back to everyone during the weekend.

As announced on our home page, we are hiring additional workforce.

If you are skilled with HDL optimization, Verilog / VHDL, circuit design and verification, shoot us a mail right away with your CV at info@labcoin.com

Candidates with previous experience with FPGA bitcoin mining projects are preferred.

We will be posting soon very important progress.  

Alright guys, point(s) taken. let's not derail the thread too much   

Come on, we just tested that terracoind (and others) with the avalons, and left it there, again it was just testing ... there is NO relevance to the project this thread is about.

Transparency is, and will remain a key point in our conduct.

Right, but i could have stopped the daemon meanwhile. Also, why it should be a problem in first place ?

Cheers

Yep. they are.

Fabrizio Tatti is the majority shareholder and CEO of iTec-Pro Limited actually.

Cheers

Well, i know that's ugly, but that guy ran a portscan on our web server, found there a running terracoind instance and hence assumed we're scammers. It is pure logic, isn't it ?

We own and run several machines. checkout the team labcoin at btcguild

NO COMMENT.

EDIT : Haters gonna hate. The terrracoind was for internal tests with our pool of Avalon machines.