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Is this project and/or thread dying out?
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Is there much difference in a Altera Hardcopy (ASIC?) versus a custom ASIC? ... Performance to cost in particular?
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I just ran across this thread, and love the idea. We'll see how it goes...and will be nice to see some competitionion in the ASIC business. ... go capitalism!  |
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anybody got shipping notice email today?
Since it seems they are a small operation, I'd expect any, if any, shipping notices to be sent out literally after they are ALL shipped. So, probably at close of business...or even after hours. If the operations was larger and they had the staff to track it real time, I guess they could send out notices concurrnet to actual shipping events. Just my guesses on it. Was that wrong? I didn't hear of anyone getting confirmations of shipments sent out later in the day/early evening. Nah, just typical BFL. They pop in and update when they want, being as vague as they want, ignoring as many questions as they want. Meanwhile, the fan club continues to make excuses for them and berate those that haven't drank the koolaid. Sounds potent... What flavor is the koolaid? |
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anybody got shipping notice email today?
Since it seems they are a small operation, I'd expect any, if any, shipping notices to be sent out literally after they are ALL shipped. So, probably at close of business...or even after hours. If the operations was larger and they had the staff to track it real time, I guess they could send out notices concurrnet to actual shipping events. Just my guesses on it. Was that wrong? I didn't hear of anyone getting confirmations of shipments sent out later in the day/early evening. |
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anybody got shipping notice email today?
Since it seems they are a small operation, I'd expect any, if any, shipping notices to be sent out literally after they are ALL shipped. So, probably at close of business...or even after hours. If the operations was larger and they had the staff to track it real time, I guess they could send out notices concurrnet to actual shipping events. Just my guesses on it. |
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fans up the side(S) moving air through the thing in a closed case should wouldn't work?
Look closely at the HS; its mostly closed from the side. The design is to let air flow through from top to bottom, not sideways. And of course the system design makes that impossible. I'm not seeing how vertical cooling design is apparent versus a horizontal airflow along the plane of the boards. Anyway, I don't think anyone knows where the fans will be placed on this rig yet either. This is just the guts. Perhaps, it will be axial airflow flow through the middle, then out the sides and/or towards the backend. |
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 ...*Shipping next quarter. (*engineer not inluded). </> |
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Do you know of any enterprise class PSUs in the 1500w range?
Or phase plasma rifles in 40w range, for that matter?
Hey, just what you see, pal! Sounds like a quote from T1. (And the green 6502 code scrolling in his head.) .45 longslide... Uzi 9mm... BF Single plasma miner in 40 nano watt range. I'll be back........ in 4 to 6 weeks. |
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War Games AND Red Dawn were on yesterday, back to back. I think my ass permanently dented the couch. Was waiting for Short Circuit to come on after, but it never did. A tear was shed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQMy buddy's kid just watched Wargames the other week for the first time. It was fun watching it with them. And good that his son could watch it while his imagination was active. Anyway, I love the reminiscent quality of watching those movies, but it's easy to note how we have advanced in film technology since then. Though, not neccessarily in acting skills. Off-off-topic, but did you ever watch the Saturday morning show Bigfoot and Wildboy? I use to think it was cool as a kid, but I find it absolutley hilarious now to think of how they depicted bigfoot running fast through the wilderness. They did it by overlaying his running/motion with (I think slightly transparent view of) those wide style speedometers from something like a 70's or early 80's Cadillac... it was clocking upwards of 40mph or something like that.... cracks me up... |
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Do you know of any enterprise class PSUs in the 1500w range?
Or phase plasma rifles in 40w range, for that matter?
Hey, just what you see, pal! Awesome! I didnt know if anyone would get it! Thanks for restoring my faith in 80s humanity. Yeah...sans member's only jackets and vhs copies of wargames.... but we're still around.  |
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Do you know of any enterprise class PSUs in the 1500w range?
Or phase plasma rifles in 40w range, for that matter?
Hey, just what you see, pal! |
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I'm wonering if it is considered by BFL to be a thought of miners to purchase the Singles and/or Mini-Rig to maintain some kind of resale value in the event that bitcoin has some hypothetical collapse (somehow). Specialized ASIC's would have no resale value whatsoever, whereas having high end Startic chips wouldn't be as bad.
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Seems like a lot of kicking and screaming going on.
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[...] BFL has announced an upcoming ASIC based miner they have also stated that we as miners should continue to buy BFL singles because they will take them as full value for trade ins for their future ASIC based devices. My question is this: how can BFL do this? How can their business model allow for them to pay back full price for their flagship product which has made 99% of that revenues income. How is that possible? How is it Not complete bullshit? Please I want to see who can answer this, and what they will say Easy enough I think. They are not refunding you money, but giving you credit towards purchasing their newer models. They will have a much higher profit margin on the ASIC systems. And it is good business to keep past customers by not pissing them off right after selling them products so soon outdated. And the chips in the sinles and mini systems are high end chips that can be sold or used. |
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I hope my prediction is wrong. I hope ASICs wont be used in a way where the Bitcoin devs have to take measures such as I described above, but it is certainly probable enough to where the community needs to identify it. I hope I dont have to come back in a year and say I told you so, only time will tell... However... to anyone who believes this fallacy that BFL or any other corporate ASIC mining manufacturer is going to limit their sales in order to protect Bitcoin - you need to get over that. Fallacy #2 ASICs will be cheap and plentiful for all to use and enjoy yeah right! The first Bitcoin mining ASICs that are mass produced (BFL singles ARE NOT ASIC they were Identified as XILINIX FPGA by ngzhang) are likely to be used and abused by its makers for massive mining profits, the first ASICs to be sold will be sold for thousands. The corporate entities that invest the money and time needed to create these chips are not going to just make them and give them away. Fact #1 Right Now the only groups that can achieve access to Bitcoin mining ASICs are those with the money and connections to get them made Fact #2 Last Summer difficulty and Bitcoin value SKYROCKETED purely on the backs of GPU mining - Can you IMAGINE what Bitcoin would be like now if only the Wealthy Had Access to GPU's in the Summer of 2011? I built a 10 ghash mining farm (back when 10ghash was alot) little by little on the mining profits of one single 5870 purchased in the early spring of 2011. A lot of others in this community have gained similar or greater Bitcoin success because Bitcoin mining can empower even the most modest of Miners, this has changed a lot of the last year but its still realistic to some degree, a lot of you may think ASIC is your chance, everyone wants to be a (God I hate saying this) " Early adopter " right? Like I said at the beginning of this rant ( ) I hope I am wrong, I really hope this horrible feeling about what I am hearing about certain people who are working on acquiring ASIC based Bitcoin mining is wrong, all I am asking anyone to do is keep your eyes and your mind open to whats really going on before you jump on the band wagon and support something for the wrong reasons. I was one of the first people to be skeptical about BFL when they first came on the scene, and I admit I was wrong at that time about them, but this "FAQ" that encourages people to buy BFL Singles now and not worry about ASIC later because they will give you a full trade in value? Its just another piece of this puzzle that makes me entirely too uneasy... From a business stand point that makes absolutely zero sense.... ...just food for thought and motivation to prove me wrong... Enjoy! Don't you have a business interest in selling FPGA boards? I'd imagine ASIC would ruin that. Anyway, how would upgrading from GPU to ASIC be different than CPU was to GPU? The only question will be availability of the chips. As a retailer, if I am not mistaken about that, you might ping Butterfly Labs about buyins their chips to make your own boards. I'm thinking they won't mind at some point. |
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Just a guess, but I'd bet that the ASICs will hash at 1GH to 1.2GH each. I know they could be designed larger or smaller, but pound for pound I gathered that ASIC's perform about 3 to 4 times faster than FPGA's. But I'm no expert on the topic.
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I suspect the difference will be based on, if anything, a typical quanity discounting curve and not a technological difference. That is, since you probably only have one ASIC chip designed and ready. Is that a correct assumption?
Put yourself in their shoes. Assume you invested a few million dollar and you now have an asic design that costs $1 per GH to produce. What do you do? Ill tell you what I would do; I would sell the first systems at a GH/$ ratio thats better than FPGAs, but no more than a factor 2x or so. Why would you? Better performance per $ and vastly better performance/W, that will make you dominate the market anyway, nothing else would make sense to buy, so you basically capture 100% of the bitcoin mining hardware market. Yet you are selling for say $300 per GH while the chip costs you $1 in marginal cost. But thats okay, you do have to make up for those millions you invested. Fast forward a few months. You've sold a few terrahash worth of those chips, as a result, difficulty begins to rise, and therefore, demand for your product begins to drop, because the ROI starts taking much longer. What do you do? Simple, you slash prices, cut them in half if you must, its not like your margins wont allow it. And so you sell a few more thousand units at $150 per GH. Until difficulty catches up again and demand slows.... rince, repeat. until you reach $3 per GH and the bitcoin network is 100x faster than it is now. And early asic customers are making 100x less than they were when they invested. Now BFL may say they dont want to rip off their customers, and Im inclined to believe them its not what they want to do, but even absent a competitor it will be very hard to avoid doing just that without resorting to a non profit business plan. Factor in a competitor in the above scenario and a price war is a certainty and therefore difficulty will explode even faster and render all those early ASIC miners expensive paperweights that will never earn their investment back. Unless BFL comes up with some sort of guarantee or promise to limit their sales (!) AND they retain a monopoly, Id like to short all mining corporations that invest in those early asics. Or later asics for that matter. I won't disagree with your thoughts. It makes sense. And I hope they make lots of profit to reward their work...though I'm pretty sure they will. But my question regarded the cost of the ASIC based models to each other. Mainly to get a feel for what kind of investment to look forward to. For example, if I had X thousand dollars to invest in the new equipment, would I be a little better or a far better deal to buy the next best model? Consider the mini-rig versus singles... if you had say $8000 to spend, then going singles would be acceptable if it would be difficult to collect another $8000 for a mini-rig. But if the performance of the minirig was double or triple that of a single, then it would be an easy decision to push for the extra cash and get a mini-rig. Make sense? And of course if you have $16k to drop, then you would of course likely go for a mini over a bunch of singles. |
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Can you give us any indication of price? >$5,000? >$25,000?
Can't give you any exact numbers yet. But for a certain model, both numbers are too big, and for another, probably both are still big... we have to decide, but it won't be unaffordable... Regards, BF Labs Inc BF Labs, Would the performance per dollar of the certain ASIC based models vary slightly, modestly or greatly as compared to other ASIC based models? Granted, these comparative terms are all somewhat subjective. ... For example, the bang/buck of single versus mini is something like ~1.3MH/$ versus ~1.6MH/$. A clear but modest difference - imo. I suspect the difference will be based on, if anything, a typical quanity discounting curve and not a technological difference. That is, since you probably only have one ASIC chip designed and ready. Is that a correct assumption? BTW: I appreciate your role in all this. I think the ASIC development is great. It might very well set the stage for the most stable period of mining for all invested miners, I suspect anyway. Like you indicated, nothing will really be the next step in technology anytime soon. Perhaps, the difficulty rating will change more normally - after the ASIC transition/shift. ||bit.out |
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