Ken is doing sales, marketing, business, some r&d, and I'm unsure how much of the web is him and how much his web guy. That's too much and there is a lack of balance which leads to some of the public mistakes seen.

Sales and marketing is the big one. Beyond that, operations manager most likely - someone to keep things all working, help ensure there is planned decision making, fulfilment, project management, etc.

And despite ken defending him, a new web guy for certain. For whatever reason, the current guy is being defended but his poor work is damaging to the company's interests in our opinion. We got shown some other work of his and it was similarly terrible. He may be lovely  but he's rubbish and has no technical or design skills. Sorry, but this is a business and he isn't good enough.

I know ken disagrees but it's obvious to everyone else. That's part of the problem, ken doesn't see it and that's why he needs an op manager and/or sales and marketing guy who he will listen to.

To be fair, the eASIC news was good (brilliant news in fact) and the only people who have a problem with anything right now are shareholders who want a lot more info because they want share movement or confidence.

In fact, the only things not going to Ken's original plans are deliveries in Nov rather than Oct/Nov and Avalon letting everyone down. And we're told that a lot more is going on too, just like at other chip companies. R&D doesn't stop.

I'm not excusing communication issues but company plan wise it's still as advertised basically, Avalon apart (and refund requested anyway).

Sometimes it's worth stepping back from this forum where a lot if people shout all sorts of rubbish or make demands they know aren't/can't be met in order to move the share price and stir trouble, or because they just want what they can't have. I try to answer those only once, but when they come back and do the same thing a few days later I'm sometimes forced to repeat myself.

Ken's IPO and public handling has always been poor so anyone surprised that communication issues remain probably didn't do their research. We've been trying to improve it but it won't surprise anyone to know that it's been very difficult. The stress getting that eASIC press release out... you don't wanna know.

I, and the rest of the advisory board, do want to see more hires though. We've worked really hard but, having done this for a few weeks now, it's not an Advisory Board that ActiveMining really need, it's more staff/internal board members and/or paid professional help; hence the push for a proper PR guy (got to start somewhere).

Some people are probably right in saying that Ken is doing too much and needs to focus on engineering. We've filled in as best as possible but it needs people inside the company and not outside of it. We can't take on practical tasks and don't have inside information, and we all have day jobs as it is.

eASIC Raises $23.5M of Growth Capital

Financing to fund global expansion and fulfill fast-growing product demand

Santa Clara, CA – September 9, 2013 – eASIC® Corporation, a leading provider of Single Mask Adaptable ASIC™ devices today announced that it has closed a $23.5M growth capital financing. The funding includes investment from Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Crescendo Ventures, Seagate Technology and Evergreen Partners. eASIC® will use the capital to fund expansion of its US and European development organizations and to provide working capital associated with the fast-growing demand for its Single Mask Adaptable ASIC devices.

"eASIC has become the go-to provider for cost effective, mass customization devices", said Ronnie Vasishta, President and CEO of eASIC. "Our success in wireless infrastructure and the storage market, coupled with several new key design wins in the high-volume automotive market drove the targeted $20M round to be oversubscribed to $23.5M. This significant funding by leading venture firms and a strategic partner positions us well to expand our development and customer organizations as we execute on our recent wins and broad customer pipeline."

"The convergence of eASIC’s unique technology, the demand for mass customization combined with the need for low-cost and fast time to market solutions is creating an unprecedented opportunity for eASIC to emerge as the de facto solution for custom silicon platforms", said Mike Kourey, a Partner at Khosla Ventures. "With this growth capital financing, eASIC and its strong leadership team is in a position to fully execute on its strategy and fulfill the demand of its broadening base of customers and platforms."

No, not at the moment anyway. Labcoin is a far better investment due to it starting hashing in the next couple of days. A lot of people will be selling shares of various other stocks to buy in before the price increases significantly. That will include ActM shareholders, causing ActM's share price to drop even lower. ActM can't do anything about this as they've already told us they'll have nothing till November.

In the tong term, ActM is still good but if you do want to buy any more stock, you'll be better off waiting a few days for the inevitable price drop.

You can take my advice on this matter or you can take the advice of an absolute fanboy like Stuart. I claimed ActM would start mining on 28nm in November (despite VBS' and Kleeck's denial) and I also claimed the increase in share price from eASIC confirmation would just be a bubble when it came. On the other hand, Stuart is a bagbolder, frothing at the mouth because he knows he was wrong. This idiot probably snapped up the shares I sold for 0.0065, while I was telling him the increase was just a bubble.

ActM's share price will drop when Labcoin starts mining. If for some strange, delusional reason, you want to buy more ActM shares, wait for that price drop. If you have any sense though, you'll buy LC instead.

I'm not talking about Avalon chips, I'm talking about the 28nm chips. Samples from them will arrive around the beginning of November. Low volume production will start around the beginning of December and normal volume production will start around the beginning of February.

Until ActM get those samples in November, they're stuck at 430 Gh/s and have no mining hardware to sell apart from the 6 Avalons producing that 430 Gh/s. So, where exactly is this 50K/month going to be coming from when they don't have any ASIC yet and won't have any significant quantity till December?

There is 0 BS in his post.
ActiveMining was suppossed to have 6TH online by now.
But since Avalon did not deliver it did not happen.
Also I find it interesting that network is 750TH and not 250TH as predicted in this chart.
But yeah that 6TH would just be temporary measure until Easic would deliver and company starts mining/selling.

My suggestion for the product list is:

1) Bulk chips.

2) PCIe 1x cards, with discounts for bulk orders.

That's it.  The reason is, a PCIe card can basically be produced entirely by an SMT line, with no manual labor at all. When the user gets it they can plug it into any motherboard.   Since they already appear to be doing something like that, that would be the way to go.

You can retail off the shelf cases/back-planes/host controllers etc (something like a PCIe based version of the bitfury m-board) - but those should not be the 'main' products and they would ship separately, etc.

http://virtualminingcorp.com/shop1/index.php?id_product=26&controller=product
Fast-Hash-One Platinum 256 GH/s PCI-E Long Module.  Less than 200 Watts.

Our cards can be used on any regular Intel/AMD motherboard!

They are currently in a design stage, to be built in a single-slot form-factor, similar to the illustration above, but using a blower-type fan assembly that expels the hot air outside your system case.

Connection requirements: the card will support a PCIE x1 connector, so you can fit it into any free PCIE x1, x4, x8, or x16 slot in your motherboard.  Alternatively, it also has an USB connector so you can use it unplugged from a motherboard like any other regular USB bitcoin miner!

Estimated Power requirements:
One PCIE six-pin power connector plus one PCIE eight-pin power connector.

Required software drivers allowing card usage in popular bitcoin mining programs will be release in due time before cards are shipped.

You're the one picking November and that ridiculous 5-6PH number. LC will already have been mining for months by then.
And yes, I can calculate an APR value for the given profit of a given timeframe.


Since they are planning to start mining within 5 days, they have working chips already.

I think most of the risk comes from the possibility the companies are just fake, or not going to do what they say they're going to do.  Any contrary evidence should boost the price.

But other then that, most of the 'scheduled events' should already be priced in.  Emphasis on should. The problem is these markets are tiny and full of n00bs.

I still think LC is the better deal in the short term, they may make more profit off their 50Th/s in October then ActM will off however much it's planning on making in November. We'll probably see up to 5-6Ph come online in November with Cointerra and HashFast.  Plus however much comes online from KnC machines in October.

And in order to compete, ActM is going to need a lot of capital for things like PCBs, etc. 10 chips per board is 250Gh/s per board.  You'd need 4,000 boards to get 1TH. Not a minor undertaking.

Yes they did, it's in the FAQ.

"Survived" is putting it lightly...

http://www.easic.com/easic-rated-third-fastest-growing-semiconductor-company-in-north-america-on-deloittes-2012-technology-fast-500/

http://www.easic.com/easic-wins-alwayson-ao-100-top-private-company-award-for-its-innovative-structured-asic-technology/


"Notability: - Over 100 Design Wins for Nextreme means that a large Number of Engineers are working with the devices - EDN Innovation Award Finalist - the award is very significant and should count towards meeting the notability criteria even if the company was 'only' finalist and did not win the award - Offers a new approach to ASICs and is therefore of general interest to engineers"
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bonf/EASIC)

just to display a bit of the eASIC prowess.

If that ridiculous 5-6PH figure will really come true by November (it won't), those 1000 btc per month will still give a 30% APR for LC shares at current price.
And that is if they really only have the 50TH and have no hardware sales. They actually plan on getting 200-300TH and will obviously also have a lot of hardware sales...
I don't even know what point you're trying to make. That making 1000BTC per month in a fucking 6PH network is too little?

That's nice.  Unfortunately "minimized" is not a very concrete amount of time.

Not exactly, You won't be able to sell, say, 900k easicopy chips the day after your nextreme chips come out of the fab.  there will be a whole other development process, possibly taking months, before you can sell orders.  Companies like Cointerra/HashFast/ and KnC will be able to sell chips/modules with a much shorter turnaround time, which is pretty critical in the bitcoin space.

http://www.easic.com/migration-to-cell-based-asic/migration-to-cell-based-asic-simple-design-flow/
The starting point for most easicopy designs is a eASIC Nextreme or Nextreme-2 design. This enables eASIC engineers to leverage much of the work that has already been done from a design that is already successfully in production. In addition, this helps to reduce the overall time to production for the easicopy design.

The easicopy design flow is shown below. At the front end it requires a eASIC Nextreme or Nextreme-2 synthesized netlist and an SDC timing constraints file. After initial synthesis, the design is taken through a traditional cell-based ASIC flow by eASIC engineers. This includes Design For Test (DFT) insertion and synthesis, and then back-end physical implemention which includes floorplanning, I/O ring design, power mesh design, timing driven place and route, timing closure, parasitic extraction, final STA, and tapeout readiness.



eASIC engineers have extensive experience in converting FPGA designs to via-programmable eASIC Nextreme or Nextreme-2 NEW ASIC, and then eASIC Nextreme or Nextreme-2 NEW ASIC designs to cell-based, easicopy ASIC.

http://www.easic.com/migration-to-cell-based-asic/migration-to-cell-based-asic-risk-mitigation/

Design Risk Mitigation - having successfully converted an FPGA prototype design to eASIC Nextreme or Nextreme-2, eASIC engineers have already made a number of changes that will make the conversion to an easicopy ASIC simpler. In addition your designers will work with the same eASIC engineers that have already helped you to successfully take your eASIC Nextreme or Nextreme-2 design to production.

Well sure, but eASIC had already published a signed letter confirming the deal with ACTM too, so a PR on eASIC's website likewise carries almost no weight.

Someone has to spend the money on those PCBs.  And the point of the chart is that, overall, it will be cheaper to stick with the regular ASICs until you get up to 300k units (per whatever time period they're estimating), it would just be a waste of money otherwise. Obviously, if the power/wattage is better then that will be an additional consideration.

Yeah, meant one PH, obviously.

As you can see on the chart, the cutoff for 'profitability' of using the easicopy instead of nextreme is 300-900 thousand units.  At 25Gh/s, that comes out to:


That's the threshold for for it to be profitable for ActM to switch to easicopy.

Assuming he can get 10 chips per board, that's 30-90k boards. At $25/board, that comes out to $750k-$2.2 million for enough boards to put 300-900k chips on.

That means in order for it to be profitable for ActiveMining to go to the easicopy rout to get standard cell asics, he would need to be making an so large he'd have to spend $750-2 million just on the blank PCBs to put them on.

Not impossible. But it's a long way off from what I can tell.

What we really need to know is the die size.

It's possible Labcoin's 65nm chip may take up less space, making their chips potentially more profitable.

I think most of the risk comes from the possibility the companies are just fake, or not going to do what they say they're going to do.  Any contrary evidence should boost the price.

But other then that, most of the 'scheduled events' should already be priced in.  Emphasis on should. The problem is these markets are tiny and full of n00bs.

I still think LC is the better deal in the short term, they may make more profit off their 50Th/s in October then ActM will off however much it's planning on making in November. We'll probably see up to 5-6Ph come online in November with Cointerra and HashFast.  Plus however much comes online from KnC machines in October.

And in order to compete, ActM is going to need a lot of capital for things like PCBs, etc. 10 chips per board is 250Gh/s per board.  You'd need 4,000 boards to get 1TH. Not a minor undertaking.