I got a butt load of S1's, S3's, and C1's as well.
To the best of my knowledge it's Bitmain not selling chips is the holdup.

Am VERY curious about their response.



Concur the 3222 is junk.
Will ask about un-announced stuff.


Concur 100% with all your points.
1) test chips for us is moot, production chips is a different animal.
2) Your IP on board design is yours and should not be restricted by a chip supplier.
3) we would not be interested in an NDA regarding anything pertaining to their 14nm dev, design, production, etc. due solely to the idea we would be involved in an independent 14nm design.
4) we would exuberantly pay excessively for test chips.

Having said that, we would be willing to "broker a deal" that meets Innosilicon and your parameters. As greasing the wheels of motion benefits us. i.e., Their chips on your boards.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156853.msg12182569#msg12182569

needs to be translated.

The BM1385 is, evidently, a 28nm process.

sidehack - you should read the last 5 pages in the thread, may be a product GS might want to supply as the primary circuit guy indicated he was NOT going to manufacture and sell.
And yes it's a simple circuit. PCB'ed would probably be a board about the size of a Prisma 1.0 USB/UART board. It, evidently, also requires some reflashing of the controller. The code for which seems to be in flux, at the moment.



Negative.

Gave up on Bitmain as you seem to have better luck than us. Should we continue to pester them for chips?

Will reach out to Avalon about the 3222 and LK about the 14nm Innosilicon unit today.

Will also query Innosilicon about obtaining a couple of their test units. If they acquiesce (and that's a big IF), likely that will require an NDA, are you cool with that?
Assuming they will part with a couple and they require an NDA, nothing about that unit could be used to forward any 14nm project the community might develop.
I'm really not interested in getting into the drama over an IP pissing contest. Much less the lost revenue over a non-innocent infringement law suit.

Best case scenario assuming everything goes according to plan, the earliest we could have a chip for prototyping is Jan 2016.

I kinda' think of the chip design project as an insurance policy.
I'm really hoping that one of the current chip manufacturers relents/reconsiders the embargo and starts selling their state-of-the-art chips and not their old tired technology.

IMHO, the release of used Bitmain's S5+'s with a 90 day warranty is a withered "olive branch".
It's a "day late and a dollar short" as it will ROI just about the time the block reward gets chopped in half (and likely the max block size goes to 20M up from 1M).
And then become a worthless piece of H/W.

It also pisses me off that while we were mining with .51J/GH/s units (or worse) Bitmain and other "large" Bitmain clients were mining with .445J/GH/s stock.
We have been predominantly a Bitmain shop since the S1 release days and one would think that the S5+'s would have offered to a loyal customer. They weren't.
Am feeling like we got stabbed in the back with a Claymore.

It's probably a good thing for the "big 4" they're not American companies else they'd be subject to Rico statutes.

Growl!

Not picking on you, but the key word and operative phrase in your statement is "seems".

There is no evidence to indicate that Innosilicon is or is not operating a farm.
Innosilicon has in the past manufactured complete miners and I imagine there is some "burn in" testing on those machines.
How long is that "burn in"?
A day, a week, a month, . . . .

And even if it's only a day at Innosilicon, when their customer (who intends to re-sell them) gets the machines, how long do they "burn in" test them before selling them as "new".

Based on TRS's info, I queried Innosilicon on the availability of 14nm hash chips which per their post alluded to indicate they had taped out a production run.
Their response indicated:
1) they had taped out a test chip run (unspecified quantity),
2) they were unwilling to sell 100-1,000 chips (test or otherwise),
3) they were soliciting "large" pre-ordrers, and
4) were interested in designing/building/supplying a custom complete miner.

Needless to say, PlanetCrypto as a company isn't interested in pre-buying vaporware chips (due to time/value of money calcs where the time parameter may approach infinity) and the belief (which has a basis in fact) that Gekkoscience would design and produce a superior hash board.

Added to this, if we purchase hash boards from GS versus a company in the Pacific Rim our shipping costs are significantly curtailed, interfacing with American customs is obviated, and GS has a history of supporting what they sell.

So bottom line, if/when Innosilicon has 14nm chips for sale, we would consider buying a small quantity (100 or less), forwarding them or drop shipping them to GS if they were interested in designing a hash board which they may or may not decide to put into production for general sales to the community.

If the GS hash board using the Innosilicon chip is a profitable unit, we would then purchase a "large" quantity of chips and contract with GS to be our vendor of choice board supplier.

Till such time as all that comes to fruition, our focus is to continue plodding forward with a community designed and owned 14nm hash chip.

sidehack - Bcc'ed you and PM'ed you.

Heading to bed, am F'ing beat.

Thanks Steve.

I asked.

sidehack - didja' get my cc?

Where can I find a datasheet/specs (prelim or otherwise) on the A3?

Probably having a senior senility (brain fart) moment, but, what hash chip(s) does Innosilicon make that are appropriate to Bitcoin hashing?

I'm predicting that'll get much worse, to the point where no component parts (i.e. SHA-256 hash chips), boards, and complete miners are available (to the general public).
The inherent design of the Bitcoin system (reward decrease in July of 2016) and the enlargement of the block size to enormous (20Mb) will force everyone not at the extremes (extremely small and extremely large) out of BTC mining. The big four are the large extreme and the hobbyist is the small extreme. Even the large multi-megawatt farms are in jeopardy because they, to a large extent, rely on the big 4 for their gear.
The big 4 (i.e. the chip makers) are gearing up for, promoting, and shifting their respective business models for this eventuality. Some of the big 4 are more transparent about this than others, Bitfury most notably:
"BitFury Group is the leading, fully integrated Bitcoin Blockchain infrastructure provider and transaction processing company."
"We build ASICs, PCB boards, servers and data centers – everything in-house and everything full custom which allows us to be the most efficient Blockchain transaction processor."
"We run one of the largest operations in the world with specially designed data centers located in Iceland and the Republic of Georgia."

To this end I'll quote lyrics from the X Ambassador's song Renegades (of Jeep fame) which embodies my belief of a possible solution:
"Long live the poineers
Rebels and Mutineers
Go forth and have no fear
Come close and lend an ear"

"All hail the underdogs
All hail the new kids
All hail the outlaws
Spielbergs n' Kubricks
It's our time to make a move
It's our time to make amends
It's our time to break the rules
Let's begin ..."

So I'm wearing my CEO of PlanetCrypto hat, PlanetCrypto's preference for all things board level is and has been GekkoScience.

If the share holders of the chip dev coop decide to get into boards (which may not be the case and I would counsel against), GekkoScience has my votes as a contractual partner for design and production.
There is a valid case to be made that the chip dev coop should concentrate on being a chip manufacturer and not branch off into areas where it may not have core competencies (customer fulfillment, call center, warranty processing, etc . . . . . ).

It does not make business sense for the chip dev coop to become a board competitor, as that field already has a plethora of players. This is the kind of crap the big 4 would do. Compete with customers who are component customers.

While there is a nice synergistic set intersection of GS, the chip dev coop, and PC regarding Bitcoin mining hardware it would not make sense to merge the two/three entities as, speaking exclusively from PC's standpoint,  PC's other business units have little to do in that arena.


An aggressive tentative schedule for the new chip would be tapeout by Dec/Jan. Proto boards by Feb. Begin production on a finalized board in Mar. Sales of the board could commence mid Mar.
So any boards GS might have available by the Christmas Holidays will likely not use the new chip from the chip dev coop.

A MBNC is allowed to retain earnings and roll that over into a new fiscal year, after the taxes are paid of course.
My degree background includes way too much accounting and for a number of years was an Enrolled Agent with the IRS (I let my certs lapse back in the late 90's).
Starting 1987 I wrote tax software (amongst other tings), and to have the S/W accepted by the IRS the coding team needed Enrolled Agent status.
Even 501(c)(3)'s are allowed to retain funds from year to year (operating expenses, salary expense, etc.)
A 503(c)(6) only has partial tax exempt status so contributions, i.e. share purchases would not be considered charitable contributions on an individual or corporate tax return.

To clarify:
Gekkoscience is a standalone entity as is Planetcrypto.
I can unequivocally say that any interaction between the proposed entity and PC will be contractual in nature as it has been between Gekkoscience and PC.
We, as a company, may elect to contribute, gratis, resources/assets to any company or individual (time on one of our super computers, for instance, for chip simulation) at our discretion.
PC will probably fund the proposed entity (subject to our share holder approval) through the share purchase vehicle as I will personally.

Currently, I'm leaning towards a corporate organizational model that files for an IRS 503(c)(6) tax status which is commonly known as a Mutual Benefit Nonprofit Corporation.
Briefly described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual-benefit_nonprofit_corporation
This will make investing in the organization less attractive to "whales", i.e. individuals looking to make huge ROI's in the short term.
But is, I think, more philosophically inline with what the Bitcoin mining community needs.

To quote from the Wiki referene:
"Mutual benefit corporations are formed for common gain purposes such as ..." "... promoting the social or economic welfare of member individuals or organizations (for example through trade groups, professional organizations or business districts)." In this instance the the proposed organization would be loosely defined as Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturers.

Stated succinctly, The proposed Mutual Benefit Nonprofit Corporation will promote the social and economic welfare (common gain) of member individuals and organizations by getting to tapeout a state-of-the-art Bitcoin SHA-256 hashing chip.

And yeah, PC will be interested in purchasing some of those 5TH machines as well.

Are you offering to spawn a thread and mother it for the chip thingy?

Hope so, cuz' I suck at that.

In the extreme, the "whales" are technologically clueless "people with lots of money who want to make lots more money".
Gauging competence (in any discipline) is the task of the many and is delegated by the many through the referendum process.
As, ultimately, the many are supremely responsible and culpable for the actions of the entity.
Personally, I pay attention to competence regardless of the individuals chosen field; engineering, administration, physical prowess, financial, sales, people skills, etc. . .

"I know people with fat wallets are going to want to keep a tight leash on what happens with their money." I categorize it as a disease, akin to obsessive hoarding. The more one hoards (money in this example) the more the individual agonizes over retaining the hoard and eventually becomes delusional.

"But if the goal of the project is to do something technically impressive ..."
The goal here is to not just do something technologically impressive, to some extent that's already been done and your efforts are a prime example, but to take that technological thing and make it the defacto standard of the many. Thereby causing the playing field to become leveled for all players.

I think that any "folks putting up 30 hours a week in free time to do all the heavy lifting," "ought have more say than the guy who spent five minutes" doing whatever.

"Is there a business model where a group of people come together with an idea of how something should be done, people hand them money in order to let them do it, and then have approximately no say after that because the core group is capable of doing it all themselves?"
Yes there are plethora of them.

"Something where investors just sit back and watch instead of being able to screw things up."
Yes, any publicly traded company on any of the exchanges meets this criteria.

The difference between a startup and a publicly traded company can be distilled down to track record. The previous has none while the latter oozes success. And that's where the rub is when initiating a venture that requires hideous amounts of capital.

I can easily imagine that if a technologically advanced chip is brought to tapeout any endeavors the entity would want to pursue after that will be easily funded.
That entity, "having figured out the wheel" could then transpose that model to others who may have other disruptive ideas.

Hey, glad to hear you made it home in one piece.

If a foundry mandates an NDA (effectively restricting the IP regarding how they make chips, if I understood 2112's post correctly, which I may not have) and one wants a chip made, the only alternative I see is to build a new foundry.
What am I missing?
Should "we" be considering creating an entity that is a foundry?
That operates under a different paradigm?

"Additionally, decision-making rights based on how much money you have strikes me as not only the way literally everything is run, but also as a terrible idea."
What other metric would you suggest for determining decision making rights?
What criteria must one meet or exceed to be endowed with the decision making responsibility?
And who determines what that criteria is?

Under the model I'm proposing, let me paint a simple possible worst case picture.
1) 10 VC whales each "invest" $100,000 (1 million voting shares).
2) 1,000 investors invest $1,000 each (1 million voting shares).
3) and one newb invests $1 (1 voting share).

The whales will likely communicate amongst themselves privately with greed as their motivation. The 1,000 will likely communicate amongst themselves in a variety of manners (Bitcoin thread, PM's, emails, etc. . .) along with the 1 one dollar investor with curiosity, creativity, and learning as their motivation. Assuming the community of $1,000 and the 1$ investors are of a like mindset and the whales are of a like mindset and a referendum is raised that is self serving, greedy, and not in keeping with the spirit (best interests) of the community at large. Who wins the vote? Maybe it's my naivete' and faith in mankind, but I contend the 1,000 and the 1 will prevail. What is required by the 1,001 is the same kind of due diligence that the 10 will exhibit (driven by greed). If individuals contained in the 1,000 are the designers, engineers, and other key technology players and the 1,001 do not apply due diligence and consequently lose the vote, how much productive work would one imagine will get done. My guess is that when work grinds to a halt, the whales will bail. And if the proper legal framework is in place the 10, 1,000, and the 1 all re-coup their investment. The community still wins as they are the possessor of the IP which the whales are clueless about. At this juncture, the community has a plethora of options on how to proceed with what will be disruptive technology.

Additionally, if an individual shareholder had the ability to proxy their voting shares, for the exclusive purpose of voting in referendums, it would be easy for a singular individual to wield immense voting control. If numerous minority shareholders proxied their shares to a trusted individual of like minded high moral/ethical caliber . . . .

"I have zero money so apparently would have no say in the project whether I were to help or not."
1) As envisioned currently, which is subject to change as a result of a better idea, 1 share = $1 par value. I'll give you the dollar and I think many others would as well. But I think I get the jist of what your      saying/implying. I can think of, off the top of my head, several individuals who if they needed the "grub stake" I'd "sponsor" them, gratis, with the cash/BTC to become financially involved. Again, "no strings attached". And I think I'm not alone in this, as others would be with acquaintances they know.

Additionally, a referendum could be raised to bestow shares to an individual either by diluting everyone's outstanding shares or by issuing them from existing capital shares (i.e. shares the company owns that have not been assigned/purchased). This creates some interesting tax liabilities for the individual but not insurmountable ones. This happens fairly regularly in corporate America today at the executive level. Where a board of directors (shareholders in this model) either sell at a reduced cost or gift capital stock to executives so they "have some skin" in the game as part of their compensation package. The theory is that if they perform, share holder value will increase and their individual share value will increase along with it. Pay based performance, so to speak. As another example, several public companies I've worked for have allowed me to purchase capital stock at par value, which at the time of purchase was several hundred % less than what the market price was. Sometimes this is called an employee stock purchase plan.

So let's take an example, You're significantly contributing (or somebody just feels sorry for you) to the design team. A singular design team member could raise a referendum, given your stellar performance, to have the corporation gift you with XXX capital shares. If voted up and you accept the gifting, you become a vested shareholder with decision making authority and participate in any profit dispersal the company may declare going forward. i.e. you become a share holder of record just like anyone who plopped down cash/BTC.

Similarly, a referendum could be raised to make a cash/BTC payment (for services rendered) to an individual. The individual would then be free to do what they will with the money/BTC.
A referendum could be raised to loan money to an individual or other entity. And they could likewise spend the money however they see fit.

There are multiple paths to ownership suffice to say. But all are based on what the community (in this case share holders) deems is appropriate and prudent to the health of the entity and the community at large.

2) As envisioned currently, which is subject to change as a result of a better idea, participation would not be restricted as I imagine the discussion would be public.

3) Assuming this endeavor actually does get a chip to tapeout and they are sold for even a minuscule infinitesimal micro-miniature net profit,
    a) what would you envision doing with that profit?
    b) and assuming it would be dispersed, what would be a fair metric to determine how it would be dispersed?

The model I'm working on will give the "every man" share holder a say in the decision making process and if the "every man" share holder bands together (which I've seen this community do) it can effectively steer the direction the ecosystem goes. Regardless of powerful outside manipulators.

None of the above is said and questions asked with even a tincture of sarcasm (with the exception of the feeling sorry for comment,  ).
I am simply truly curious and welcome solutions to the existing paradigm.

If there is a way to make this happen fairly that prohibits ego's from manifesting themselves, that ethicality needs to be in the foundation.

And the topics/advantages of Public Benefit Nonprofit Corporations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-benefit_nonprofit_corporation) and Mutual Benefit Nonprofit Corporations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual-benefit_nonprofit_corporation) have not even been broached.

As a footnote, I'm really glad these questions are surfacing now as opposed to later.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Maragret Mead

My intention is to create a new thread in the not so distant future.
I'll also be soliciting for moderators as I'm a F'ing newb at that too.

I'm a newb at fabbing chips, but have a strong desire to know/learn all the aspects ("inquiring minds wanna' know").
But I would not want to become a hindrance to the very gifted, brilliant, and accomplished folks that lurk in these here waters.

In the organization model I'll be proposing, a shareholder may raise a referendum to be included in the design team (or any other team for that matter).
Then all the shareholders vote that referendum up or down (I assume shareholders will vote based on the merit of their referendum).

With regard to the discussion that the design team has ongoing, I envision that will be a separate thread.
So that anyone (whether they are on the design team or not, a shareholder or not) may contribute to the "brain working" and/or learn the process.

This participation would only be limited by shareholder determined IP restrictions.
In other words, if the shareholders were to ratify a referendum that restricted the release of information regarding a design, for say patent/IP reasons, then those particular aspects of the design would be withheld.

Speaking of a new thread and parameters thereof; the entity will need a name.
My input would be "Alliance Chip & Circuit Design (ACCD)"

Suggestions? Thoughts? Inputs?

Thanks guys/gals.

IMHO, shipping, delivery costs, delivery delays, etc. are component costs of ownership and can be quantified. Just sayin', not criticizing, If I was ordering an expensive piece of mission critical equipment I would include a guaranteed delivery method in the total cost of ownership or elect a different avenue.

A long while back we ordered a butt load of miners from Bitmain and they got stuck in American customs cuz' the total declared value on the one business (versus personal) waybill exceeded $2500. It cost us extra money, days, duty, and numerous phone calls to get UPS to interface with customs to get them released. The combined dollar value of payments to UPS, lost mining revenue, duty, and phone expense would have easily covered me hopping on a plane to China and couriering them back on the same flight, potentially as checked luggage. Since I have no desire to "tour" China we now ensure that each waybill exhibits a declared value of less than $2500. It was an expensive lesson regarding the various shipping options available and customs wrangling.

Am really sorry you're stuck learning this lesson, but imagine (as smart as you are) it won't bite ya' in the butt going forward.