[->Foxpup] Hey, don't bite the newbies, it seemed like a genuine question (AGF as that other board says), however this ...


I think I have to agree with your last, but you may still have some fun on here  

Solo mining risks orphaned blocks (no money!) unless you are very well connected to the rest of the bitcoin hashing network. Don't even consider it unless you have an enormous hash rate.

But answering your main point. Current nethash is around 120THash/sec, solving a block every 10 minutes. Just work backwards from how often you want to solve a block. Once per day needs around 1THash. 50GHash may solve one block a month.

Are you sure you did the math right? Using the calculator http://coinish.com/calc I get $3.09 (0.028BTC) per day at diff 100,000,000 for 5.5GHash/sec Jalapeno (ref https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227101.0 which is a nice post). That's a lot less than $480 per month. Don't forget to play with expert mode to see the effect of difficulty rise on ROI.

I agree with your last point, the early orders will make a killing, just not anyone ordering today.

[Edit]Or maybe you meant to say you've ordered four BFL 7GHash/sec (the upgrades). That would be about right for $480/month (but you'' still need to account for difficulty rise in ROI calculation). How much did you pay for them?

I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to ask as this is just so ridiculous, but just for the lols.

Which process are you using 110nm, 65nm, 28nm, 18nm ?

Which foundry ?

Which design tools? Do you own them or are you moonlighting at work?

How did you fund the mask set, using MPW shuttle?

What's the hash rate for mining litecoin instead of bitcoin?

Enough for now. Lets see what you come up with.

Whose chips are you using? 300MH/s sounds like a single Avalon, or maybe Asicminer (but they are not selling their chips, making far too much profit with Block Erupters at 2BTC). BFL are 4GH/s so it can't be them. Don't tell me you're making your own?

Anyway even 1.5BTC is a money loser the way difficulty is currently rising (do the math on the ROI folks).

Too many scams these days. Caveat emptor.

Bitcoin Comprehension Fail (and from a hero member too!!). The network averages one block every ten minutes, regardless of hashrate. 

Unfortunately its this attitude (yes, I know you're only j35t1ng) that has caused the spike in ASIC pre-orders, subsequent price hike and is contributing to the huge rise in difficulty. In a Gold Rush only those that sell the shovels get rich. Take care and do the math on your ROI.

Done https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228068.0
Hopefully you will be whitelisted now this is more visible.

Cross posted from newbies with permission of OP (not quoted for readability, but I'll edit if this is confusing)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227625.0

OP is SwedErik https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=127256


Found the threads about KNCminer on this forum and since I know a little about this company. Well actually the formal company "kncminer" is soo new so the one I know about is orsoc, which is
one of it's two parent companies. The other parent company that is owned by two guys do I not know much about, but they does not seem to be have with anything similar in the past, but has worked in the financial sector...

I created an account and will post what I know. I saw a good summary posted by someone who attended the "openday":


I can just confirm everything above and start with the "posstive" things. I do not know the relation between ORSoC or KnCMiner, but I can confirm that ORSoC has been around for quite some time and has made profit in the last 3-5 years. In range of $80k-$250k. They do various things but profile themselfe as fpga consultants. I honestly do not belive that they are trying to make an obvious scam (like; scam people and flee the country), but I would NEVER pay a single dollar in advance. See below for reasons;
They have a history with the "openrisc" cpu that they have been promoting for many years. People who are paying them for a-yet-to-be-produced asic should know that this is not the first time they are collecting money in advance for an asic design. Previous try was with a promise to produce an openrisc cpu (at a MUCH less advance process than .28), they gathered some money from the community (the "campaign" may still be active, I do not know, google for it!). However, when the project did not take off, I think most of the money just went into their company...  
As far as I know there was nu public records for the accounting, allthought it was "pitched" as a "community project".

Among other local companies within the same sector, they are quite well known for being "close to impossible to work with" and quite a few companies has bad relations with them. Ask around!!!
My personal belief is some of the people have little touch with reality and tends to be better on producing visions rather than code/hw! That's why I said above that I do not thing they are doing an "obvious scam", but I fear that the result may be the same.

Among the five people listed I think would say that four of them are 100% "non-technical". I guess others are also working in producing working code. To my knowledge no one has ever been involved in asic production before (I could be wrong on this) and they are now about to go directly to a 28nm tape out... . Yeah right!
But since there are quite a few "non-technical" people on the project (at least relativly) I'm not suprised that they do a good job in marketing and come out with new ideas about lotto and other stuff instead of actually showing working stuff.
Or is it 100% confirmed that the mars prototype is actually is working a specified speed??! If soo, why is it not up for sale?

Some other thoughts and things I would think is an absolute must before even going public with something like this:

* I read about canceling mars.... well, if you can not even meet deadlines or results on the fpga, why even bother moving along to an asic? It's a bit contradictive when they claim they basically will use the same pcb for asic as fpga, but they need to focus on asic. To my knowledge it more or less standard to verify that the design is working in fpga (at much lower clock/density) before moving to asic. Why not release this then if it's so magical... Even if the fpga is working PERFECTLY it's a LONG way before doing a tape out (escpecially at 28nm)...
* At least a few people with experince of asic production.
* SOME budget that at least shows that there is a possibility that they can handle a production run at 28nm.... Are you guys aware of the HUGE costs involved??! My guess would be several millions of USD.... however, I have not either done anything similar so it's a guess, but should at least give SOME indication.
* + Some financial backing for doing a tape out at 28nm.... not just relying on massive preorders.
* + some proof that the company and owners really risk their own money, not money collected from users preorders
* It's not that many FAB:s that do 28nm, is it public who they will use? If not, if this is legit, why should it be keept secret? All chip manufactures are quite open about who produce their devices.

Well, these are just my thought, based on what I know and heard from others in the industry. Sure it would be cool if they could produce such a device, but I highly doubt it based on what I know and have read about kncminer. If it sounds to good to be true, it is probably to good to be true.  

Sothisiswhytherearesomanyhighpostingnewbieswhowillgoinstantheroonceoutofjail ... that's a word I just made up.

This would be very useful on the Custom Hardware forum. I can cross-post a copy if you're not whilelisted soonish.
(Waiting on response).

Yah, but be careful with voltage levels. Connecting to a full voltage RS232 is going to fry the fpga instantly. You'll need level translation (even for a 5V TTL  port). The serial protocol is customised too (and fixed at 4800 baud to work with a minimalist opto-isolator circuit), so its not just plug and play here. Then again if you're buying an fpga development/educational board you should expect to have to put some effort in

Oh, and to repeat, its only 5MHash/sec, or 2.34MHash/sec or whatever. Just a toy which will mine you some dust only.

[Edit] Clarifcation, by "you" I mean "you dear reader", not "you razorfishl" as you're clearly far more knowledgeable than me!!

Your guess is as good as mine. But you're very late to the party, so if you're buying ASIC hardware to mine you are going to be way down the queue for shipment which will make a huge difference to whether you make a profit or not. As for ASICMINER shares, again its late so you take a chance that they are grossly overpriced for the expected return (I haven't researched this, so don't take my word for it, and all the standard disclaimers about advice on shares apply).

IMHO its all a big gamble, but if you're game then do the math first. From an earlier post ...

Good question. BFL were bragging that their technology was so much more advanced than "the competition", then when they finally got working silicon (after several expensive design iterations!!), they discovered that it was far more power hungry than their estimations, and had to redesign their boards (and whole product range, note that they are currently only shipping their smallest Jalapinos). Just too much heat being generated inside their cute little boxes.

As for why? Well a like-for-like comparison for the same hashing architecture on the 65nm vs 110nm process should give a significant efficiency gain (I've been out of this biz for a long time now, so I won't hazard an exact figure). So it looks to me that Avalon did a better design (its Ngzhang after all, who did the Icarus and Lancelot FPGAs, he's good).

As for 23nm, that will be a while off (if ever) as the mask costs are far more expensive. Expect next gen to be 65nm (possibly with improved architecture), then maybe 45nm if BTC is still with us by then.

PS I forgot kncminer. They are using a 28nm process but its all still vaporware at the moment. They have takena very few pre-orders for September delivery (they are using a mask sharing scheme to save on up-front costs, so their initial throughput is very limited). We'll just have to see what comes of it.

Its very difficult to guess. I've been reading over at the Mining Speculation threads https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=81.0 and there are many different opinions, and that's just predicting the next few months, let alone years. But one fact is that ASICMINER are currently a full 25% of the mining hash rate, so yes, the big boys would seem to be taking over. But to balance that there is a huge backlog of ASIC orders from general punters which should start to be delivered over the next few months.

As for what happens when the difficulty rises ten fold (as is commomly predicted for the end of the year), its going to cause a shake down of the current GPU miners, and all but the earliest ASIC pre-orders are looking at making a loss in BTC terms. Then next-gen ASIC will start to pre-order and the treadmill will start to spin again.

Interesting times (and my bedtime, so no more from me today).

Plenty.

The current ASICs are based on very old technology as the up-front tooling costs (mask manufacture) were much cheaper than state of the art processes. Avalon uses a 110nm process, BFL uses 65nm process (hence the Avalons using far more chips than BFL for the same performance, though probably a good move as Avalon got it right the first time, while BFL's development was a series of disasters).

Given the success of ASICs (to the manufacturers anyway), there is a huge incentive to build on more state of the art processes, which will be faster and lower power comsumption. AFAIK the current commodity foundries are at around 23nm, and Moore's law still has a few generations left to go yet before it hits the endpoint (transistors don't work once you're down to a few dozen atoms in width).

So there is going to be lots more excitement to come (both success and failure) over next next few years, and that's not even allowing for black swan's like quantum computing. Stock up on the popcorn!

Probably the only way to profit from ASICs at the moment (unless you're the lucky owner of an early Avalon or BFL pre-order). They are certainly profiting on the Block Erupter sales (warning to prospective buyers, do the math on the ROI, its a very bad deal at the current 2.0BTC asking price).

Take care what you invest in, the current products are way over priced and unlikely to make you any profit (you'll mine less BTC than it cost you to buy).

You could have a lot more fun than mining BTC if you had a time machine. But there are some risks ... Primer ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

You need to change your avatar to a bitcoin so we can see what you look like