This should come as no surprise, trouble is, several people saw this opportunity a long time ago so they're way behind the curve.

Its a shame that individuals will lose out but it was inevitable if you chose to effectively finance companies that didn't care about the little guy by buying their products.

They've still done nothing wrong.

Granted, they could have gone about things a better way but their minds may be focused on what happens when they get their prototypes in a few weeks. This just shows how much people will read into things, I couldn't give a rat's arse if they put up pictures of miming rigs, tulips or hyenas, as long as they give technological information that stands up.

So come on guys, what about some provisional data and stop this thread getting any longer?

I have to say that showing random photos of the insides of various industrial plants plus one of a 4" wafer does nothing to demomstrate their technology, nor does a bunch of graphs with headings like "Consumer Price Index", "Population Growth" and so on.

Sure, it's just space filler but it might have been better just to put 'under construction'.

Oh, and by the way guys, no one EVER said that Scrypt couldn't be "asic'd", any decent electronics designer could clearly deduce that it could and would at some point if it was commercially viable.

Sorry, forgot to add, the reason that you can apply for their liquidation is that if they are unable to pay their debts, the company is INSOLVENT and so should cease trading

Hello all,

Came to this thread by accident. I've not read through it all but what I have read makes me very angry, so I'd just like to introduced you to a little known legal tool in the UK called a 'Statutory Demand' which is way of demanding payment of monies owed to you by a company, whether it's an individual or a limited company (US corporation), This is the government website link:

https://www.gov.uk/statutory-demands/overview

It was really designed as a way of one company forcing a debtor to pay up, it's not used an awful lot and almost never by individuals, but that doesn't mean that individuals can't use it. It doesn't cost anything except the cost of registered or recorded delivery post to 'serve' it on the company in question.

Now here's the killer:

Even if your claim may rest on soemwhat shaky ground in terms of Alpha's T's & C's, you can still put in your claim and:

LEGALLY THEY MUST RESPOND TO YOUR CLAIM WITHIN 21 DAYS. IF THEY DON'T THEN YOU CAN ENTER A PETITION TO WIND UP (LIQUIDATE) THEIR COMPANY

Now one person doing it will just be a nuisance to them, but 100? or 1000? They don't have the option to ignore any one of you, because you might be the one that petitions for liquidation! This is not in any way similar to a small claims action, that takes place  in a court before a judge (or sheriff in Scotland) and each claimant has to pay court fees to lodge their claim. 'Class action' cases' are difficult to bring before UK courts.

The key here is mass action, one individual demand won't cut it.

I'm pretty sure that there will be some of you that live in the UK to coordinate this if you go down this road. What might be advantageous to you
all is to write (NOT EMAIL) to Alpha and demand your money back (on the basis that you haven't got the product or refund you were promised) giving the 7 days to do so. It can be 'served' by recorded delivery post, about £1.80 in the UK. They will likely ignore you or send out a standard letter, it doesn't really matter what they say, your DEMAND is what they ultimately have to answer, the 7 day letter merely reinforces your Statutory Demand.

This is not driven by consumer law, that's why it's so sneaky!

If nothing else it will force them to do something. Everyone's claim will be different so they won't be able to get away with a standard letter, there is too much risk that a court will accept a petition for liquidation if they do this. If they get liquidated yes, you may lose your money bus as a creditor you have rights and that includes forcing the liquidator to bring the company directors to account, and perhaps even asking for criminal action to be taken against them if they have behaved fraudulently. It does happen regularly, believe it or not.

Hope you all get a result of some kind!

I'm not familiar with all that's gone before here but I think this is worth looking into.

If Alpha's people are reading this then they might want to consider telling you the truth about what they've done with your money and try to find a resolution. Directors have statutory duties in the UK to protect monies they are given either as investment or payment for goods, They can be jailed if it's found that they did not exercise due care in protecting those monies and spent them on their personal enrichment. Think on.

At the end of the day, all they have done is tell the forum members that they have taped out their chip. They are not asking for your money nor are they promising something that they may not be able to deliver, sounds like good engineering practice to me.

They have done absolutely nothing wrong or underhand except share information on their plans. Whether you like their plans or not, at least they have given an indication of where they are planning to go. Personally, I don't think what they are doing is particularly cost effective but I do hope that they make it and that it works.

What they have done is encourage some debate, which is never a bad thing. I'm pretty sure that if they want to sell you something then they'll give out all the information you need.

You don't give yourself enough credit, the best technologists are the ones that realise they don't have a piece of knowledge instead of bullshitting that they are an expert. Then they go and learn about it. Silicon design and power estimation are defined by fairly simple mathematics and physics, and for anyone with an inquiring mind, a desire to learn and a bit of patience, it's easy to learn the basics.

Particle physics? That's a whole different ballgame!

Both are fixed algorithms. If you are familiar with silicon design you can accurately determine how many times each gate/transistor in an engine stage switches in one arithmetic cycle. Knowing roughly how much power that consumes based on the characteristics of the process node - and looks from the initial power figures quoted that it's still a good 'ol fashioned 28nm straight gate based design - then it's very easy to get a good approximation of the power consumed. It's also very easy to calculate the power of the embedded DRAM blocks. Try it and see.

Us? Do you think you're Queen Victoria?

Seriously, do the maths and you'll see exactly why this configuration is a very bad idea. If you can make any such arrangement work, then there's something seriously wrong in your calculations.

If you need any help, just post here.

Dual mining technologies on a single chip is not a good idea, there are almost no common parts between the two hashing engines, the silicon for the scrypt engine is a waste of space unless LTC price goes up considerably. Also, the scrypt engine will be relatively power hungry.

For those of you unfamiliar with scrypt physical implementation please read this excellent article by Alpha Technology:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Falpha-t.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F11%2FAlpha-Technology-Scrypt-Analysis-on-FPGA-proof-of-concept.pdf&ei=ljMXVarbNJHaaIH-gZAB&usg=AFQjCNG9nKGtWnMgUeKH2mHZclPgyOxKIw&bvm=bv.89381419,d.d2s

It was for an FPGA implementation but it shows very clearly the arithmetic, logic and memory processes. In particular, have a look at the last part that shows hashrate against frequency for a single engine. Factor in the power requirement on a 28nm implementation and you'll see exactly why it's a bad idea right now.

Yes, I know Alpha has it's problems but I always respect any company that freely publishes knowledge for the benefit of others.

As for SFARDS I wish them good luck with their chip, especially with routing it.

$3.33 per Gigahash? You're having a laugh, right? 60Gh/s at current exchange rate will earn you around $4 a month, giving you a grand total of $48 per year for your $200.

According to Joseph Bessimer, 'there's a sucker born every minute'; don't let it be you, folks.

Why are you guys even dignifying this comment by posting about it?

In historic terms you're absolutely right but for a miner, home or professional, to simply stay the same means that they would need 4x as much hashing power at the same electricity cost. 16nm won't deliver anywhere near that, against a 28nm design at best it'll give twice the density at 50% power reduction, ie a performance gain of 2. Trouble is, the silicon costs 2.5 times as much and the NRE/development costs are about 4 times as much and someone has to pay them.

Well, some of it is known as asic manufacturers are busy announcing new devices in 16nm for 2015, but their expectations of performance are mostly pure fantasy. However, that won't stop the network hashrate growing rapidly as more capital is put into building bigger and bigger farms.

Trust me on this, there are monsters lurking in the wings; expect network hashrate of 1200PH by June 2015, even with Btc at $350.

Good point, and that's why jumping into a largely unproven technology is not the thing to do. All the industry pundits pretty much agree that it'll be 5 years at least before 16nm actually becomes cost effective against 28nm, except for those few applications where speed and density are essential. Bitcoin doesn't really fall into this because of the energy issue. At the moment, a 28nm mask set costs around $1.7 million, for a 16nm one it's about $7.5-8.5 million unless you're a really big customer like Qualcomm or Apple, relative to their quantities Bitcoin asic volumes are tiny.

Their figure of 0.07W/ (Gh/sec) is pure fantasy, this if simply a trick to try to put doubt into their competition's minds. Look at it this way, they had plenty of time to work some magic with their Neptune machine on 20nm, yet it's power consumption is higher than most 28nm implementations. FinFet is not some magical process with a quantum leap in terms of performance, (about 50% lower power than 28nm), so unless they've done a very clever full custom design - which I sincerely doubt they have the ability to do - then the 0.07 is nonsense.

There are custom devices that exist in 28nm that can easily beat this figure by a significant margin, so I think they may well be spending a lot of money on something that is already way behind the curve.

Gentlemen,

Much though I'm sure the forum readers are enjoying seeing two members have a go at one another, your disagreement certainly confirms what most technical professional know about any kind of product evaluation - it should be carried out by properly qualified, paid third parties who have no bias in their measurement criteria and can maintain objectivity.

Unfortunately the world doesn't always work that way, but I for one have always found it rather unsettling that mining rig manufacturers find it necessary to submit products to forum member(s) for evaluation - and hopefully endorsement. It's unprofessional and exemplifies the amateur attitude  of most of the rig companies. There are plenty of companies they could go to and pay to get a proper engineering evaluation done, and the results might be surprising as there would be no biases.

Look at the car market - you get dyed in the wool journalists who will never criticise their favourite manufacturer, even if they make a real dog. On UK TV we have a program called Top Gear hosted by a obnoxious oaf called Jeremy Clarkson who will never, ever admit that anyone can make a better sportscar than Ferrari, despite clear evidence to the contrary. They (Ferrari ) treat him like royalty, and he repays them in spades.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the bias shown to Cointerra in the forums, admittedly mostly due to their previously appalling customer service, means that probably they'll never again get a truly objective view taken of their business by any forum member.

Objectivity goes out the window in both these cases, and that's why product evaluations and comparisons should be done by independents like the UK's Which? organisation or JD Power, leaving technical testing to properly qualified, independent experts.

Aerobatic has never tried to hide his investment in Cointerra and probably feels that they have been unfairly criticised. He's a very articulate and clearly thoughtful person who believes the in the company and was willing to put his hand in his pocket as a result. I personally enjoy reading his input to the forums and if he's complaining about something it's usually for good reasons.

W

The key line here is "if sources at KNC are to be believed", and if you feel that they can be trusted then that's a personal decision, since they don't plan on selling any then you'll never know whether this is horseshit or not. Might frighten their competition though, but going on KNC's past record for efficiency I wouldn't worry too much if I was them, Spondoolie's 28nm design easily outperforms their 20nm one. Cointerra's figures are much more believable, although they are rather on the high side.

What is fact is that moving to 16nm Finfet from 20nm does NOT give you a 10 fold decrease in power consumption, even with 3D transistors. What is fact is that there are physical solutions in 28nm that can better their figure with good 'ol 2D transistors - translating to 0.034 W / (Gh/sec) in 16nm.

So there's something for the "sources at KNC" to consider.

Incidentally, why the 5000 cores guys? Got something against working in powers of 2 or is the yield expected to be so bad that 20% of your cores are unusable?

Copper is popular, reasonably cheap and works very well. It's easy to recycle and can be done so almost indefinitely, it will be around for a long time to come.