And whats the benefit of doing so, to anyone? The RTL we already have (well, more or less), anything beyond that like the synthesis and  place and route will be covered by NDAs, but even if they werent, it would only be useful at one specific fab using one particular process and its usefulness would be limited to someone nearly doubling the NRE by ordering pretty much the exact same maskset. If this chip arrives 6+ months after BFL, I would be surprised if they could recover the costs of one design and maskset, anyone trying to do the same another 6 months later is completely out of his mind. "Opensourcing" stuff like PCB design is almost equally pointless, the PCB will be utterly tied to the asic.

I think many people here would like to see BFLs bitstream and have people improve on it, and therefore think opensource hardware is somehow good, but that only works for FPGAs. Once this asic has taped out, any brilliant idea anyone might have to improve on it will be useless.

Anyway, I dont think this is the biggest hurdle this project has ahead of it. Im my mind, Ive started making a list of "bitcoin tops and flops of 2012", and I fear this project will feature in the latter list, along with Diablo's $1M Mining corporation, Vladimirs "huge" asic mining company and a few other pies in the sky. But I guess we'll see.

I see, so I should just believe the 3 or 4 people on here that love to slam this company and could have easily set up a fake quote from a BFL employee rather than believe the actual press release given by the company itself.  Sure. 

This is a joke?

Kid, go ask your bank to see for yourself.

I don't know if I believe this post since on the BFL press release it says very clearly ---

"Because our first and second generation equipment is expected to be outpaced very quickly by the new hardware, customers who have purchased earlier generation products will be able to trade them in at 100% of their value toward the purchase of SC-generation hardware."

It would be nice if BFL would come here and explain this in their own words rather than hear it from a 3rd party.

you don't get it right guys. don't get it right.
not about the sun, or internet connection, its about the people who live there.
do you really think they will even know how to open the pc if they are from a "3 world country" living in a "tribe" LOL

even if the start button will be on a cow's ass they don't know how to operate the OS

Sorry that is a load of garbage.
1) While you may have convinced your customers that week long delays are unacceptable on wires they aren't.  Due to your inability to get a wire done in <14 days I needed to have funds wired to me from my brokerage.  I requested a $20K wire at 8AM and it cleared by noon.  A week later I requested an $85K wire and it cleared within 6 hours. 

2) While an international wire may take longer it shouldn't be taking 19 days longer.  That is whole point of AML verification.  My bank account is AML verified.  My MtGox exchange account is AML verified.  How much investigation can one possibly due in 19 days.  You have my info it either checks out or it doesn't.  You never asked for more info to aid your investigation.  I mean how many times can you look at my utility bill over the course of 19 days?

3) If my funds are being held for an investigation (which I don't think they are) are you committing a crime here:


You are advising your customer on how to avoid an AML investigation? 
Should the Japanese regulators be made aware of this?

I doubt your customer support is stupid enough to document a conspiracy to avoid AML/KYC procedures.  The reality is that  this has nothing to do w/ AML does it?

You will only get 1:1 though

No troll, just an observation and a simple question. Currently, asic topics have more in common with cosplay fanboys in chicken suits than they do being in an FPGA subforum, with one being fantasy and the other a tangible item that truly exist in our shared space and time. just sayin. FPGAOGTFO!

and gpu?....hahah...who's trollin?...what tar pit you climb out of, dino? The only tar pits I know of that are still profitable for gpu are generally named things like "parents basement", or "under my desk, hidden from boss".

And I wonder why more ppl have not caught on to being Gox'ed. These fuckers are fraudulent!

On another note, There has been multiple times within the last ~6mo that the price per btc randomly dropped to like $2 per btc... then back up to normal price... They have closed my account and friends accounts for no reason and KEPT THE BTC.

Why are they popular, because of these forums... and others that have no idea of their history.

Gox, go eat a bowl of dicks!

Is there not a fantasy sub forum somewhere better suited for this? You can ponder pixie dust, unicorns, and asic for bitcoin mining without annoying those who actually want to read about the hardware they own and run in this thing we call RealLife™.

They don't have the actual wafer, just a simulation. ASICs are very complicated and sometimes require several re-spins to get right. Even CPU/GPU manufacturers with years of experience end up having to do re-spins on newly released products, such re-spins are called steppings, or require firmware updates to take care of Erratas.
With ASIC it's difficult to fix with firmware update so a re-spin is usually required.

The BFL FPGA only had a custom power phase design from BFL and on the first attempt they didn't get this right (as they said the simulation showed a power consumption of 20w when it turned out to be 80w so power circuitry had to be redesigned)

Right now they are designing an ASIC without prior experience in designing such things (the FPGA chip is off the shelf product so they can't call it their own)

I dont get how you get forget things that you did only 6 months ago. Im pretty sure the link to the exchange was in your sig but it seems you changed your sig sometime today. I dont see how you can call mining unprofitable when there are tons of people doing it for a profit and you were even getting free equipment.

To me you are a scammer who started to feel bad so you gave back some of the money you stole to feel a little better.

edit: I did a VERY(very) quick look in your post history and didn't see the bux-e thread, I know there is one... but here is one of your posts on Bitflow thread where you mention it. (at this point you had abandoned the original idea to purse this exchange venture.)

These things are awesome, as I stated ages ago...



5x 5830 Sapphire Extremes running K90 2-heatpipe Coolers. Under 60c running overclocked in a warm room.....and nearly dead silent.

I am also running a K120 on an oddball 6950 XFX card (factory cooler couldn't cool the card, shitty XFX chips...) that I have left and it stays under 60C also, same mining conditions....

To all gigaminers:

In light of how the Butterfly labs trade-in program works, I have decided hold back on ordering the 4 new mini rigs and will instead be ordering 4 SC mini rigs when BFL decides to accept orders. The net effect of this will allow for gigaminers to be one of the first to join in on ASIC profits when this equipment starts to ship.

Once I have more clarification from BFL around how all of this will work, I will post another update.

As for today's delivery of the first 4 mini rigs, I have a tracking number and the carrier says it is guaranteed for today.

Best,
gigavps

Have a problem ?

I realised that BFL or quit is the only option for a GPU miner like me.

I will quit.

Its time for a reality check; if you have yet to select a fab and process, you cant even have taped out yet, much less have a maskset. What you do have is an FPGA design that might be ported to a process, but that still needs to be done, the analog part probably still needs to be done, the design must be tested, characterized and validated for that process,  then you have to order the maskset, wait for it to be produced, then you have to order the wafers, wait for wafer processing, you have to get the chips cut, packaged and tested, design and order and test the PCBs, do Q&A, software, etc.

IOW, you are as far as BFL would have been 9 (or more likely 12) months ago. How in the world do you expect to beat them to market?

No offense Gusti, but by your own admission you have no experience in the semi conductor industry and you seem to be treating this as the purchase of a car or something, asking around quotes and expecting to place an order and be done with it. Even for a structured ASIC it wouldnt be quite that simple, but the development process of a custom asic is a lot more complicated than that, and I would feel a lot more confident in the outcome of your project if someone was involved that has any experience designing, producing and bringing to market a digital design of any kind. I know thats not you, nor Jason, so I would urge you to bring someone on board who has that experience. Now you could outsource all of that (prepare for a shock when you get the quote and tentative planning) but then you wouldnt be negotiating with fabs like you say you are.

As for the business aspect of this; you may call it opensource or community driven, but what does that even mean if you are simply a company that will fund the NRE to develop and sell another asic? I fail to see the big difference with BFL.  If the community aspect of this will be the funding, good luck raising the $1+M you would need to come to market with a product that will start a price war with BFL (and potentially others) who will already have recovered their NRE and because of their early sales, will have pushed up difficulty to a point where your asics will be worth only a fraction of what they could be worth today.

I may be missing something, and I hope Im wrong, but I just dont see how this is going to fly.