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Well I haven't had a payout in a few days... Tried manual and got
"Payouts have been disabled temporarily while we investigate a payout issue."
What sort of issue... any idea when it might be resolved?
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I was wondering the same, however from a different angle:
Will there be a super ASIC 2.0? With a similar gap like the one between FPGA and ASICs? Or do you predict there to be a much softer increase in efficiency (like the usual doubling in increase every 18 months)
not really. In the case of 120nm ASIC, the best you could hope for 14nm - so maybe an 85% better asic at some point in the future. |
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Site is down now...
Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111) - Probably missing DB config temporarily while redeploying the website. Please ignore this error and try again in a few minutes.
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Sorry for the late post - but any netgear router can be set to operate as a wireless access point... which has the side effect of turning the ethernet ports into a switch... SMC routers all have this same 'feature' as well.
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So, the name of the game is to always stay on the bleeding edge of the available tech...in the hopes that you are implementing and bringing that tech to bare so you can collect an increased percentage of profits before all the other guys catch up. Then it's rinse and repeat with the next innovation?
Sorry if this is an ultra-noob understanding of all this I'm just fascinated by the whole process.
I suppose you could look at it that way... What it really comes down to is economy of scale. Yes, I know that the useful idiots tend not to agree. But listen this is more about simple economics than anything else. If you invest to the point that you're making whatever income level from mining that you want. Then you re-invest to compensate for total network hash rate increases so you continue to make that income level (or more). The economy of scale comes into effect in how much gross btc you can generate in a short enough time frame to keep pulling that income. Because the more income you have the more quickly you can add hardware. It will of course all come down to power consumption in the run. Once we reach that point then you have to make the decision of stopping purchases of new hardware and profit taking or finding better hardware, cheaper power, etc. I say - drop your 120k on mining hardware. Pull in 20k a month... spend half your profits to buy more hardware... be happy to hit 100% a year on your investment. |
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Now we wait to learn how many of each unit BFL will manufacturer from the first 5,000 chips. No matter what the answer, it's going to piss off some people everyone.
FTFY  |
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The ASIC team is a third party we have contracted with to do the design and routing on the chip itself, they are located in California.
I don't have the specifics on the testing procedure, so I can't answer that. They don't need 1000 chips to do the testing, but we can't just send part of a wafer and 1 wafer is around 1000 chips. Testing chips and testing devices are two entirely different things. The testing that's being done on the chips is to make sure the chip design is correct, not whether or not a particular chip works. This round of testing does not care if any individual chip is bad, we just want to know if the new BGA packages has any problems in the design/mask.
Here is Josh's logic fail ^ How can the chips be working if the design isn't correct? oh wait it's a technicality that no one even cares about. If the design or reason for the chips to be designed isnt working how it was intended then it doesn't work. It's obvious from the context that he's saying that this test isn't looking for defective chips, but to evaluate to make certain that the design itself works. I think you need to sharpen your troll-claws smoothie, you're slipping. |
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It's great to say that the bumping facility can't wrap their heads around urgency.
It's also a lie. Every step of the way, every other company they work with is always the one that won't meet promised schedules. Sooner or later Josh looses all credibility. You can't believe anything he says about dates, because he's just making them up as he goes along. 2 days in bumping becomes 2 weeks. Why? Because that 2-day schedule was all in his mind. It isn't exactly a lie... it's just a refusal to admit that BFL screwed up. They probably had everything in order... except no blank wafer... the bump shop isn't going to stop running their business just because BFL wasn't ready to go. Their primary expense is LABOR. So they'll retool the line, and run other jobs while they wait for BFL to be ready. Then once BFL is ready... they aren't stopping a half finished job to retool again... BFL ends up waiting for the end of that (probably much larger) run before being slotted in again. |
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Honestly, I don't know how they're able to not touch a single satoshi of the ASIC pre-order funds, currently operating off the profits of the sales of FPGA products (no longer sold) and VC funding which, BTW, funded the FPGA rigs since none of that pre-order money was also not used during development.
We're talking about massive overhead here, and that's if those in upper management (above Josh) are not taking salary. Speaking of salaries, the best case scenario is that no more than a quarter million dollars has been paid out to the current staff over the past six months, based on prevailing wages and about a dozen personal (no more than 18 employees).
The new warehouse cost is probably their least expense, considering it's a least with a build-to-use clause. Even if the least payment is $3,000/mo (no way it should be more), they could have locked in by paying $36,000 down (year in advance least payments) at the worse case scenario if they couldn't show enough cred to obtain a conventional least. But that's probably not the case, for the Vleisides family has been a fixture around KC for decades.
The above only mentioned to drive the point home that the warehouse cost is one of their least expenses.
That said, unless I figured incorrectly, we're easily at a million dollars that only came from the profit of the FGPA sales and VC funding. Is this possible? Feel free to set me straight on my assessment.
~Bruno K~
Having worked for and managed several small businesses I can tell you that this doesn't seem strange to me at all. This really depends on how deep the pockets of the investors happen to be. How much venture capital was obtained over what period of time. They're certainly going to generate millions in orders the first year after they ship. I personally am prepared to purchase a quarter million worth of rigs about a week after I see some 'in the wild' numbers on them. There must be others planning to do the same. How quickly I'm going to hand over that money or additional money really depends on real world numbers not projections. Moving to a new location is an expense - it's dwarfed by the NRE of setting up asic production. In that you're correct. I couldn't comment on FPGA sales numbers... but I'd imagine that most of their operating costs have come from investor money. With the fpga sales money going to pay wages and costs of operating fpga business. |
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Explain like I'm 5 anyone? How does this help bitcoin mining? Do these serve for mining just as well as "asics"? How do they improve on the structure?
Basically it's possible that if this technology is mass produced and becomes cheap enough... quick enough... that we'll be able to see multiple fpga products that will give existing asics a run for the money. It really depends on how cheaply they're available. |
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If the bumping facility really has the chips bumped and ready for testing by Friday (as they imply for the projected start of deliveries is March 9th) then there is really no need to burn, i.e. destroy 1 whole wafer. 1.000 chips less for the 1st month pre-orders....
I think there point is that there's no benefit in waiting until all of the wafers are bumped - they're going to have to destroy a wafer in order to test unpackaged chips so they might as well destroy the first bumped wafer now as wait until the end of the week. The alternative is waiting until they have some packaged chips to test. If the chips test OK then being able to accelerate the delivery of the other 69,000 chips might be worth the sacrifice - but early chip delivery isn't going to worth a damn unless they get the rest of their production processes streamlined in a hurry. If they can't get 6,000 chips bumped, packaged, placed on boards, assembled into units and shipped, how the hell are they going to manage turning their 63,000 bulk order into working units and getting them to customers before hell freezes over? They are accelerating by 1 week at the most according to their latest timeline.... seeing as the project is already 4 months delayed I really don't see the benefit in destroying 1000 chips Especially not since those 1000 chips could go towards 1st month orders. They are now sacrificing 1st month orders to get later orders filled earlier. As everyone has already paid for their order...and the money is already in the bank for them, they are simply showing a lot of disregard for their early believers.... IMO Not really, if they're holding the 2nd batch for the top 5 layers... that means there probably isn't a 3rd batch right now. What would you rather have? a 1/6th reduction in the size of the first batch... followed by the immediate completion of the second batch... with no delay between processing after that followed by them being able to grow enough to cover all orders... Or wait 2 weeks for all 6 to come out of bumping, dicing, packaging and then they are finally able to test... delaying the second batch being grown, and the ordering of batch 3... imo the point of this who process is to get the NRE handled and the processes in place - then they can reasonably project a real timeline from order to shipped. That's the really important thing for BFL from a product delivery point of view. Because I promise you, anyone who hasn't handed of their money for pre-orders isn't going to until someone has a working unit in hand and they have a good idea about how long it will take to fill the order. |
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So I've come to a strange place... and find myself heading up the development of a Digital Collectible Card Game.
So here's the deal. I should start out by saying that the currently we have 2 artists, a writer and a programmer. We're going for a free to play game with micropayments in bitcoin. The primary source of income will be the sale of digital product packs and tourney tickets. At present, we're willing to give up an even split on any profits made. If you get in now at the beginning (that is very soon) you will be own an equal share of the profit for the life of the game.
Right now there are only 5 of us, and we expect to be able to complete production with between 10 and 15 people.
All positions are unpaid, and you will be asked (as some point, but not soon) to contribute to the costs of running the game. I say asked because if you aren't interested in that... I'll just end up hosting it myself and covering the operating costs (but I'd really rather not). We are looking for a low time commitment, probably only a few hours a week, but we expect the development to last at least a year - possibly as long as 2 years before we start seeing income from the project.
The positions are as follows:
1 x Artist, landscape painting (oil, pastel, watercolor) - FILLED
1 x Artist, character drawings (pencil, ink) - FILLED
1 x Writer, lore design - FILLED
1 x Project Manager - FILLED
1 x Programmer, client server architecture & game mechanics - FILLED
Writer, dialogue and content - This writer will focus mostly on directly generating game dialogue which will be presented in the extensive PVE portion of the game. Will have to be able to convert character definitions into lively and exciting verbal exchanges.
Programmer, code monkey - This programmer get to choose small specific assignments from the Game Bible and develop them. This is not a "figure out what to do" type of position, you'll be told what the goal is, but you're get to implement the solution in code however you'd like. We haven't decided if we're going with c++, c# or XNA and/or XNA GS - as the code monkey you'd have an equal say on these types of decision. Since the game is going to be a client initially released for WIN32 we've ruled out java, flash and unity as platforms.
Programmer, database & bitcoin integration - This programmer would be responsible for the integration of bitcoin addresses and transactions on the bitcoin network, since the game will be using bitcoin as the ingame currency. You'll also need be willing to help develop the micro-payment system for in game markets.
Programmer, graphics and interface - This programmer will be responsible for the design of the graphics overlay and special effects. Since this a CCG frame rates aren't the concern that they could. You'll simply be manipulating the card images over a background and helping to design the user interface.
Graphics Design & Digital Conversion Artist - This artist will be responsible for taking the photos/scans of the physical art produced by other artists and touching it up digitally as well as converting to whatever formats the programmers need to construct the graphics for the game.
Audio Artist - This artist will be in charge of game audio tracks. We'd prefer original composition using your existing digital hardware & instruments. If you could do sound effects that would be great to add some flavor, but isn't strictly required.
As it stands right now, the lone writer is churning out lore... while the rest of us are slowly coming up with card concepts. We want to have the initial (in-house) alpha set have 297 cards, we're shooting for 495 at release. Huge by CCG set standards, but not really all that much considering the game mechanics involved and some of the duplicates in other factions that only involve an art and a name change. We don't have any strict demands for how much time you spend on development but it will need to be a slow progression over the next year. If you become involved now you'll be able to have input on the game mechanics and card design and some limited input on the lore as well.
I decided to post this here first in the hopes that we'd get people who already know what bitcoin is and why we want to use it ingame. Frankly I'm getting sick of having to explain why it's a good idea for micro-payments on a free to play model. That being said, game development is a something we've never done before and we're willing to give you the time and support you need to grow into any of these roles. With the exception of the bitcoin and database programmer - if you're that guy we expect you to be able to already know how to make that work in code.
If you're interested please reply by private msg. If you'd like to comment in the thread feel free to. We're willing to release some basic information about the world, game mechanics and engage in theory-craft with you about the bitcoin related micro-payment systems. Or if you'd just like to tell me what sort of game you'd like to play... I'd be willing to hear that as well.
Have a great day, and thanks for reading.
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BitInstant support can be painfully slow but they're not scammers.
Have ALWAYS had all of my issues resolved by BitInstant.
Link to the order number where you've received no payment?
QFT BitInstant is great when all goes well... when it doesn't support can be slow. But they aren't ripping you off. |
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he said the reference design has network and USB controllers. But of course an integrator could do something different.
In theory you could have boards connected to each other via USB hub, and one board using the ARM core to run the mining software. So you could have a more expensive "primary" board and numerous "secondary" or "slave" boards that don't have all the extra sub systems required on the "primary" and hence cost a bit less. You could then build your own mini rig!!
I really think it would be in our interests to move away from USB as the primary connection method (as a long term goal). Why not ethernet or stat. At least then we could have the option of daisy chaining devices together. As to your previous comment about shiny cases... I'd be fine with having to build my own rack to use bleeding edge tech... but when we're talking about a retail product that can be mass produced it has to be presented well... the only serious options imho a stand-alone case like the BFL mini-rig or a rack mounted case if you want to go for purity of function. I really wish somebody would produce a u3 or u5 asic miner that I could be sold in small lots and just stuck into a rack. |
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This method could be very price competitive.
Take BFL. 8 chips per board, and those chips are a few $$s each to produce, but the development costs have to be spread over the units only BFL sells.
Avalong uses ALOT of slightly less expensive chips, but their cost to produce all those chips and boards etc would likely actually cost them more than BFL. Not to mention their volumes will be smaller- they just aren't set up for really high volumes of assembly it seems, and the power consumption will cost them sales.
For these new chips they will cost more than BFL's-say 5 times more for the integrator once you have paid costs and share of dev. But *if* you only need 2 of them for the same performance you have a small on cost to the integrator compared to BFL-but BFL still have to pay their development costs.
Look at the cost of a motherboard. Most good boards cost $200-$300AUD, and the fancier ones cost up to $500. Now consider all the bridge chips, controllers, LAN chips, audio chips, capacitors etc etc, there is a lot that goes on them. Since there are so many board models the only thing really made in huge volumes are the chips themselves which are used by many different vendors, the cost to develop each board is spread over smaller numbers.
Could this result in a $500 low power high hash ASIC? Possibly if enough integrators come along and compete with each other. It may not be possible for BFL to compete at that price, and I'd say Avalon will be done by the time those prices come around.
Could BFL become the 2nd 28Nm ASIC chip supplier so we get an Intel/AMD battle? Intel still makes their own boards as well. If BFL goes this path for their 2nd gen ASIC then mining really will stay affordable.
Still looking forward to Q3/Q4 to see these new ASIC integrators show their stuff. I can wait til then to part with my $$.
I wonder whether BFL even considered this possibility in their risk management assessments. This might not even be the only company which has developed chips which are near ready for release to the B2B market. For all we know, there's another company out there we haven't yet heard of which has end user units almost ready for release, too. This could force BFL to go to a smaller process sooner than they'd originally planned, or to drop the prices of their current units earlier than they'd hoped. It's definitely going to be interesting as more and more players enter the ASIC market. I doubt it was considered. And it might not make much difference either way. What I mean is, there's really zero downward pressure on prices... assuming that the new offering isn't orders of magnitude better (and a move from 65 to 28 really isn't going to show that much gain imo). You'll dirty the water by having multiple board designers... which maybe help with the prices being lower... But the long and short of it is... if they don't absolutely destroy BFL as far as power draw and shiny packaging they aren't really competition long term. And even if they are... there's no reason they wouldn't have pricing thats identical or very close to BFLs. |
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I love there still aren't any avalon users in this thread... =P
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I think that mtgox being seized via some government shenanigans would be the only that could seriously drop the market now... and that's simply because of the amount of active btc they control on behalf of their users.
There will be a market tank soon - as a result of asics in the wild and the difficulty adjustments... we could see as many as 6 weeks worth of block rewards being generated in couple of days. But the normal support will be largely unaffected by this effect and quickly drive the price back up.
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so, if i ran a botnet friendly pool, what fee would i be able to charge? 5%? 10%?
Fun Question. 10 or 12 percent I imagine. |
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Offer of $55 still open - Just let me know when...
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The fact that they haven't released the source in a timely manner and are violating GPL by withholding it (yes, I actually agree with Kano on this one)... should be raising alarm bells like crazy... You're talking about running a few scripts to remove debug related code. doing a test compile and publishing. That should literally take one coder a couple of hours tops... and that's if they have to manually locate everything they'd want to remove. If the code is at all decent they'd have it tagged already so it could be removed much more quickly.
It's even more than that. Whatever source was used to create the binaries, that's the source that needs to be made available. There's no cleanup to do! In fact, doing some sort of cleanup would be in violation of the GPL, as then the sources wouldn't match the binaries they already shipped. Well if it were actually debug information the compiler would have stripped it out during the compile anyway - that's standard in most (if not all) modern compilers. |
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