This a reply to Bitcoinoramo's post;

I'm not quite sure you think I 'love' BFL. They have indeed royally screwed up what should have been a technical and commercial triumph for their company and a financial one for their customers. I have my own ideas about what they did wrong, but I suspect that both they and their customers don't at this stage give a shit - they just want to get the products out and hashing.

But it's all too easy to get carried away with lots of pre-order cash and think you're some kind of Bitcoin or Silicon god. Technical history of asic designs suggests that such arrogance usually gets rewarded with humiliating failure, and your boys in KNC  / Orsoc are just about to go down the same sorry path. I mean, no chip testing methodology - just solder them to a board and see if they work? Love or hate BFL, at least they did try to get the back end right (eventually).

An earlier post suggested you might be angling for some kind of job with your heroes. Good luck to you, you are certainly defending them a lot which is your right, of course.

It's really a pity they won't put aside the pseudoscience and speculation and actually publish a proper datasheet for the product, just like any regular chip supplier. Something that tells their purchasers exactly what they are promising and - under European Law - they must then deliver (to buyers in the EU at least). It would certainly close off this thread if they did so, and might silence the skeptics, including me.

Perhaps you can help them with this?

If you are using a new process, sometimes the design rules have not been properly defined, and simple things like metal tracks being too close together can spell disaster. I don't know about this Nvidia incident, but I'll bet it was multiple issues that caused the problem.

Forget about all this speculative stuff. If I go to buy a car with a 100 BHP engine, that's what I get. Same with a 2TB hard drive, a 32" waist pair of jeans or a 400g tin of beans. If you don't get what you pay for you would be angry, and rightly so.

In real world engineering, we work in specifications, not speculation. Would you buy a car that 'might' give you 100 BHP? Of course not, you want the figures pinned down tightly as to what you are actually going to get. Yes, you could possibly tune the engine or use Nitrous oxide to 'overclock' it, but both measures might destroy the engine by overstressing it beyond it's design limits.

So demand a proper specification for any miner device - not speculation as to what it 'might' do. If the designers can't give you a proper answer to that question, then you should be very wary. Modern software tools from companies like Cadence can predict very precisely how silicon will behave once manufactured in a particular foundry's process, so as long as the design has been done properly there are NO excuses for not pinning down the specification.

BFL underestimated the power consumption of their asic by a factor of six. This should not have happened, but I suspect they based their figure on an asic process but effectively used an FPGA transfer, using up a lot more gates in the process. On the limited information I have on their device and die size, in a 65nm process they should have a single chip capable of around 11 - 13GH, not 5 -6.

Sorry, the point of your post is?

At what point did you decide the debate had finished?

How does this differ from their statements? Were you taught the meaning of percentages at school? Have you ever done any real engineering?

Another contributor was right - who gives a f*** for anything but the hash rate?

Except, possibly, if there is misinformation about one major thing, how can you trust anything you are told? For example, delivery times.

The more I hear about this project - mostly from it's 'believers' - the more I worry. Not for me, but for the hard working people that have bought into it (literally) and not been given the full facts about what might happen to their money and expectations. They deserve better.

I have nothing to gain or lose whether KNC succeed or fail. But I'd give any other company exactly the same criticism if they came out with shoddy or false specifications, misinformation or unachievable goals.

After all, I thought one of the major purposes of this forum was to watch each others' back? I'll bet you that with the response this post has had there won't be too many chancers offering their 'asics' anytime soon unless they have a proper ,documented plan.

With all due respect, there is no place in my profession for deception, exaggeration, poor design, dubious methodology and 'try it and hope for the best' attitude.

Shit, hit the wrong key.

To continue on my response;

3. I could not believe my eyes when I read that the plan is to simply solder the prototype chips straight
    onto the board without testing. This is an unbelievably stupid plan; any engineer worth their salt
    would be horrified. In asic design there is a well worn path for carrying out evaluation of new chips,
    and this isn't it. It's amateurish and totally unworkable. Plus, it suggests that they have no actual
    test strategy or production test program. But hey, who needs it? (Intel, AMD ............)

    But if you trust your thousands of dollars to these guys, good luck to you.

As regards some of the other comments about semantics, my initial post was about the fact that KNC were misleading potential customers by claiming they had something which they don't. It's dishonest, no
matter what spin you try to put on it. I've still not seen one solid piece of data from them or any of their
'fans' about their design architecture, die size or contingency plans if things go wrong, and if was giving
my money to them, these are not 'optional' facts.

What I did initially see was the specification of their Mars miner which seemed to be able to sold for less than a third of the price that the FPGAs alone within it cost. Bad marketing? Poor engineering? Voodoo?
Who knows, but if you want to be successful in building a complex device costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars in tooling costs, you'd better get your paperwork and specifications right.

The thought of these guys with millions of dollars of pre order money horrifies me - until I get some
straight answers at least.

But again, if you want to be a 'Believer', who am I to tell you otherwise? I've spent my entire
professional life dealing in facts, specifications and good solid engineering methodology. My 'belief'
in this system has always worked, and will continue to do so.

But greed blinds most people. Just look at what's happened to the financial fantasies of the BFL pre
order herd.

Well, well. Seems my post has caused a little bit of debate and controversy.

In answer to some of what I assume are the adolescents among us, I did read the visit 'report' to KNC and I can only surmise it was written by someone who is a True Believer, much like those misguided souls who believe in UFO's and related claptrap. From the little factual content presented, there emerge further disturbing facts:

1. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the asic industry would tell you that silicon foundries are not
    at all excited at the prospect of possibly a few hundred k asics for 28nm. To suggest they will
    'compete' to get KNC's business is a very quaint idea, but totally untrue. KNC will have to convince
    a foundry to give them access to the technology, and it's not a dead cert that they will. I know for a
    fact that foundries have been 'plagued' (their words, not mine) by people calling them up with plans
 for
    Bitcoin asics,who don't seem to have the first idea what is actually involved.

2. Designing an FPGA is totally different from designing an asic. I'm not going to go into the details, just
    ask anyone who works in the industry. To think that you just take the same HDL code and out pops
    your asic is not the case. Any competent engineering graduate could write the HDL for a SHA256
    engine in an afternoon, and put together a compiled FPGA solution in a few days, at most.

    To do the same in an asic is a totally different ball game. Clearly the lads at KNC either have never
    done this,or are making some potentially fatal assumptions.

KS, it goes back to the basic questions I put in my earlier post. You have to select a foundry early on to get access to their technology design rules and cell libraries, unless you already have said or are using COT. KNC clearly don't have the first and are'nt using the second. So they are still at least 6 - 8 weeks away from tape out, and another 12 weeks to prototypes. That's end November by my estimation, so forget getting any product this year.

Can you see why I'm concerned about what companies say / promise? One lie leads to another and so on....

Believe me, if I had access to 400k$ I would get one built. But I don't and so have work for a living like everyone else.

I know of at least two groups that are actually doing this on 20nm technology at the moment, and they aren't planning on selling their product to the masses. Frightening thought.

As for Mr. Dadda, I suspect that because of his abilities and reputation he's paid extremely well and has other interests. Read some of his papers, you'll find it a worthwhile exercise, he's a very clever man.

Glad to see some of you have actually started to think. I have actually designed asics before, and am well aware of what is real and what is not in device specifications and performance. I would advise anyone with an interest in the asic implementation of SHA256 to read some of the academic prior art available as I have done. Then let's hear your thoughts.

I have no alligience to any of the asic companies, but I hate misuse of data and bad 'technospeak'. I also think any company that wants your money should answer your questions without you having to ask them. If you think differently, then you're an idiot.

As for BFL, they dug themselves into a hole and did'nt try to get out. They need a good PR man to repair their tattered reputation,and to do something to restore the faith in their customers.

Problem is here, you all want to be rich - nothing wrong in that - but don't make the mistake of financing your future competition.

I am really not interested in Open Days, just plain old transparency. It works.

Got one on order, have you?

No, this is'nt Josh, just a concerned citizen. I doubt that Josh has the time or inclination to worry about what KNC may or may not claim at present. In all fairness to him and BFL, they've never put out any technical misinformation about their products. 

The real question to ask yourself is:

What do I think an improvement of x% to the SHA256 algorithm means?

Most everybody will think it means x% more hash rate, yes? Inferring that their SHA is better than others,
yes? So their product is superior?

You cannot change the SHA256 algorithm or it isn't SHA256 anymore. A hardware tweak which enables a higher clock rate has nothing to do with the algorithm itself, so why try to claim otherwise? I don't even know if KNC have used the methods in the paper - I doubt it - and they have given no details about their mathematical wizardry. I would, if I was them, there is no shame in being genuinely creative, like the
authors of the paper. But to use these tactics?

So I am very, very suspicious. If you read my other posts about them in the Newbies section then you will
see some other rather serious inconsistencies about their Mars machine that I picked up.

I have nothing against them or any other wanabee asic company, but when you want people to give you a
lot of money on trust, you MUST be honest and truthful.  

And speaking of said, here are some questions you shouldask anyone wanting your money up front for any asic product:

1. Who is the silicon foundry?
2. Are you using a Multi Project Wafer service or a full mask set?
3. What is the chip size?
4. How many pipelines does it have and what is the operating frequency?
5. What is the target package type?
6. If you are using a full mask set ($1.6 - $2.3 Million for 28nm) who or how are you financing it and what are your contingency plans if you need a respin?
7. To get '90 day' production you need a lot of chips, meaning you need several wafers (costing 15 - 30k dollars each in a small geometry). Refer to 6 above.
8. What software tools have you used for development and if they are commercial ones like Cadence, exactly how have you financed them up to now?
9. What happens to my money/order if you miss the 90 day target?
10. Will you publish an order backlog summary for purchasers to examine?
11. Will you publish the invoice for NRE for purchasers to see? (ie to see that it really is x nm)

Feel free to add your own. There is absolutely no reason for any company wanting your money NOT to answer these questions.

It's called trying to inflate the actual performance of your product and/or design knowledge. If your product is good, quote firm numbers based on hard, verifiable FACTS rather than allude to 'improvements' to a mathematical process which has data dependencies which cannot be changed or improved.

The academics who wrote the paper quoted are experts in their field - Dadda has an adder type named after him - and designed a method of reducing delay paths on an actual asic. They did'nt change or say they could change an algorithm. KNC claim to have an 'improved' algorithm, and that is just plain rubbish. Ask any mathematician.

Any respectable company would not make such ridiculous claims, if KNC have indeed used the methods from this paper in their design,then they should acknowledge it. Hence my annoyance.

Incidentally, Dadda and co. got their SHA256 engine to run at 'a clock speed of well over 1Ghz' on a 130nm process.

Hi Peter, silly me. I'm just too old and cynical. Thanks for setting me straight.

Knew I'd find this eventually:

"An ASIC Design for a High Speed Implementation of the Hash Function SHA256 (384, 512)", Dadda, Machetti, Owen (2004)

These guys came up with a re-timing pipeline which increases Maximum Clock Speed on a regular SHA engine by 36%. No new algorithm - you cannot 'improve' the existing one, this is simply an exercise to reduce critical path delay on an ASIC (not an FPGA)

So to any of you that are prepared to swallow the shite that KNC put out: Beware.

I'm not saying they are scammers, but they are dishonest with their information, to put it mildly.

Read into that what you will.

Thanks for the invite.

I just hope to hell that people don't order this stuff until some very pertinent questions are answered.

The whole setup with Kncminer is all wrong. Isn't it a little odd that they pull the info from their website on the Mars project today of all days?

How could a bunch of professional engineers make such stupid mistakes as they did with the Cyclone IV 'specifications'?

And let me assure you, in this particular universe we inhabit, you cannot 'improve' the SHA256 algorithm.

If people want to put their money up for this, that's their choice. But first, why not ask kncminer exactly how they are funding this wonderful device?
Simply to get to prototype stage on a multi project wafer with a typical 10mm2 die on 28 nm will cost them about 250k$. That's not including the cost of renting the Cadence or Synopsis tools necessary to get from HDL code through simulation, Layout, DRC and tape out. Lets call it 300k$.

That gets them a handful of die. Of course, if they get enough 'pre orders' they could afford full mask set. Today that'll set you back about $2-3 million for 28nm. That's a shitload of pre orders, and what happens if they make a mistake?

Rather than the 'I want to believe' line, why not try to look at what's actually happening here and start asking some pertinent questions? If you need help in this respect, please ask.

Hi all,

Just joined after a look around. Read through some of the posts regarding new mining companies, and this one caught my interest- kncminer.

Had a look on their site, and nearly burst out laughing. Seem to think they can change instantly from 40nm to 28nm technology (in standard cell, no less) and get a prototype out by September;

CRAP

Have a 'special' algorithm that speeds up SHA-256 by 30%. Oh yeah? On a data dependency algorithm? Have they got a time machine?

CRAP

Are actively asking their users if they would like a Litecoin asic when they haven't even delivered a Bitcoin one. The two are not remotely similar. and a Litecoin asic is going to be HUGE due to the memory requirement.

CRAP

One crap is ok, everyone can be optimistic or makes mistakes. But three?

Oh, and their wattage figures are way, way out; for once, too high. For example, their 'Saturn' miner will consume a maximum of 500W. For a 175GH asic based design on 28nm? It's about an order of magnitude too high. And water cooling? Guess what -

ANOTHER CRAP

Perhaps it's all down to the 30% extra hash power from their special algorithm?


***** ADD ON INFO **********


According to KncMiner's site, their 'Mars' box costs $2795 and contains 48 Altera Cyclone IV FPGA's 115k LUT version. That equates to just under $60 each. Are they getting them off the back of a lorry?

Cheapest price for 60 units on Altera's own site is $315 EACH, so even if they're buying them in the 10's of thousands, they are NEVER going to get a price 5 times less than this! For them to make the machine and make a profit they would have to be buying them at less than $30.

And since they are so fond of 28nm technology, why not use the much faster (and cheaper at $209) Cyclone V?

Can anyone else see something wrong with this picture?

BTW, I reckon a properly routed Cyclone V could do 2 -3 GH with just one unit. And no water cooling.