he is wanting 3000E for a triple FPGA?!? I can't see where he quotes what hash rate it gets or power consumption

It seems to me they are saying they know nothing of lightening, prime, and russian/chinese ASICs which people have likely been asking. I don't think they mean they have no idea what BFL or Avalon are doing-they have said their chips will out perform other offerings, so that suggests they know what is out there soon will be.

They have also said they will provide specs and test boards to selected integrators who have signed up with an NDA. SO hard to scam somebody when you have sent them a reference board to study.

Hopefully they release more info next week and plenty of proof. I think these guy will come good with product.

I don't know any company that throws a few hundred K around just for laughs. These days big & small companies count every penny even more than they did in the past. Share holders have been burnt by the GFC and are screaming for profits and share price increases.

However I see where you are going-they have the resources to do a study on what they could make, and the business case. Some might even have good manufacturing costs they can leverage to make entry easier. But no big business will start a project with out a profitable business case, and it has to be more profitable than other projects they could invest that R&D in.

I'm hoping somebody quite large takes on these 28Nm ASICs. Somebody with nice low PCB manufacturing and assembly costs who can deliver in volume. Down side is that smart business means they will only slightly under cut BFL etc in cost for performance, but we would still get quality ASICs with a steady supply.
I'm also looking forward to different applications for these chips. PCI-E card based ASICs, all in one CPU motherboard with ASICs lined all over the board, server rack systems.

So next week is the first "press release" with target performance and the names of the chosen integrators??

you do realise that we could buy a jalapeno for that price-only difference is we could have these next week 
and if Lightening is for real you could get at least two (nearly 3) lightenings so 20x the hashing

If these things are still profitable why not just keep using them?

clearly a scam-I count 28 cores in that image. Standard practice would to have 8,16, or 32 core, not 28.

And you wouldn't layer them like that. At best you'd do 4 layers of 4x2 each layer.

How are you meant to get the heat out? The top layers will melt!

they may have made their ROI by mining with their test chips, and now that difficulty is going up they will sell chips to us....

just for those who aren't aware of what 800w means-go look for the images of the Avalon boxes. They are using 600-800w depending on configuration. They get referred to as a box of fans (as a joke) because the front and back are lined with large cooling fans to drive air past the ASICs.

You then get an android tv or mac mini box and claim it burns 800w.....the plastic would melt. Maybe it is designed to be left out the snow?

come on guys this is bitcoin- nothing has or hasn't happened until at least 12 confirms!

If people are going to be testing lightenings- speak up
If people are expecting to beta test mammoths- speak up (I was asked if I'd like to, I declined for various reasons)

I want to believe as well, but will give the benefit of doubt (but no cash) until there is a failure to provide proof.

CAN-ELECTRIC has clearly turned out to be a scam. No feed back from that website. However multiverse has been taking the time to reply to emails.

I'm giving them a chance to deliver proof before giving up.

Thanks for the feedback. Also respect that you don't wish to make statements or promises you then don't deliver on.

I don't like the constant auction method. Will mean they make a stack load of money as customer clammer to get their hands on them. Should see how people are jumping at the idea of 80ghs at 800w. I would rather order at a known price that I can weigh up the pros and cons of features and pricing and be told the lead time for orders.

It would be good to know what your chips can do. Sure you can't make a choice without a prce and timing, but from a tech hungry point of view it would be interesting. A statement like "we predict each chip to operate at xx-yy ghs per second and have a power window around 0.x-0.y w per ghs. Your integrators final performance will then likely vary depending on their cooling performance and hardware they build with.

That is more than BFL, and oyu should be able to run a singhle at closer to 70 than the claimed (conservative) 60 without much issue
(they recently said each engine should be able to run at a clock of 500, times 16 engines, times 8 chips =64mhs, odds are you will get better than that again unless the ambient is too high)

So I see the cost/hash is higher with these guys, and the power usage is not even close to BFL. Only advantage is you will have them sooner so you will get the extra price back and probably cover over a year's power.

For some fast ROI is more important than long term

wow 80Ghs at over 800watts- at what price? It will need to be low to compensate for the 10w per Ghs

However for people who can get hold of them quickly you do stand to get decent ROI-but long term they will stop being profitable much much faster than BFLs at 1-12.w per Ghs and the recently alluded to 28Nm ASICs that are going to hopefully be on the market in a few months (but in a few months you can make some coin while difficulty is lower). Because of the power usage they will have a lot of price pressures after the middle of the year when other options come a long and I find it hard to see this product being profitable next year (ie company closes down or has to bring a new product along)

Would be good to see some prices (with and without VAT) and some pictures, and even better-videos!! WHat manufacturing process size are you using? I'm guessing 110Nm like Avalon and a large number of chips.

It is cool they are letting people come and see and test. Look forward to seeing the reviews

We've already seen how everything will get faster-more core in the one chip.

The chips are so small and heat such a non issue that they just put more cores into the chip. More cores produce more heat which then brings you back tot he same cooling requirements of the larger process chips.
But yes also means coming back to the same power usage per chip, but that chip does more because there are more processing units.

So they might make these 14Nm FPGAs the same wafer size, but with more transistors allowing more engines. So they might be able to compete speed wise with the better ASICs miners, but because they needed more hashing units to do it will they still be in the same power window?

The FPGAs might be a technology step ahead because of their wider commercial applications, but who knows in 2 years time BFL might also get access to the 14Nm process for their ASICs to jump ahead of the market and crush the FPGAs again just like they are with current FPGAs

Maybe somebody will take a new FPGA, put it on a PCB, and program it. I just hope they plan to be out of business within a year or two such is the tech market these days.

Correct me if I don't quote this quite correctly

Avalon -> 110Nm
bASIC -> 90Nm (had they launched)
BFL    -> 60Nm
un-named secrete vendor looking for integrators->  28Nm

Avalon are currently at around 10w per Ghs, BFL are looking at 1-1.2w per Ghs, this new prospect on the horizon could be down around .5-.75w per Ghs

Unless a 14Nm FPGA can give a business case of improved watts per Ghs and a decent price per Ghs then why would you bother?

Avalon is likely to fall out of the market with their power usage. Once they have got their ROI maybe they will start using this new vendor. BFL may then have to put their chips on the market as well to help get their volumes up, but they probably get more profit selling complete boards. However that might change for them to do a smaller genII ASIC. They do nice external cased BFL miners, then they sell to somebody who will do something more raw.

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!!

Mr Teal- I hope your prediction is more correct than mine!

Firefop- from a business prospective you are correct. Why would you charge half the price of the competition when you could charge about the same and make a similar amount of sales. If they have speed and power advantages they could make the claim of "we are better you pay more" just like BFL are doing currently.

I don't think the BTC community is that worried about fancy cases. They/we are used to playing with computer boards and cables, and plenty had FPGAs which had no cases at all. Yes the BFL cases look nice, but I was planning on getting mine without the case to increase airflow- function over form for me, and when it comes to making ROI I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one!!

helveticoin - I'm desperate for some teaser specs off your reference test board. If you want people to hold out and not spend their $$ on BFLs and Avalon before you and your integrators launch then give us a reason to postpone!! What clock speed speed have you reached with your current cooling method, and what power and hash results did you get? Yes it will vary depending on what the integrators do for cooling etc, but it would give us something to ponder when considering a future purchase.

Hmm one chip as fast as other vendors multi chip systems- if an integrator used a standardised heat sink mounting pattern it would be killer for aftermarket cooling and even off the shelf water cooling (please please please!!)

Yeah I agree. *IF* there is a reference design and firmware/mining software in place then integrators with their own production equipment could have tested systems ready in Q3. If there is no reference, or different integrators want to do different implementations, might take longer.
Plus hey doesn't hurt to be pessimistic when thinking about when you are going to get some new mining hardware 

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 hope this gets off the ground-should be very interesting for the BTC ASIC market- numerous vendors of a powerful chip offering different features and price points to compete for market.

Reminds me of how the mother board market works more so than the video card market. You can have $200 mother boards using the same bridge chips as a $500 mother board, just the final features and implementation varies. But at each price point there is competition for market.

Will be watching for this with interest

I count as a newbie. I'm not even mining as yet I'm waiting, and waiting, to get an ASIC rather than spend money on tech I know will be completely outdated very very soon.

My main business is Auto Engineering, but I also run my own online bike parts store
www.blingmybike.com.au

I got into mining from a work college who started GPU mining, then through these forum got a couple of FPGAs. He is working on paying those off and waiting for things to stabilise next year before stepping it up another knotch again.

I plan on building my mining empire little by little as it proves itself.

Interesting the block reward has halved and the BTC exchange rate has actually increased! I didn't think it would make much difference. I'm thinking when the ASICS start coming on line GPU mining will start to become difficult and people leaving the biz and selling their coins will hold the price down.

So I plan on spending cash on hardware for the next 6 months, and saving my earned BTC to then keep buying hardware.

If you think this is a huge international scam report it to the FBI rather than troll it all over a forum.