Casings, boards, fans, heatsinks - everything is already built. If they take bigger heatsinks and fans they won't fit in the casings anymore.

What do you think they're gonna do?
(a) throw all that stuff away
or
(b) reduce the hashing power per unit



No - my picture shows no CPU cooler. It's taken from bitcoinmagazine.com and from BFL's own website:

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/content/attachments/176d1352245075-copp.jpg.html

I just image Josh having to pay the UL office a visit  

UL clerk: "Please sir, tell me something about your power supply."
Josh: "It's drawing 160 watts, the power regulator is only rated for 1/3 of that. But don't worry, the next unit will have 2 regulators."
UL clerk: "Um ... next please!!"

All quotes from BFL_Josh, 29th Mar 2013: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b8hvt/bfl_josh_updates_on_asic_status_full_transcript/

Performance: "If the cooling becomes an issue, like I said, we'd scale it back and ship multiple units."
-> there goes another one of BFLs promises down the drain: the superb overvlocking ability


Power consumption: "... it's not 1w/GH and we're trying to locate the source of the power drain. It may require a revision of the substrate and/or the PCB."
-> it seems batch #1 and #2 customers get nothing more than a prototype because some major corrections/redesigns might be necessary for the next batches


Guinea pigs: "... I'm thinking no one is going to care at the moment they just want to hash. Which is why we'll be shipping and then improving as we go."
-> Yeah, that's what cowboys do: shoot first - think later


Prototype: It seems BFL finally managed to get something like a prototype up and running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C4bgho5JSI
Originally advertised values for a Single SC: 40 Watt while hashing (at 40GHash/s).
Actual values for this little prototype board (with unknown hashrate): 42 Watt idle (!!), 160 Watt when hashing


Stability: "We are trying to nail it down. We have some boards at 1.76w, some at 2.5 and some at 4 and one at 6 ... What's causing even more consternation is the fact that the wafer we burned for tests runs at far less power than a second wafer we mounted on the BGA package... so it may be a wafer by wafer thing, and since we only have two datapoints, it's hard to nail down the issue. We're rolling the other 4 wafers off the line shortly (they may be done already I think) - and that will at least give us an idea of the power consumption between wafers with 6 data points."
-> unpredictable behaviour of the devices (intermittent errors, the worst that can happen in engineering, because it makes it especially hard to track down the source of error)


Long-term testing: Unknown. The devices might run fine for years - or blow up after a few hours. No one knows ...


Good luck with that, batch #1 and #2 customers! To reach break even in a reasonable time your ASIC devices have to run stable 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. Or at least don't blow up due to overheating after 10 minutes ...

Based on their track record of failures it will take them at least 5 times of what it took you guys. So we can expect a non-prototype product that works (more or less) within specs in about 1/2 year.

Ask yourself this question: Do you wanna have this:



BFL_Josh: "We have some boards at 1.76w, some at 2.5 and some at 4 and one at 6 <- although I think the ones at 4 and 6 have either a broken power regulator and/or a bad power brick, because they power brick is only 120w and it's drawing like 195 watts which is ridiculous. ..."

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b8hvt/bfl_josh_updates_on_asic_status_full_transcript/

OK, here's one:

From https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status.html
BFL_Josh, 16th Jan 2013: "When we announced the delay last month, we decided to go back and switch from our QFN package to a flip chip BGA (FCBGA) package. ... Our chips would have functioned as currently spec'd within our thermal tolerances, but we would have very little thermal headroom to really crank things up. With an eye towards the future, we decided to bite the bullet and release a product that is ready for the long haul as opposed to releasing something now that would require exotic cooling to be pushed past 80 GH/s or so."

LOL! Obviously not as we all know now: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b8hvt/bfl_josh_updates_on_asic_status_full_transcript/
BFL_Josh, 28th Mar 2013:: "We have some boards at 1.76w, some at 2.5 and some at 4 and one at 6 ... it's drawing like 195 watts which is ridiculous."
Lyke: Do all the devices have the power issues or just specific ones?
BFL_Josh: All devices, Lyke... they all use the same board and substrate.

The cockiness of those arrogant cowboys is seriously hard to grasp: They produce tons of boxes with fans. Casings. PCBs. High gloss boxing that would fit perfectly in an Apple store. All before they knew if their ASICS are working. All before they had a working prototype.

It was a 1:1000 chance. BFL was just too cocky. All the way ...

How do those things make it into the EU? I don't think BFL gets CE approval with this increased power requirements.

It's not just that. The casing, the heatsink and the fan is not designed to handle 2-3 times more power and heat.

I am sure anyone cares about this here:

Difficulty swings between 2.000 and 12.000 several times per day. And so does network hashrate, because miners are jumping on and off.

Is Terracoin's design flawed?

It's just the casing, heatsink and fan are not designed for so much heat.

So don't be surprised if you smell burnt plastic 30 seconds after you turned your BFL ASIC on - and a big flame after 60 seconds ... 

Batch #1 & #2 customers - you are looking forward to something like this:

#1 :
 
lmftfy:

I wouldn't wanna be a batch #1 customers. Don't wanna be a guinea pig.

195W for such a tiny case, such a tiny heatsink and such a tiny fan - how is that supposed to work?

195W is about the same amount of power a 7970s uses - and they have huge heat sinks.

Their estimates for their FPGAs were way off too. So 195W for a Single SC sounds plausible.

Hi weex, what's your data source?

Read my signature.

You mean instead of a Box of Fans they now have a Box of Water? 

Geee ... what will that be? Lots of yadda yadda - and a new shipping date. Sometime in April. Which is of course just another guesstimate that's never gonna materialize ...

Arrogant? Please explain.