I'm in Shanghai - interested in a few X1s
What can you do for me here?

Any images of the X1 yet (didn't read all the pages....)

1) pre orders on an unproven product that hasn't even had a prototype
2) pre orders with a company who hasn't even shipped all their previous pre order from their last disaster, which came after their first disaster (FPGAs were late)
3) non refundable pre orders with a company facing legal action
4) pre orders on a flashy new product from a company who $%^&ed up the actual imaginary spec on their previous product which ended up needing WAY more power per chip and each chip delivered WAY less hash per chip due to the heat.
5) Result of 4) is money being claimed back, and far higher expenses and having to pay employees for a loooong time without actually really finishing the sales they made a year earilier

IF BFL ever deliver anything that is even 50% of what they have just started marketing I'll be EXTREMELY surprised

If this does work you should be able to get twice the engines into one FPGA. There is money in this as there are plenty of FPGAs out there and I'm sure ppl would love to double thier hash rate!!

$400 for 400mhz doesn't even make them competitive with GPUs. $300 for a 7950 will get you 600mhz+ easily

if the price were 4 for $1000 that would get you 1600mhz, but then 3 7950s would still only cost $900 and get you 1700-1900mhz.

yes cost of power is an issue, but going for the asking price $100 buys a fair bit of power, and the extra 100-200mhz gets you a few extra BTC, plus the option to mine LTC etc.

Now if I could talk them into 5 for $1000....(every thing is negotiable in China.....)

block ejaculator

22K for 22-28ghs?

How much are avalons selling for? (if ever shipped)
How muych $$ would BFL take off you for the hope of get a 30ghs single?
How much are block ejaculator blades selling for?

*IF* any asic supplier were actually shipping anything consistently you have to say the prices are too high.
That said I wouldn't order at that price to get in the first 150 chips, but could be interested in batch 2 if prices come down.

Also I'd really like to buy boards without the RPi and run from the computer hardware I already have, and that computer can support far more than 4 boards.

I'd be more interested in the 8950/9950 for litecoin mining, the **70 might be better for bitcoin if you still want to use GPUs for that.

Currently the 7970 is bandwidth limited and despite having more processing power than than its little brother the hash rate doesn't scale.

The number quoted for the **70 show a higher band width, but with more processors you are still going to be bottle necked. If the **50 has the same band width but less processors and a much lower price then this is your LTC baby.

BTC you don't worry about memory performance and under clock not over clock. So the extra processors will be put to full work *IF* you want to mine with a GPU.

trendmicro blocked the site...what does that tell you?

What income have BFL had for the past8 months? Pre sales.

But what happened? Couldn't deliver then missed their specs. Sales would have slowed and refunds grown. How many people have asked for their 30K back from no chance of getting a mini rig? And for the remaining products the profit has been slashed due to pricing against a spec they couldn't deliver, and they bought ALOT of parts they can't use. (I'm thinking about those boxes of 1500W PSUs they showed us).

Now they are doing something strange - instead of concentrating on delivering the orders they already have they are asking 50% up front for a bulk chip order. Why? Because they need the $$$$$$. They are running out of the money they have been donated for the past 12 months, and their on going income is minimal. I'm thinking they are even struggling to pay for their chip orders and hence they need people to down pay for the manufacturing for both bulk chip sales and chips for what ever BFL is able to deliver.

When will there be a class action against BFL for late delivery and failing to meet promised specs?

I've emailed the assistants to SFgate's VPs and senior editors

No r3eflection on yourself, but there are just soooo manyt scams around that nobody will trust anybody else without a show of proof.

I suggest getting a dev board, make you algo work even if highly restricted, then show the community how it will scale if you had more resources.

Dev board can be obtained for just a few hundred $$, clearly if you need special hardware setups you will need to get some funding through your own closer networks (your own $$, friends, family, put a call out to meet with LTC miners in your local area).

The website listed in the OP seems to just be a Chinese bitcoin news page.

Where is all this work being done? I assume down in Shenzhen?

Electricity is cheap in China, so the difference in investment cost for 130nm and 60 or 28nm etc is not worth the electricity savings I'd guess. But if this is meant to be an on going business I'd hope they would reinvest some profit into developing a smaller form factor for the future.

I'd certainly be interested, but only if I could travel down from Shanghai to have a look at test rigs etc.

As for not being able to access bitcoin traffic, just setup a private VPN in Hongkong or something. I've found accessing bitcoin and litecoin site patchy without a VPN, so it does seem the authorities do try to block them (when they know about them).

wow on board liquid nitrogen generator!!

where does all the heat go?

and where do we get the 2800W from? Not from the power socket of any normal house hold!!!

"3-axis gyrometer & temperature security purge sensors" - ooooo fancy

"Custom designed and milled stainless steel “C” pillar inner frame" can I see some picture of this not just computer rederings? No? what a surprise

A thread on a forum isn't going to gain you anything even if it does feel better after venting.

Go talk to a lawyer in the same state as BFL about a case action against them for failing to meet promises on purchases made by customers. They are what 8 months late and under delivering on specs.

But don't do it until they have shipped your unit! You don't want them declaring bankruptcy and going to jail (again) until you have at least got something out of them!!

Ay least advertise a competetive price/performance.

3.3ghz for $1000?? Less than a jalapeno but what twice the price?

1) Yes scrypt mining is pretty mature and popular. There are more than enough people investing in GPUs and tuning them to get the peak performance. If you made a good FPGA scrypt miner at the right price, people would buy them.

2) Just answered that. If your FPGA miner was well priced per hash, used less power per hash, and was neat and tidy to coordinate people would go for it.

3) Would pre-order to fund prototyping, but once you had development boards with guys like Kano who could review and give an opinion I would pre-order to help fund the building of a batch of chips and boards.

My reason for this point to pre-order:
-scam avoidance
-knowledge of a time frame and proven performance. Just look at BFL. Completely screwed up both the period of time to finish the design, then completely screwed up the time line to production, then completely screwed up on end performance. If somebody like Kano would turn around and say "boards look good for X/Y/Z performance software should be finalised soon and board designs look mature enough for production" then I'm happy to part with some cash.
-somebody else might come along with a better offer while you are trying to get to market. I'll hold onto my coins until I know I'll get the best product  in the short term.

Now if you went for a raffle - no way. If I front money right away before somebody else who waits til the week before shipping I should get my gear before they do. If that means the poor cheap risk less baby has to wait a long time, tough so did I from when I put in.
If you went for auctions- no way. Set a competitive price where you are confident you will sell at the rate you can build them, and let me decide if I see that as what I want to spend. I don't want to have to wait for ever until the cash up idiots out there have run out of life savings before I'm willing to spend a more sensible amount. No doubt Auctions are better for sellers when demand is hot, but it doesn't impress me as a buyer.
I would support a limit per customer would make more sense than 1. However you could always order via a friend's/family member's card and address to make more orders.

What would impress me as a price? Well you can get a 7950 for $300 which can easily hash at 600mhs, so that is 50c a mhs. You will still need a host system for a GPU as well as a FPGA board, just you can run more FPGAs per host ultimately. It is likely by the time these FPGAs launch that the 8950 will be out which promises lower power and probably a little more speed (I hear power is more the concern currently). So you would be best to target at most 50c per mhs.
Again a 7950 as the target means 250W for 600mhs -> 2.5mhs per W. You could assume a 8950 might be closer to 3mhs per W. So to impress me on the power front you'd want to be well better than 3mhs per W.

I like the idea of a FGPA with decent ram performance as it opens it up for other uses later. An ASIC could only be used for mining or scypt work, but an FPGA could be used for all sorts of scientific applications later and hence actually have some good resale later. Their flexibility and potential is far higher than low/no ram spartan boards etc.

a 7950 board with clock and voltage limits turned off and user closeable heat sink would be a great start if you can do it fairly quickly

but then follow up with a dual 8950 when that series of chips come out!!

What would be good is-

-OEM packaging without all the extra fluff like games codes etc. But I understand this is coming from ATI not the vendors
-Cards with unlocked clocks and voltages. What is the point of water cooling if the clock/mem speed is limited?
-Cards with no heat sinks, and the user can select their cooling system from your stock (and keep decent stock!)
-Cards with dual 7950 chips. I'm more into LTC with GPU mining, and the 7950 seems to be the best performance/$/watt.
-Since you are now the distributor give us awesome pricing

If you could turn the ram speed up way high for LTC (ie 1800mhz instead of 1500mhz) then you could start using more GPU clock too (around 1250 instead of ). Currently with LTC you clock the memory as high as it will go, then start low with the GPU and slowly turn it back up til you find the sweet spot. Usually around standard clock settings- typically 70% of the memory clock. The heat generated typically isn't as bad as BTC mining with higher GPU settings, but turning off the memry clock limit would really unleash some power

try using MSI afterburner, and enable the voltage unlock function in the setting button.

Just experiment with turning the voltage down until it is not longer stable, see what effect it has on heat.

Frankly going to 92deg suggests the heat sink and fan is really struggling, surprised it didn't shut down. I assume you have auto fan enabled!?!

NONE of these scam sites have managed to send prototypes to be varified by a trusdted third party.
NONE
NONE of these scam sites have had any developmental contact with the gurus of bitcoin and mining software
NONE of these scam sites have a business history in bitcoin. In fact thier posting history on this foram generally started at the time of the scam. If you've been into bit coin for years you'd think you would have shown your face some where.

I'm really hoping KNC come good, and that the 28Nm ASICs and thier integrators get announced soon. Even if these guys aren't a scam I would give them money. Hell after the incompetence of BFL and the decent public face they at least put forward........
(note I didn't say respectable)