@inaba: What size are the chips anyway? It can be measured really easily,
without pulling the heatsink off... I don't think inaba was allowed to keep the board although he could measure them (take a pocket ruler) next time he is given access. I like how BFL came in here when ppl were discussing paypal chargebacks, but didnt give us official info how WHAT exactly was the problem with the demonstration. They use Inaba as their official PR lol? Exactly. This smells of scam a mile away. Will be laughing all day at the fools getting their money stolen because they did not listen. Happy scamming ! |
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Remember the classical signs of a scam everybody: Delays, delays and more delays. +Excuses, excuses and more excuses.
As far as I can see it, BF Labs has failed at producing the demo that they promised, they have also failed at giving a proper
message as to why they failed.
I wouldn't touch this project with a barge-pole at the moment.
In the remote instance that they're infact legit, they suck hard at estimates and PR.
Meanwhile, the suckers keeps ordering, as the excitement builds up.
This smells like rotten fish over the entire atlantic sea.
And remember that even though a unit is eventually demoed that gives the proper hash-rate, it's no guarantee that buyers
in fact recieve nothing if they order.
Sorry, if this comes forth as very negative, but all the classical signs of a scam are there: Delays, excuses and poor communication.
+1 for this post. BFL you are scammers and you have proved it with these delays. Come on !!! |
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I wake up expecting some proof and really thinking "this is 90% real right now" and instead wake up to find more delays ( initially it was supposed to be Friday then Sunday now next week LOL ). BFL fix your stuff please I wanna get rid of my noisy and hot GPUs ASAP.
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I guess the two questions we should be asking are these :
1. are the quoted figures ( price, power, performance ) possible and achievable with a current sASIC or FPGA out in the market right now ( eg Hardcopy )
2. should we be scared ? I certainly am.
Think about it. A startup like BFL Labs can come up with a custom ASIC or a sASIC or whatever new revolutionary hashing technology and do a 51% on the network with just 4-5 million USD ( eg current network of slow GPUs is about 8000 ghash and one rigbox supposedly does 50 ghash and costs 25000 USD ). I wonder what the US government could come up with to take us out, spending less than 10 million in the process ( bet they have spent much more than that fighting the war on drugs etc. ). In any case I still think it would be cheaper for them to drive the price under $1 and every miner quits then they attack with server farms etc. but my point still stands.
My point is that the network right now is mostly GPU while in the past was mostly CPUs. If somebody makes a custom ASIC / product like BFL Labs that gets each unit minimum of 1 Ghash/s until we all upgrade to that technology the network is vulnerable to a 51% by the guys with the new tech etc. Can someone confirm ? Thanks.
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U5 on that board is atmel AT45DB642D, a 2.5V dataflash.
for the FPGA config steam storage? (so not hard-copy?)
I had a feeling it was going to be something like that but couldn't quite read the markings. Almost certainly bitstream storage for an FPGA of some kind then - nothing else would need that much storage. So is this or is this not using that Altera hardcopy chip ? Could other people also use that magical altera sASIC chip or the $$$ needed is just too much for the average bitcoin fpga designer etc. ? What is going to happen if this is indeed real ? Will all the other FPGA garage designers quit and let BFL have a hardware monopoly etc. ? |
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So, ATM is this the most powerful FPGA you can get for BTC mining ( in terms of getting the most hashes/s out of all the FPGA devices out there ) ?
Do you think BFL Labs can be a real product ?
Can you compete with them and do a similar design that gets like 1 GH/s ?
Thanks !
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I say we probe the chip by JTAG and see what it is so we know if they can really pull this off.
Time for demo is still Sunday at midnight GMT right ? Thanks.
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WOW thanks for all the design information !
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Thank you for the updates Inaba. Hope you stay out of the "dark side"  and avoid the temptation. Looking forward to Sunday 18:00. |
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So 25 passed. So does 26 in a couple of hours. No magical uncorn. Just as I predicted. BFL = great ride on the failrumorcopter. Better file those chargebacks before the time runs out. Shipping in 4-8 weeks for a while now  No test. No live demo. No announcement. No data on chips. Yeah, sounds like a typical scam to me. Has the big announcement on the 25 passed and I did not see it ? Am I just dumb ? Or, are they strong with the scam, these ones ? |
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WOW. We just got royally screwed. He did not even have any hardware in the first place  !!! Congratulations, you just are the best scammer on here. |
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In my spare time (not as much as I would like) I have been experimenting w/ a deterministic wallet variant which generates private keys "on demand" storing only the public key in the wallet. The goal would be to never write any private key to disk. However the way bitcoind is currently written makes that a challenge and will require extensive rewrite of the db and log code.
Exactly. The current code is a complete mess no wonder the wallet encryption bug. A Berkeley database, seriously ? |
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sASIC is not attractive for mining as it does not have the dedicated adder resources
required to compete with modern FPGAs. I think even ArtForz (who actually built an sASIC)
would agree on this point today, with the recent FPGA design optimizations.
BFL needs to show that:
a) The device can generate real, accepted shares for deepbit or another large,
respected pool at the stated power and performance level, reliably, on a long term basis
b) The device can be built in moderate volume for significantly less than $500
(or $700 or whatever they're charging now)
c) The device will ship in production in <4 weeks, regardless of how many orders they get.
-rph
I think all the FPGA producers like you are getting a bit scared. If this was real you would all be out of business as quick as a fiddle. Are you saying that sASIC like Altera Hardcopy is not used in this device ? What is used if not this chip ? Maybe you know something we don't. |
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Dying here for some proof. There is a slight chance this might be real after all. Thank you D&T for explaining how this could work.
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SO then should we understand or assume that this is what BFL did and they use 2 Hardcopy chips from Altera or did they do something else ?
I though we were getting custom BTC ASICs like in a couple of years not right now. Maybe Altera is not a real ASIC and just one that is generic but was customised for mining ?
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Yeah these will be MAD profitable if they are real NOT.
Little if any resale value outside of Bitcoin.
If you all buy them the difficulty and price will adjust so no mad gains and 1 block a day just like with GPUs ( when only a few had GPUs they were getting mad BTC but when all got GPUs it wasn't that good anymore ) etc.
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I'm loving this thread, this will put and end to bitcoin. I mean scams after scams, bitcoin does show all how good we truly are as human species.
TBH the main uses of BTC for now are Silk Road and scamming. For all I care, we could rename this forum "Scammers R us" with the amount of scammers on here. Too bad there is no live video feed or something. I am thinking they gave Inaba $5k or $10k to turn to the dark side and we get fed a ton of BS and people rush in to buy etc. this fantastic new magical unicorn technology. Maybe I am just paranoid  but these scams on here are not normal scammer level; they are UBER level and they are doing it very in depth and planning etc. mybitcoin, bitcoin7 etc. |
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So they are using an OEM box to house this instead of fabbing their own and THAT is what makes it fake? Seriously? That's your position? 1 hour and 40 minutes to go. 100 minutes folks. I am prepared and ready for my socks to be blown off by this magical device. It's like the second coming of Jesus a month before ! Oh, the excitement. |
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Any idea what that is about? What is chugalug? Unix Gnu and Linux User Group? LOL. This purely smells of scam from a mile away. From what I heard that place is one of the shadiest places around town. |
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"Yes, the drivers are open source. Processing functions outside of sha256 are not supported." Well I guess that kind of sucks. Good luck selling these after the hype / music is over. Might as well buy the damn coins then since the hardware can become just as useless just as soon if something else comes up etc. This is why I'm keeping my 5970s. Indeed, as much as I would like to get rid of those noisy space heaters, the only reason I bought in the first place is because even if BTC went to 0 I still have something in the end to play games on etc. With these ( I suppose only the professional miners will want them, while the amateurs keep using GPUs that are not really that scalable in comparison to BFL products ) you get almost 0 resale value. If BTC fails then you fail as well . |
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