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Weekly Financial Disclosure
Time: 13:27 PM, Beijing time
Date: October 3, 2012
Funds of Last Week: 110.469BTC
Number of Total Shares in Circulation: 5000
Assets:
JLP-BMD
Holding: 1569shares 141.210BTC
Dividends Paid: 1.313BTC
YABMC
Holding: 539shares 42.527BTC
Dividends Paid: 1.715BTC
PIMP
Holding: 2120shares 190.800BTC
Dividends Paid: 5.211BTC
NASTY
Holding: 37shares 17.938BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.000BTC
BFLS
Holding: 40shares 28.000BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.411BTC
Cognitive
Holding: 256shares 140.800BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.553BTC
ASICMINER
Holding: 811shares 89.210BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.000BTC
BTC
Holding: 169.228shares 169.228BTC
Holding After Dividends: 160.025BTC
Calculated Dividends: 1.313+1.715+5.211+0.000+0.411+0.553+0.000=9.203BTC
NAV: 140.210+42.527+190.800+17.938+28.000+140.800+89.210+169.228-9.203=809.510BTC
Weekly NAV Growth: (809.510-804.945)/804.945=0.57%
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Friedcat: Would it be possible to give a power estimate in Wattage per GH
BFL and Avalon came out with theirs so it would be good to be able to compare, I know you gave yours in Joule/GH, but there's no way to compare the 2 without having more info
Thanks
Our spec is 4.2 (Watt / (GHash / s)). Because 1 Watt = 1 Joule / s, it equals to 4.2 Joule / GHash. We know that: 1 kWh = 3,600,000 Joule 1 GHash = 50 / (4 * difficulty) BTC [before block reward halving] or 25 / (4 * difficulty) [after block reward halving] BTC Suppose the price of electricity per kWh is pe, and the price of BTC is pb, the difficulty when we are un-profitable any more is d, we have: 4.2 * pe / 3,600,000 = pb * 50 / (4 * d) [before block reward halving] or 4.2 * pe / 3,600,000 = pb * 25 / (4 * d) [after block reward halving] therefore: d = (3,600,000 * pb * 50) / (4.2 * pe * 4) [before block reward halving] or d = (3,600,000 * pb * 25) / (4.2 * pe * 4) [after block reward halving] First we could fill in the (pe) field [0.1$ in China]. Then we could speculate on the average price of Bitcoin during the whole operating time and fill in the (pb) field to get the average difficulty cap, below which the miners could have non-negative margin profits if they consider electricity cost to be their only margin cost. |
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Friedcat: Have you guys thought about mining software yet ? Will you develop that in-house or get supported by CGMiner for instance ?
Don't know if that part can be started before the actual product is in your hands ? That will also take time I assume
We will make/customize our own version at first when the PCB design is finalized. After we publish the PCB interface to the community, and people make better open source software than ours, we will possibly switch. Hmm - sounds just like BFL - before BFL changed their mind and said they would support software development of their ASIC. Why am I not surprised?  Sorry for my bad communication of giving people the impression that we claim to write the software from scratch. What in my mind was the scenario of our own deployment of our first batch of THashes when I replied the question. The software needs to be modified to adapt our hardware protocol and optimized for larger size of works from the network. This part would first be done with ourselves because it allows quicker iteration. Since we don't sell our boards until later batches, and mere specification is not enough for other people to support our products with their software, we (Bitfountain side) talked about giving a small number of sample boards to the community for evaluation and development before we accept any orders. The final plan should be discussed among board members and approved by shareholders. |
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A legitimate and reputatable company works on a first come first serve basis. If you are the 10th in line at McDonalds, and people would be served before you because you had a "pay double, be served instantly option". How would you feel? Ignored because you choose to pay the normal price?
LOL, welcome to the reality. What do you think will happen if a big costumer of the foundry is asking for a reduced timeline or some test wafers that are important to the development? Do you really thing they will be told 'we are a legitimate company, you have to wait?'. This would be last time the big costumer were asking this fab as there a lot of other 'illegitimate and unreputatable company' who work first for their shareholders benefit. What Do you think 'hot run' and 'super hot run' mean? Pay some money and become a vip costumer and get your chips a little more ASAP. On the other side there are (at least at 'my' pcb-manufacturer) reduced rates if you can wait a little longer. Even if that is true: most foundries have very large customers that get privileged treatment anyway because they are repeat customers with a lot of business. I am afraid our little $ 100K project does not have the funds to bribe it's way to the front of the queue and will certainly be the one put on the back burner when one of the regular big customers wants a run done. (Super) hot run, as well as MLM process, is made possible because we are lucky, happening to be in the quarter when large players are less than other seasons.  |
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Friedcat: Have you guys thought about mining software yet ? Will you develop that in-house or get supported by CGMiner for instance ?
Don't know if that part can be started before the actual product is in your hands ? That will also take time I assume
We will make/customize our own version at first when the PCB design is finalized. After we publish the PCB interface to the community, and people make better open source software than ours, we will possibly switch. |
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16th Payment
Calculation time: September 26, 10:30:18 forum time
Number of difficulty change: 1
Number of block reward change: 0
Time interval:
Starting from: September 19, 06:39:24
Ending at: September 19, 22:13:25
Total time: 56041s
Difficulty: 2,694,047.95
Starting from: September 19, 22:13:25
Ending at: September 26, 10:30:18
Total time: 562613s
Difficulty: 2,864,140.50
Hashrate of this week: 1.33964MH/s
coupon/share = (1.33964*10^6)/(2^32)*(56041*50/2,694,047.95+562613*50/2,864,140.50)=0.0033879
Number of Shares: 3961
Total Payment: 13.4194719
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Update
This week we suffered from another serious dip. It's caused by the general bearish-ness of the mining market.
We have been chosen to still bet on mining assets because it's already proven by history to be safer than other obscure business models, and a little less prone to the rise of BTC/USD (hashrate grows at a more elastic manner with respect to BTC price).
Here is our plan in the next several months.
1. Keeping betting a lot on mining, and continue liquidating assets with no ASIC upgrade promises.
2. Trying to use financial tools to hedge the exchange rates.
3. Doing arbitrage with proved safe (safer than others) assets.
It's a hard time for us, and for many investors on most assets in GLBSE, especially when you nominate your investment with BTC. But we will insist on our strategy and will not invest in any seemingly "fixed-income" assets.
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Weekly Financial Disclosure
Time: 12:43 AM, Beijing time
Date: September 26, 2012
Funds of Last Week: 170.256BTC
Number of Total Shares in Circulation: 5000
Assets:
JLP-BMD
Holding: 1569shares 148.819BTC
Dividends Paid: 1.355BTC
YABMC
Holding: 909shares 63.630BTC
Dividends Paid: 2.263BTC
PIMP
Holding: 2120shares 190.800BTC
Dividends Paid: 5.400BTC
MOVETO.FUND
Holding: 90shares 90.000BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.000BTC
BFLS
Holding: 40shares 24.000BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.367BTC
Cognitive
Holding: 179shares 82.340BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.578BTC
ASICMINER
Holding: 811shares 94.887BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.000BTC
BTC
Holding: 120.432shares 120.432BTC
Holding After Dividends: 110.469BTC
Calculated Dividends: 1.355+2.263+5.400+0.000+0.367+0.578+0.000=9.963BTC
NAV: 148.819+63.630+190.800+90.000+24.000+82.340+94.887+120.432-9.963=804.945BTC
Weekly NAV Growth: (804.945-937.992)/937.992=-14.18%
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How does ASIC mining differ in calculating how much the hashrate will rise each week ?
It will be done as the one before: when upgrade with ASICMINER, we directly push X weeks ahead, resulting in a jump of (1+0.89%)^X, then grow by 0.89% each week as usual. Whats X? Maybe you can say a range where x will lie in? Or is it like it was with the liquid helium plan? X will lie in the range to keep the price level at 0.5. It will probably a much bigger number than the original liquid helium plan's. If the exchange rate does not change, please expect the original estimation: Therefore we have two choices now. One is to empower MOORE with my own ASIC project when it succeeds (estimated deploying time at October-November this year), the other is to buy BFL ASICs. In both cases I will continue to pay coupons and increase the hashrate steadily by 0.89% per week before suddenly pulling the hashrate up with the help of new mining rigs with a new execution of the new Liquid Helium plan.
The estimation of the first choice is about 200-300MH/(second*share).
The estimation of the second choice is about 50-100MH/(second*share).
Both are based on the current price level of Bitcoin. The 0.89% growth will still be maintained after the upgrade.
And if at that time, the market tells me the hashrate/share is too high, I will raise the price when selling more. If too low, I will push the hashrate higher. |
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but the chips discussed above are tiny. TINY. 6mmx6mm is smaller then most of my fingernails.
And its the packaged chip size. The naked die could be many times smaller. I wonder what the rationale is for making such small chips? Small chips means higher yield, but on a mature process like this, yield wouldnt be a serious issue for anything below 100mm2. Packaging, testing, assembly, cooling, PCB costs etc would make this a bad trade off I would think. Friedcat can you say how small the actual die is and why you designed it so small? The main reason is that it makes the iteration cycle shorter and reduces the potential risk/complexity. This is our first ASIC project and our main target is a successful production. Any technical challenge should be avoided in the first place, rather than confronted with a lot of time. |
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Let me rephrase: how long before the manufacturer delivers the chips ?
It depends on how well we could push the hotrun/super-hotrun process. 45 days are a good non-optimal estimation. While 3x-5x days are a way large enough range of a way high confidence. |
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Core Frequency: 335 MHz
Core Frequency Range: 255-378 MHz
Do I understand this correctly if I conclude that one chip will mine @ 335MH/s ? or 378MH/s if it's a good one ? Yes. 255-378 MHz is the result of the back-end simulation under 1.2V. If you do an over-voltage, it will probably be significantly higher, but the stability is hard to say. Exactly how high a frequency we could push them to, could only be answered when the chips are out. |
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Can we assume that additional sacrifices in hashrate were made to accommodate the smaller package and reduce heat issues?
Yes. We did sacrifice some hashrate per area, that is, hashrate per wafer. But the compromise is worth it, because the loss is not significant, and because we have gained much lower ir drop and much better power efficiency. |
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Isn't the big pad connected to GND (so the number of power pads should be 19)?
Yes. Thanks for clarification. We use the standard QFN way to package. So there's a big pad in the middle, making the total number of pads 19. |
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How reliable is the power consumption figure?
It's the back-end simulation result with 1.2V and 335MHz. It depends on the actual voltage (1.2 typical, over-voltage and under-voltage is OK), the frequency you set for the chips, and the how well each individual chip could perform (random factors when producing). |
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UpdateChip SpecificationTechnology Summary: 130 nm 1 Ploy 6 Metal 1 Top Metal Logic Process Core Voltage: 1.2 V I/O Voltage: 3.3 V Core Frequency: 335 MHz Core Frequency Range: 255-378 MHz PLL Multiplier: 28 Power Consumption: 4.2 J/GHash Number of Pads: 40 22 Data 18 Power Package Type: QFN40 Packaged Chip Size: 6 mm x 6 mm Chip InterfaceData Pins (22 in total): clk i
soft-reset i
reset i
cs i
addr[6] i
data[8] i/o
w_valid i
w_allow o
r_allow o
r_req i Address Allocation: 0-31 writing midstate
32-43 writing data
44-47 reading nonce
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UpdateProgress ReportWe are in the taping-out process with the foundry. July to Sep Financial Statement BriefTotal Expense: ￥58285.58 BTC Balance: BTC5,928.188 BTC Creditor's Right: BTC290.000 BTC Net Asset: BTC6218.188 RMB Balance: ￥550,465.66 Fixed Asset: ￥5775.00 RMB Net Asset: ￥556,240.66 Remarks: 1. The creditor's right is ours vs nedbert9. 2. The detailed financial report is sent to the board mailing list. 3. The specification and interface of our chips is also made public. ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.msg1211518#msg1211518)
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Is Bitfountain ever going to get a website where people can order / pre-order, or just get general info?
My hope: once the prototypes are up and running, so they can provide real information. Umlike the competition. Yes, the website will be online when we have our hardware running. Currently our budget and energy doesn't allow a premature expansion with a sales department. There will be no MPW phase. The first batch will be actual production-quality chips, not prototypes. We did our best on RTL testing(via FPGA), netlist testing(via front-end and back-end simulation), and netlist verification(via formality). MPW would take too much time(waiting for the shuttle), more than what we could afford. |
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15th Payment
Calculation time: September 19, 06:39:24 forum time
Number of difficulty change: 0
Number of block reward change: 0
Time interval:
Starting from: September 12, 05:32:20
Ending at: September 19, 06:39:24
Total time: 608824s
Difficulty: 2,694,047.95
Hashrate of this week: 1.32782MH/s
coupon/share = (1.32782*10^6)/(2^32)*(608824*50/2,694,047.95)=0.0034933
Number of Shares: 4048
Total Payment: 14.1408784
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Weekly Financial Disclosure
Time: 11:40 AM, Beijing time
Date: September 19, 2012
Funds of Last Week: 141.529BTC
Number of Total Shares in Circulation: 5000
Assets:
JLP-BMD
Holding: 1569shares 148.819BTC
Dividends Paid: 1.092BTC
YABMC
Holding: 909shares 82.719BTC
Dividends Paid: 2.609BTC
PIMP
Holding: 2120shares 271.360BTC
Dividends Paid: 5.567BTC
MOVETO.FUND
Holding: 109shares 118.348BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.000BTC
BFLS
Holding: 40shares 28.600BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.439BTC
Cognitive
Holding: 179shares 109.190BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.619BTC
ASICMINER
Holding: 75shares 8.700BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.000BTC
BTC
Holding: 180.582shares 180.582BTC
Holding After Dividends: 170.256BTC
Calculated Dividends: 1.092+2.609+5.567+0.000+0.439+0.619+0.000=10.326BTC
NAV: 148.819+82.719+271.360+118.348+28.600+109.190+8.700+180.582-10.326=937.992BTC
Weekly NAV Growth: (937.992-934.061)/934.061=0.42%
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