Tough Questions about the Monarch Card
http://www.butterflylabs.com/monarch/Q Hey you Jerks, what are you doing announcing 28nm gear while you're still shipping 65nm? I want my Single!A65nm products are shipping in volume now after over a year of delays, but they'll be out of production before the first 28nm Monarch cards are through development and ready to be shipped. If you haven't already received your 65nm product you wont ever get a return on your investment, but you will receive it very soon. It will be useless for mining maybe you can use a single case to drain boiled vegetables, by opening one end. Another good use is to get many of them (they will be $2 soon on ebay) and play BFL style Jenga.
The ASIC engineering team switched to 28nm shortly after tapeout of the 65nm, when they could have been used to help production of the products we sold a long time ago. Because chip development is traditionally a year long process (we like to make excuses where we can), ASIC engineering teams work far in advance in order to deliver the outdated technology to the market. Please don't think that production of your singles ever lost a second to 28nm development, because they lost hours, days, weeks and months. We've put minimal resources into building our supply chain & production capacity so that we can serve our customers, after all once we have your money what do we care?! Nothing is more important to us than shipping your order after it's obsolete.
Q Will the power & performance really be that good?ABFL began making bitcoin mining hardware in 2011 with the announcement of the now famous FPGA 'Single'. The delivered speed was overestimated to gain sales, but the power consumption was higher than the design simulation indicated something we have a track record of now. The product was mediocre but to be honest people could have made something similar with a little skill and experience.
So fast forward to our first generation ASIC chip which was an original design. We delivered exactly the speed promised over a year late, the power consumption was higher than predicted, and we used this to scam people into making a decision. We held customers to ransom, saying they will all ship in June or July. We forced people to agree to new terms and conditions then took another 5 months (and counting) to get some orders out. We really are a company that will tell you it's raining and piss on your back. That 65nm ASIC chip is now almost worthless as soon it will not be efficient enough to be profitable. It's a chip, that we used to make you guys the Guinea pig for this soon to be obsolete hardware. We are confident that our Monarch will be able to produce 1.7 GH per Joule, an eight-fold increase over our 65nm ASIC products, but take that with a huge pinch of salt, as we made many claims in the past that were not true or never happened.
In sum, the value of a 2nd generation chip can't be overstated. It allows us to optimize with great vision and it takes the guesswork out of calculating power and speed in the final silicon design.
The bottom line is that BFL is only interested is profit and does not care if the customer is left in a world of poop!
Q Can I transfer my existing order into a 28nm Monarch card ?AYes, but again bear in mind how slow we are, how we will tell you it's almost ready, when actually we know it's way off. Also there is the risk we will have to defend a law suit or several, so your money may be used for our lawyers. Heck, we're gonna need 'em. So just keep this in mind before transferring.
Q Can you host these for me?AYes we can, but again be aware that, there may be long delays.
Q Why should I place my Pre-Order with Butterfly Labs?AThat's a good question.
Since 2011, Butterfly Labs has been telling customer "not much longer" so why break the habit of a lifetime? As we enter the 28nm era, we're the only competitor with a CEO proven guilty in court of fraud. We have 45 employees, some of which may be facing law suits in the future, a painfully slow production line & fragile supply chain. Our 28nm competitors don't need to belittle other competition in the way we do. Most of them have a track record that makes us look incompetent. Their manufacturing, supply chain and engineering are all back-of-the-napkin ideas, like the Avalon guy that beat us to the ASIC market, it really shows how useless we really are.
Shipped more outdated ASIC's than all competitors combined
2nd generation (vaporware) ASIC
4th generation bitcoin processor (We have got worse with each generation)
Slowest production line
45 employees most with a lack of customer service
Q Why should I place my Pre-Order with Butterfly Labs?AAnd here's the kicker, we guarantee you that we will keep making you feel that it is close to shipping but, our track record does not lie, we are lethargic and borderline incompetent. We will give you a small slice of the truth and after we get your money, there's no getting it back.
We've been in development for approximately six months. We're now in the final stage of the process which is wafer start at the foundry. However, I must stress how we only at the PRE-ORDER stage. We have NON-PRE-ORDER products if you want order them, but even though they are not PRE-ORDER we are still shipping orders from April this year.
With that in mind, you will be lucky to get your miner by 2015.
Here are the timeline milestones:
Tapeout (Initialization of wafer production)
Foundry production takes 10 weeks (our delays take another 30 or so weeks)
Bumping, Slicing & BGA packaging takes approximately 2 weeks (but approximately can mean withing +/- 200% or more)
Initial shipments begin and ramp up to full capacity over the following 3 weeks
Since this is our 2nd generation ASIC chip, we're largely free of risk from the pitfalls normally associated with a new chip design, but we are likeley to find new excuses in the future. Testing systems, Bumping masks, Substrates & under fill engineering are all carryovers from our proven first ASIC fail, so with that in mind, remember we were only so good last time due to beginners luck. And remember when we do delay, we will stop offering refunds when the new product is obsolete.
We are ButterFly Labs, and our latin moto is "Mora, praestigiis, quam turpis est!"
