.

[Bananery]

I wonder if they delay so much until others starts to deliver cheap products such as knc miner, it might kill bfl once and for all. They get new money in only because people are so desperate to buy cheap asics, but no one really delivers except for asicminer, but they are overpriced.

[ilikehero]

I ordered in March, Still waiting for some news about it.

have to wait a long time

[dominicus]

strange they didn't even make the upgrade tempting though, same $ per GH as just buying a new unit.

I'm quite suspicious of what the upgrade path would mean to your actual ship date.
If the upgrade involves cherry-picking an ASIC with more working engines to get this better performance, adding the upgrade may further delay delivery until such ASIC was available for the build.

[Zanatos666]

strange they didn't even make the upgrade tempting though, same $ per GH as just buying a new unit.

I'm quite suspicious of what the upgrade path would mean to your actual ship date.
If the upgrade involves cherry-picking an ASIC with more working engines to get this better performance, adding the upgrade may further delay delivery until such ASIC was available for the build.

The upgrade option does not affect your place in queue.  They have stated that numerous times on their forums.  All it is, is a firmware flash that essentially overclocks your unit.  They just need to know before your unit goes into production so they know what version of firmware to flash onto your unit.

[dominicus]

All it is, is a firmware flash that essentially overclocks your unit.

You should also read the section on "considerations":
https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage-subproducts/65nm-asic-bitcoin-mining-chip.html

The upgrade is from 5GHz->7GHz, that's 40% faster hash.  BFL states overclocks are possible only on high-grade ASICs from 250->294 MHz.  That's only a 17% overclock...no enough to get you 40% higher hashrate.
So the upgrade likely involves cherry-picking the better ASICs.  Getting one of the 60% of chips have all their engines working, and out of those, one that will also stably overclock to the higher frequency.

I'd say if >40% of the backlogged customers go for the upgrade, they could have issues keeping the order of the queue without injecting further shipping delays.

[Zanatos666]

All it is, is a firmware flash that essentially overclocks your unit.

You should also read the section on "considerations":
https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage-subproducts/65nm-asic-bitcoin-mining-chip.html

The upgrade is from 5GHz->7GHz, that's 40% faster hash.  BFL states overclocks are possible only on high-grade ASICs from 250->294 MHz.  That's only a 17% overclock...no enough to get you 40% higher hashrate.
So the upgrade likely involves cherry-picking the better ASICs.  Getting one of the 60% of chips have all their engines working, and out of those, one that will also stably overclock to the higher frequency.

I'd say if >40% of the backlogged customers go for the upgrade, they could have issues keeping the order of the queue without injecting further shipping delays.

Josh has stated before that all it is is a firmware flash, basically tricking your Jala into thinking its a single.

With that being said, within the last couple hours of my last post here, I just flashed (well, Runlinux did while I watched) my firmware and went from ~5.8Gh/s, to ~8.5Gh/s. 

[dominicus]

I just flashed (well, Runlinux did while I watched) my firmware and went from ~5.8Gh/s, to ~8.5Gh/s.

Zanatos, that's awesome news, and congrats on being able to apply such a FW upgrade.  I stand humbly corrected, I didn't consider BFL would leave 70% harshrate headroom.  Yet thinking these are first-production units, it actually makes sense for them to spec very conservatively.

Were you able to purchase the upgraded FW after receipt of your unit(s)?

What effect did this have on operating temps?

[Zanatos666]

I just flashed (well, Runlinux did while I watched) my firmware and went from ~5.8Gh/s, to ~8.5Gh/s.

Zanatos, that's awesome news, and congrats on being able to apply such a FW upgrade.  I stand humbly corrected, I didn't consider BFL would leave 70% harshrate headroom.  Yet thinking these are first-production units, it actually makes sense for them to spec very conservatively.

Were you able to purchase the upgraded FW after receipt of your unit(s)?

What effect did this have on operating temps?

I didnt upgrade my unit before it shipped, so it was a ~5Gh/s unit, but BFL says it has an +/-10% variance level, obviously I was on the plus side as I was running about 5.8 at first.  Temps then were about 40C, but that was fully cased.  Everyone said to take the case off and flip the fan to blowing down and it would run cooler, I just didnt want to mess with it.  After the flash though it is now running case-less with the fan blowing down, and my temps are actually lower, around 33C.

[Trillium]

Do you have a watt meter and could measure the power consumption after the overclock?

[Zanatos666]

Do you have a watt meter and could measure the power consumption after the overclock?

I do, but its in another location.  Will have to report back.

[dominicus]

All it is, is a firmware flash that essentially overclocks your unit.

You should also read the section on "considerations":
https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage-subproducts/65nm-asic-bitcoin-mining-chip.html

The upgrade is from 5GHz->7GHz, that's 40% faster hash.  BFL states overclocks are possible only on high-grade ASICs from 250->294 MHz.  That's only a 17% overclock...no enough to get you 40% higher hashrate.
So the upgrade likely involves cherry-picking the better ASICs.  Getting one of the 60% of chips have all their engines working, and out of those, one that will also stably overclock to the higher frequency.

I'd say if >40% of the backlogged customers go for the upgrade, they could have issues keeping the order of the queue without injecting further shipping delays.

Well, my prediction on this issue turned out to be the eventual outcome. 

Read'em and weep:
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/251-monday-july-22-2013-shipping-update.html

This is the classic risk behind offering a cherry-picked component for profit, and ending up with a huge share of customers ordering the tail of your distribution.

If the imbalance in share of upgraded orders vs. availability of faster ASICs persists through the queue (no reason to think otherwise), the difference in ship dates for regulars vs. upgrades units will increase non-linearly.

Silver-lining: if your Jala order date is beyond Dec'12, cancelling the upgrade and trying your luck overclocking yourself will surely help get your unit earlier.

[nairna53]

.

p. s. i like the first post in this thread.

[dominicus]

All it is, is a firmware flash that essentially overclocks your unit.

You should also read the section on "considerations":
https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage-subproducts/65nm-asic-bitcoin-mining-chip.html

The upgrade is from 5GHz->7GHz, that's 40% faster hash.  BFL states overclocks are possible only on high-grade ASICs from 250->294 MHz.  That's only a 17% overclock...no enough to get you 40% higher hashrate.
So the upgrade likely involves cherry-picking the better ASICs.  Getting one of the 60% of chips have all their engines working, and out of those, one that will also stably overclock to the higher frequency.

I'd say if >40% of the backlogged customers go for the upgrade, they could have issues keeping the order of the queue without injecting further shipping delays.

Well, my prediction on this issue turned out to be the eventual outcome. 

Read'em and weep:
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/251-monday-july-22-2013-shipping-update.html

This is the classic risk behind offering a cherry-picked component for profit, and ending up with a huge share of customers ordering the tail of your distribution.

If the imbalance in share of upgraded orders vs. availability of faster ASICs persists through the queue (no reason to think otherwise), the difference in ship dates for regulars vs. upgrades units will increase non-linearly.

Silver-lining: if your Jala order date is beyond Dec'12, cancelling the upgrade and trying your luck overclocking yourself will surely help get your unit earlier.

Confirmed by BFL_Josh

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/pre-sales-questions/4031-2gh-upgrade.html#post49429