"Avalon" ASIC, announcement & pre-order. pre-order over. project started.

[Carlton Banks]

9299 Renminbi = 9299 Yuan = 1483.75 USD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi

The renminbi (RMB, sign: ¥; code: CNY; also CN¥, 元 and CN元) is the official currency of China (People's Republic of China). Renminbi is legal tender in mainland China, but not in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Macau. It is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of China.[4] Its name (simplified Chinese: 人民币; traditional Chinese: 人民幣; pinyin: rénmínbì) means "people's currency".

This ad makes me nervous. I know they are selling to their Chinese customers...but if there is a joke...I don't see it yet...in the translator. Where is the punch line? (Keeps looking....1TH/s is an absurdly high number)

Bear in mind that the developer is soliciting orders via PM and that he asks the customer to tell him which payment method they would prefer. Real or not, I wouldn't give them any money (if those pre-orders aren't already filled with willing victims, I mean customers, then you'll have to wait to pay $2235 for the full price unit)

[Frequency]

Something like this will happen when just give ur BTC or money to air sellers

[bitmar]

Why is so quiet here? I hear my own thoughts which are not optimistic...

[loshia]

Why is so quiet here? I hear my own thoughts which are not optimistic...

What are they saying to you?
That competition will be first on the market? Or BTC price will collapse or both?
What is meant to happen will happen we chose one road so we have to stay calm and cool.
Any way except to loose some money nothing worst can happen right:)

[Aseras]

Something like this will happen when just give ur BTC or money to air sellers

I trust ngzhang infinitely more than BFL.

[Frequency]

Something like this will happen when just give ur BTC or money to air sellers

I trust ngzhang infinitely more than BFL.

don,t get me wrong, i really to hope they will all deliver as promised ...but something is wrong in this ASIC project and can,t find out what it is, maybe just bad customers services to simpel questions all answers are maybe,s en don,t worry,s ...but we will see in 5 or 6 weeks everything will be clear....

[Tinua]

will release a new site and start a new thread soon.  

What you mean with soon?

[Tinua]

Errr,

Oki. Edit the post!

(What means "Errr" ?  )

[flynn]

Errr,

Oki. Edit the post!

(What means "Errr" ?  )

It just means that this left me speechless. (I deleted my post, not much sense to it now)

[Icoin]

The DVB sponsored QCool element is made for LANCELOT, a watercool element for AVALON is avalable as soon we get the boards.

price: 79 CHF
preorder: 3 BTC

please email qcool at glari.ch

[ewibit]

The DVB sponsored QCool element is made for LANCELOT, a watercool element for AVALON is avalable as soon we get the boards.

price: 79 CHF
preorder: 3 BTC

please email qcool at glari.ch

this price is for a LANCELOT or a AVALON?
(what is DVB in this context?)
TIA

[chrcoe01]

I love the idea of watercooling these miners!  so much quieter that way

[Icoin]

this price is for a LANCELOT or a AVALON?

For both the same price

what is DVB in this context?

DVB sponsored the Qcool element development

[Tinua]

Great!
Now we can already buy cooling elements before we know how the boards are designed and look at all! 

[PuertoLibre]

Seems there is a small tidbit released by Avalon:

Avalon has stated they are aiming for 130nm to 110nm.

Avalon is TSMC 110nm G

I looked up that particular profile and this is what I have found so far:

110-nm option ready
At the technology symposium, TSMC managers said they are ready to begin production of a 110-nm process, essentially a 10 percent linear shrink of the company's 130-nm process. Wei said many TSMC customers opted to use the 150-nm (0.15-micron) process, saving money on die size compared with the 180-nm process. The popularity of the 150-nm option led TSMC to develop a 110-nm process.
The 150-nm process was a 15 percent linear shrink and required a separate set of design rules, Wei said. The 110-nm process does not require new rules, and customers can "directly shrink their 130-nm designs by 10 percent and get 20 percent more gross die," Wei said. "For large chips, there are some yield advantages. And we estimate an 8 percent improvement in transistor performance in the back end of the line."
TSMC is ready to accept production for what it calls the "LV-plus" version of the process, for low-voltage applications. The 110-nm "G" or general-purpose version will be ready in the second quarter of 2005. TSMC does not plan to offer an LP, or low-power, 110-nm process.
For some customers, the smaller die size could result in a 20 to 25 percent cost savings, Wei said, even though TSMC will charge more for 110-nm processing because the mask costs are "a 40 percent markup from the 130-nm process."

The 110-nm process offers tighter interconnects, he said, and the supply voltage remains the same as for TSMC's 130-nm processes, largely because the gate oxide thickness was not changed.

Even as it offers the 110-nm process, TSMC is telling its customers of the advantages of moving to 90-nm design rules. The 90-nm low-power process will be offered first, before the general or high-performance process offerings, largely because the high-volume cell phone chip customers will be the first to switch to 90 nm.

Wei said the 90-nm process, which will be qualified this summer, will increase the device density sharply: At 130-nm design rules the SRAM cell size was 2.43 micron2, shrinking to 0.99 micron2 at the 90-nm node.

Partly because all of the 90-nm chips will use a low-k process, TSMC expects that most applications will see a 30 percent performance improvement compared with the 130-nm process.

Source: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4048728/TSMC-prepares-MIM-memory-at-90-nm-node

[Tinua]

TSMC is ready to accept production for what it calls the "LV-plus" version of the process, for low-voltage applications. The 110-nm "G" or general-purpose version will be ready in the second quarter of 2005. TSMC does not plan to offer an LP, or low-power, 110-nm process.

Does this mean, Avalon uses chip technology of 2005?

[PuertoLibre]

Does this mean, Avalon uses chip technology of 2005?

Pretty much...more or less. 110nm process node was introduced in or around 2003.

Keep in mind bASIC is using 90nm and that was roughly introduced in 2006.

The older tech is obviously more accessible to a small company. The 28nm tech is impossibly expensive and not nearly as mature as the older (already well refined) methods. They (all the competing companies) are putting together ASICs which are relatively simple chips...so the newer tech is overkill and fraught with lots of different kinds of problems (most of the time).

I believe Intel and AMD pay somewhere around 90,000 per silicon wafer at the newest process nodes. Possibly more. Though they make tons of chips in a much smaller space so it evens out...more or less. It's one of the reasons why CPU's cost what they do.

See for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication

[squid]

110 / 130 nm gate size can hardly be considered "technology of 2005" since many many companies still use that size today. It all comes down to the complexity of the device you are making and the cost to fabricate it.

[squeept]

And in very few non-mobile devices do people actually care about power consumption, let alone how it affects profitability. The sum of those considerations is probably unique to bitcoin mining. In most normal cases, it would be majorly wasteful and pointless to use "new" fab processes in an ASIC.

[BeetcoinScummer]

110 / 130 nm gate size can hardly be considered "technology of 2005" since many many companies still use that size today. It all comes down to the complexity of the device you are making and the cost to fabricate it.

Question: Does process node == gate size? I took some VLSI courses as an undergrad (a long time back) and from my understanding they are not the same thing.