Butterfly Labs invests heavily in high speed production equipment

[Bogart]

first off they are a business they dont have to tell us shit, if they dont want to.

It's a little different when the business takes pre-order money from customers (100% of the purchase price I might add) to fund the development of the product.  In a case like this, the customers are more akin to shareholders IMO.

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[Unacceptable]

The more they tell us,the more the competition knows.

My preorder money entitles me to nothing but a finished product being delivered by the date promised,IMO..............

If were a shareholder I would have bonds or something to show for it,correct??

I have nothing but a promise,that's good enough for me 

[Bogart]

I have nothing but a promise,that's good enough for me 

That's too good not to quote.

[Unacceptable]

Wear it with pride dude 

I believe in them,what can I say 

[bustaballs]

The more they tell us,the more the competition knows.

My preorder money entitles me to nothing but a finished product being delivered by the date promised,IMO..............

If were a shareholder I would have bonds or something to show for it,correct??

I have nothing but a promise,that's good enough for me 

Well, you'd have shares of their stock and voting privileges. But you know all of that before you invest in a company.

In this case, BFL did not say anything except that they were going to be producing ASIC mining equipment at certain specifications and anyone who wanted to preorder was welcome to do so. Anything beyond that is extra. The customers here are nothing like shareholders and are entitled to nothing except their product. I don't remember reading anything by BFL saying they were going to be super transparent and give daily or weekly updates on every tiny little detail of what's going on.

[yrtrnc]

Yes BFL has delivered before and maybe they will deliver this time round also. Still there are alot of sceptical people and alot of bad rumours and fishy going ons. If I did preorder a bfl device I would most probably be somewhat worried in the back of my mind as they have yet to produce any substantial evidence, strictly speaking from my limited knowledge.

Would it not boost their sales if they somehow proved they were going to deliver? Then why take so long to do so?
Pls dont get me wrong, I am not trying to say bfl are scammers and all the rest of it. Im simply trying to sympathize with the people who have invested quite a bit of their savings hoping they will make some money. What do you think? Can bfl do better to reassure their potential customers and also current customers?

[SLok]

My only worry is WHEN, not IF. Let it be weeks before the reward halving please.

[bitmar]

Yes BFL has delivered before and maybe they will deliver this time round also. Still there are alot of sceptical people and alot of bad rumours and fishy going ons. If I did preorder a bfl device I would most probably be somewhat worried in the back of my mind as they have yet to produce any substantial evidence, strictly speaking from my limited knowledge.

Would it not boost their sales if they somehow proved they were going to deliver? Then why take so long to do so?
Pls dont get me wrong, I am not trying to say bfl are scammers and all the rest of it. Im simply trying to sympathize with the people who have invested quite a bit of their savings hoping they will make some money. What do you think? Can bfl do better to reassure their potential customers and also current customers?

you're right. I would buy their rig if they will be more reliable. They have no proof that they are working on ASICs. Why should I trust them ? Over the last year I have learned one thing: do not trust anyone in bitcoin world. In fact, they sold a lot of FPGA, but  world already has seen more sophisticated fraudsters. I am not saying that they are scammers, I'm just cautious and distrustful man. I understand that the BFL has its own secrets, but sometimes they behave suspiciously. It is easy to cross the thin line between credibility and suspicion of fraud. I'm sure they would sell twice as many rigs if they changed their policy to business. But this is just my opinion

[mc_lovin]

Here is a recently completed auction of the Essemtec reflow oven pictured.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ESSEMTEC-RO300FC-REFLOW-OVEN-/320989507198?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abc772e7e

Is there any way BFL could prove they won the auction?

Who has an account on ebay? Someone could ask who was the buyer.

I sent a message to the seller, linking him to the announcement, pointing out the image, and mentioning the skepticism surrounding BFL.  I asked if the machine was being shipped to somewhere in the Kansas City area. 

Everything still checks out as the auction was won Sept. 28 and it is reasonable for it to still be in transit.

I received confirmation from the ebay seller that the reflow oven was bought by BF Labs.  The seller asked BFL's permission first before confirming them as the buyer.

^ I got my confirmation back from the seller as well, same message.

[Keefe]

Yes BFL has delivered before and maybe they will deliver this time round also. Still there are alot of sceptical people and alot of bad rumours and fishy going ons. If I did preorder a bfl device I would most probably be somewhat worried in the back of my mind as they have yet to produce any substantial evidence, strictly speaking from my limited knowledge.

Would it not boost their sales if they somehow proved they were going to deliver? Then why take so long to do so?
Pls dont get me wrong, I am not trying to say bfl are scammers and all the rest of it. Im simply trying to sympathize with the people who have invested quite a bit of their savings hoping they will make some money. What do you think? Can bfl do better to reassure their potential customers and also current customers?

Should they bother? They've already collected ~$4M, and will get millions more when shipments start. Maybe they feel that enough customers are sufficiently satisfied with the status quo.

[enmaku]

Here is a recently completed auction of the Essemtec reflow oven pictured.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ESSEMTEC-RO300FC-REFLOW-OVEN-/320989507198?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abc772e7e

Is there any way BFL could prove they won the auction?

Who has an account on ebay? Someone could ask who was the buyer.

I sent a message to the seller, linking him to the announcement, pointing out the image, and mentioning the skepticism surrounding BFL.  I asked if the machine was being shipped to somewhere in the Kansas City area. 

Everything still checks out as the auction was won Sept. 28 and it is reasonable for it to still be in transit.

I received confirmation from the ebay seller that the reflow oven was bought by BF Labs.  The seller asked BFL's permission first before confirming them as the buyer.

^ I got my confirmation back from the seller as well, same message.

You're all lucky this guy actually spoke to you at all. If I were that seller there is no way in hell I would put in any effort to appease a bunch of conspiracy theorists by potentially violating the privacy of my buyer. I wouldn't even have asked BFL, I would have sent your emails straight to the trash. You're also lucky this was an eBay purchase instead of direct - try asking a manufacturer for that kind of information and they'll kindly ask to see your warrant as security removes you from the building.

This entire effort is ridiculous. It's nearly impossible to believe that this many people have this much free time on your collective hands and this little common sense. If we were talking about any non-Bitcoin business BFL would actually be considered fairly transparent, but you're all too spoiled by the downright radical transparency of others to recognize that it's not actually normal for a tech business to hand you a "how to copy our shit" kit before the product is released. I also have the feeling that if BFL were a bigger business run by standard douchebag executive assholes, there would already be several lawsuits.

But hey, pass out the tinfoil hats, the controversy is just free advertising for the company you purportedly hate - especially when stuff like this happens. I'm sure you're right, though... I mean, buying thousands of dollars worth of electronics manufacturing equipment from eBay on the off chance you'll identify the source of the pictures then getting some random seller to cooperate with you to confirm the purchase is just part of the "long con." Totally. I mean, that sounds not at all crazy and totally like something people do, right?

[squeept]

Here is a recently completed auction of the Essemtec reflow oven pictured.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ESSEMTEC-RO300FC-REFLOW-OVEN-/320989507198?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abc772e7e

Is there any way BFL could prove they won the auction?

Who has an account on ebay? Someone could ask who was the buyer.

I sent a message to the seller, linking him to the announcement, pointing out the image, and mentioning the skepticism surrounding BFL.  I asked if the machine was being shipped to somewhere in the Kansas City area. 

Everything still checks out as the auction was won Sept. 28 and it is reasonable for it to still be in transit.

I received confirmation from the ebay seller that the reflow oven was bought by BF Labs.  The seller asked BFL's permission first before confirming them as the buyer.

^ I got my confirmation back from the seller as well, same message.

You're all lucky this guy actually spoke to you at all. If I were that seller there is no way in hell I would put in any effort to appease a bunch of conspiracy theorists by potentially violating the privacy of my buyer. I wouldn't even have asked BFL, I would have sent your emails straight to the trash. You're also lucky this was an eBay purchase instead of direct - try asking a manufacturer for that kind of information and they'll kindly ask to see your warrant as security removes you from the building.

This entire effort is ridiculous. It's nearly impossible to believe that this many people have this much free time on your collective hands and this little common sense. If we were talking about any non-Bitcoin business BFL would actually be considered fairly transparent, but you're all too spoiled by the downright radical transparency of others to recognize that it's not actually normal for a tech business to hand you a "how to copy our shit" kit before the product is released. I also have the feeling that if BFL were a bigger business run by standard douchebag executive assholes, there would already be several lawsuits.

But hey, pass out the tinfoil hats, the controversy is just free advertising for the company you purportedly hate - especially when stuff like this happens. I'm sure you're right, though... I mean, buying thousands of dollars worth of electronics manufacturing equipment from eBay on the off chance you'll identify the source of the pictures then getting some random seller to cooperate with you to confirm the purchase is just part of the "long con." Totally. I mean, that sounds not at all crazy and totally like something people do, right?

^This a hundred times. I think you're forgetting, though, that there are a ton of people that have a monetary interest in trashing and trolling about ASIC constantly, and plenty for specifically BFL. I have a pre-order with BFL, but I can't manage to bring myself to blather on about scams to pray that there are less ASIC devices in the wild at first so I can make a few more bucks.

On that note, I think anyone that is constantly spewing this trash, and is found to have pre-ordered any ASIC device, or is associated with any ASIC company, should get a scammer tag if BFL delivers. That's pretty much the definition of scam, right? Lying through your teeth to make a few bucks off the decisions you influenced others to make.

[Kaliecious]

defimation of charachter suit anyone?

[enmaku]

Here is a recently completed auction of the Essemtec reflow oven pictured.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ESSEMTEC-RO300FC-REFLOW-OVEN-/320989507198?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abc772e7e

Is there any way BFL could prove they won the auction?

Who has an account on ebay? Someone could ask who was the buyer.

I sent a message to the seller, linking him to the announcement, pointing out the image, and mentioning the skepticism surrounding BFL.  I asked if the machine was being shipped to somewhere in the Kansas City area. 

Everything still checks out as the auction was won Sept. 28 and it is reasonable for it to still be in transit.

I received confirmation from the ebay seller that the reflow oven was bought by BF Labs.  The seller asked BFL's permission first before confirming them as the buyer.

^ I got my confirmation back from the seller as well, same message.

You're all lucky this guy actually spoke to you at all. If I were that seller there is no way in hell I would put in any effort to appease a bunch of conspiracy theorists by potentially violating the privacy of my buyer. I wouldn't even have asked BFL, I would have sent your emails straight to the trash. You're also lucky this was an eBay purchase instead of direct - try asking a manufacturer for that kind of information and they'll kindly ask to see your warrant as security removes you from the building.

This entire effort is ridiculous. It's nearly impossible to believe that this many people have this much free time on your collective hands and this little common sense. If we were talking about any non-Bitcoin business BFL would actually be considered fairly transparent, but you're all too spoiled by the downright radical transparency of others to recognize that it's not actually normal for a tech business to hand you a "how to copy our shit" kit before the product is released. I also have the feeling that if BFL were a bigger business run by standard douchebag executive assholes, there would already be several lawsuits.

But hey, pass out the tinfoil hats, the controversy is just free advertising for the company you purportedly hate - especially when stuff like this happens. I'm sure you're right, though... I mean, buying thousands of dollars worth of electronics manufacturing equipment from eBay on the off chance you'll identify the source of the pictures then getting some random seller to cooperate with you to confirm the purchase is just part of the "long con." Totally. I mean, that sounds not at all crazy and totally like something people do, right?

^This a hundred times. I think you're forgetting, though, that there are a ton of people that have a monetary interest in trashing and trolling about ASIC constantly, and plenty for specifically BFL. I have a pre-order with BFL, but I can't manage to bring myself to blather on about scams to pray that there are less ASIC devices in the wild at first so I can make a few more bucks.

On that note, I think anyone that is constantly spewing this trash, and is found to have pre-ordered any ASIC device, or is associated with any ASIC company, should get a scammer tag if BFL delivers. That's pretty much the definition of scam, right? Lying through your teeth to make a few bucks off the decisions you influenced others to make.

I couldn't agree more. Shall we start a list of the angry shouting people and start tying them to ASIC competitors in preparation?

[Unacceptable]

Here is a recently completed auction of the Essemtec reflow oven pictured.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ESSEMTEC-RO300FC-REFLOW-OVEN-/320989507198?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abc772e7e

Is there any way BFL could prove they won the auction?

Who has an account on ebay? Someone could ask who was the buyer.

I sent a message to the seller, linking him to the announcement, pointing out the image, and mentioning the skepticism surrounding BFL.  I asked if the machine was being shipped to somewhere in the Kansas City area.  

Everything still checks out as the auction was won Sept. 28 and it is reasonable for it to still be in transit.

I received confirmation from the ebay seller that the reflow oven was bought by BF Labs.  The seller asked BFL's permission first before confirming them as the buyer.

^ I got my confirmation back from the seller as well, same message.

You're all lucky this guy actually spoke to you at all. If I were that seller there is no way in hell I would put in any effort to appease a bunch of conspiracy theorists by potentially violating the privacy of my buyer. I wouldn't even have asked BFL, I would have sent your emails straight to the trash. You're also lucky this was an eBay purchase instead of direct - try asking a manufacturer for that kind of information and they'll kindly ask to see your warrant as security removes you from the building.

This entire effort is ridiculous. It's nearly impossible to believe that this many people have this much free time on your collective hands and this little common sense. If we were talking about any non-Bitcoin business BFL would actually be considered fairly transparent, but you're all too spoiled by the downright radical transparency of others to recognize that it's not actually normal for a tech business to hand you a "how to copy our shit" kit before the product is released. I also have the feeling that if BFL were a bigger business run by standard douchebag executive assholes, there would already be several lawsuits.

But hey, pass out the tinfoil hats, the controversy is just free advertising for the company you purportedly hate - especially when stuff like this happens. I'm sure you're right, though... I mean, buying thousands of dollars worth of electronics manufacturing equipment from eBay on the off chance you'll identify the source of the pictures then getting some random seller to cooperate with you to confirm the purchase is just part of the "long con." Totally. I mean, that sounds not at all crazy and totally like something people do, right?

+1

I personally can't think or ANY reason for all the hate.Yes,some griping about shipping times,controversial past of an employee,misinformation on the FPGA's before release.

But the attacks from several posters is way beyond griping.Downright rude & worthy of a good slap to the face in my book.

No one owes anyone anything..........................

[PuertoLibre]

[Estimated Speculation based on known factors?]


BFL josh just released some info on the BFL forum that gives some clues (not unexpected) for what is behind the delay. Link:https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showthread.php/104-Shipping-in-2-3-weeks?p=1461&viewfull=1#post1461

It seems I was right that they would have to readjust for power and heat spec changes.

[PuertoLibre]

BFL Josh also stated that the company can bump it up to 25% of maximum (1GHz). Which would yield about 80-90GH/s. Which is in the neighborhood of what I suspect Avalon ASIC may actually be rated at. (Though obviously I do not know that in any way)

[Speculation]
The renderings of the final product seem to include a rather standard heatpipe with a fan. Probably rated somewhere in the neighborhood of 125watts TDP. (Total Dissipation Power)

The water block is probably for enhanced cooling OR for taking it up further than the 1GHz mark.
[End Speculation]

Edit: I hope people begin asking BFL what their hardware is expected to handle in terms of ambient temperature. Keep in mind the hotter the boards run, the colder the room should be. (Air Conditioners or CRACs don't run for free...so they are not included in the power estimates)

http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/computer-room-air-conditioning-unit

If they ran their hardware at 33% the ambient temperature can be pretty high (80~95F). As the speed of the chips and the heat coming off them increases...the ambient operating temperature *should* decrease to extend the life and reliability of the device. (in this case now running at roughly 50% overclock)

So buyers should normally ask what the overclock of the hardware means as far as ambient temperatures. If you live in a hot area, that means more frequent failures if the temperature remains high.

Avalons speculative specs are even higher than BFL rating so who knows if the ambient operating temperature for that piece of hardware is worse or better.

Time to starts asking questions folks! It is all in the fine print!

 

[abeaulieu]

Adding Josh's Quote from BFL forums:

So for an update on shipping times... As you might imagine, we get this question a lot. It seems like it would be a simple question to answer, but it's not. Let me describe the process so people can better understand why.


If you look at the current FPGA board in a Single or MiniRig, you'll see lots of capacitors, resistors, etc... about 350 little tiny parts attached to the board. Contrary to some of the conspiracy theories out there, all our boards are completely custom made, they aren't purchased from another manufacturer, etc... they are designed by us and made for us and us alone. As such, we are required to volume source every single part that goes on the board.


The ASICs are similar in so far as they also have nearly 350 components on each board. With the FPGAs, we sourced parts in the hundreds or low thousands at a time. For some of the ASIC parts, we are sourcing hundreds of thousands at a time which requires direct ordering & lead time dependancy from the respective manufacturers. However, for this first batch, we're mostly able to depend on available distribution stock from places like Mouser and DigiKey. Shortly after we get the first batch of everything in, we'll have our larger mega stockpiles arrive from other vendors and/or direct from the distributors, it's just the first batch that's going to be rough.


So, we've got he myriad distributors shipping thousands of little pieces to us, the PCB manufacturer sending us the bare PCBs, the HSF manufacturer sending the HSFs to us, the PSU manufacturer sending the PSU's to us, the case manufacturer sending the cases to us and most importantly, the fab sending the ASIC chips to us. All of these must arrive on time and as expected for everything to go off without a hitch. So far, so good.


When we made our announcement for shipping dates, we padded in some extra weeks in case of delays, and as we try to herd all these cats into one corral, our padding is slowly eaten up with mostly minor problems, but they all add up. With the bump in specs, we spent some time ensuring the power subsystem is over powered to accommodate the new and future power requirements - our chips are capable of higher speeds than what we initially intended to send out in the first batch, and they still have quite a bit of headroom; We decided to go ahead design the power subsystem to handle the maximum theoretical load of the chips. This means we can now crank the board up with some minor tweaking. Each chip is theoretically capable of operating at 1 GHz, we are running them at 500 MHz with the new specs... we will likely never see 1 GHz operations, simply because of heat density issues and a few other factors, but we have at least another 25% of headroom we can play with, if not more. Again, we built in a lot of padding into the specs, just in case something went wrong. We have basically padded everything we could in terms of estimates and that padding is what has allowed us to bump specs on short notice and keep our shipping times in line even in the face of delays.


Ok, so we have the cats herded, the specs staked out, now we have to actually build these things. As many of you know, we've purchased SMT machines to allow us to manufacture our own boards - and I have mentioned this before, but many have not heard it - we will not be using the SMT equipment to process our first batch of boards; we will be using the same house that did the pick and place for our previous generation products, which means we're still at the mercy of someone else for our first batch shipments. There has been some delays at that stage, but we have the padding, so it's not been a critical issue. There has also been some delays at the foundry, but again, we have padding, so it's not been a critical issue. We are also paying for an expedited run at the foundry (which does not come cheap) to keep our timeline up. All these things have to work out perfectly and our timeline is still looking good. However, if something does not work out perfectly, our timeline is going to slip, plain and simple. We've used up most of our padding at this point and we are still ironing out a few little wrinkles here and there. This has been a long explanation for a simple answer: I would like to tell you we are still on time or pretty close to it, because we are. However, I would also like to tell you that we are going to slip a couple weeks or so if anything goes wrong, and given the complexity of the issues facing us, I would say it's almost inevitable something will crop up between now and the beginning of November that we are not expecting; What that is, I don't know yet, but I would rather error on the side of caution, say the timeline is going to slip a little bit and then surprise everyone with an early delivery than promise an early delivery and not meet that promise. So that's what I'm doing and there's your answer. When I have more information, I'll let people know as soon as I can.

Source: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showthread.php/104-Shipping-in-2-3-weeks?p=1461&viewfull=1#post1461

[freeAgent]

That's a pretty good explanation.  It's nice to see that they're getting pretty close to mass production.

[bitmar]

BFL started to accept orders 4 months ago, ASIC project is a complicated so we should expect rigs for about another 2-4 months, as I guess (speculation).  6-8 months is not bad considering the average time (18 months) for ASIC projects. It is a pity that the money deposited to the BFL not earn during this time.