21 co introducing bitcoin [mining+] computer for $399.99 (unofficial thread)

[sidehack]

Assuming 0.16 is bottom-clock efficiency, that puts it at about 10% better than BM1385. Not really revolutionary by comparison.

[Guy Corem]

Assuming 0.16 is bottom-clock efficiency, that puts it at about 10% better than BM1385. Not really revolutionary by comparison.

+1

21 1st gen was TSMC 40nm
21 2nd gen was Intel 22nm, power numbers of about 0.57 J/GH at nominal working point.
21 3rd gen was another Intel 22nm, they aimed for 0.22 J/GH according to their investors materials (taped out 24/8 2014, silicon was expected in November 2014)

I believe this is the 3rd gen. It's very bad number for a Intel 22nn, which is FinFET process.

A quote I liked from their presentation: "Approaching Moore's law: best efficiency is likely ~0.15 W/GH/s @ 14nm"

So funny.

I believe that they're working on TSMC 16nm, or Intel 14nm 4th gen.

They're not doing custom design, taking a standard cell brute force approach.

Look at the "ASIC Design Engineer" job description here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150821050459/https://21.co/#jobs

Pure waste of funds, IMHO.

[sidehack]

I kinda figured the same, that it was a <28nm process and not a full-custom design.

A lot of what these guys want to do seems like a bad idea to me. I'm all for wider adoption and bitcoin promotion and such, but the idea of adding mining chips into non-miner devices is foolish. Just like with trying to deploy a farm full of stick miners, the support-component overhead per hash makes it not cost-effective.
We're already having fights over how to expand the block size to accomodate existing actual financial transactions in the chain (you know, the financial transaction recordbook), and we're approaching a halving wherein block rewards decrease, putting more emphasis on transaction fees as a source of mining revenue. So why do we want to promote a mass deployment of services based around spamming the blockchain with (likely zero-fee) dust transactions, either from the "constant stream of bitcoins" coming from your baby miner or microtransactions as a means of messaging? My hatred for IoT in general aside, I'm sure I'm not the only one considering how little sense it makes to use a public financial ledger (with finite resources), the cost of maintenance of which is supposed to be compensated by its users, as a free SMS service.

Seriously, 21. You want to spam a blockchain with tiny free transactions, go make your own and stop messing with ours.

Having a console from which you can send and receive coins in payment for goods and services, that's a great idea. Except it's been done already, for free.

[RichBC]

It also smacks of a "Oh dear this chip is not that good, how are we going to present it?" At which point the marketing department got out the smoke & mirrors and came up a collection of stuff to wrap round it. 

Rich

[alh]

I don't really understand why a "machine" would need to send money to another machine. Why or when a machine would need or want money is beyond me. I thought money was an invention for people, not for machines.

How is your self-driven car going to pay for it self, when going through the car wash? Paying parking?
How are people going to pay your self driven uber car(taxi)?

The possibilities are endless!

http://www.nerdgraph.com/rise-internet-things/
<3 IoT

So do the JetCars arrive at the same time as the switchover to connected cars? The graphic referenced above is way cool and really impressive. Including the item where the IoT universe is worth $7.1 Trillion, which is supposed to be larger than the 2020 Russian GDP. I wonder how the Russian people feel about that? Looks to me like we need to get on the stick and start replacing cars at a furious pace if we want 90% of the cars on the road to be "Connected" in 2020. Maybe folks will just be so dazzled by the possibilities they'll run right out and replace their car. I am sure the.

The costs are staggering and completely out of line with reality. Maybe this can become part of the 2016 Presidential election discussion, after of course we dispense with Planned Parenthood and reducing taxes on the wealthy.   

[alh]

I also found the "WiFi connected Garbage Cans" to be truly hilarious. In my house, the garbage goes out when it stinks too much, or it's pickup day. I would love to see what a "WiFi can will cost" and how it changes the need for the trash hauler to drive down the street on Monday morning. I am absolutely not interested in doing Tech Support at my house for any new Internet connected Gadgets. If you aren't married, this may work great for you. My wife will have nothing to do with it.

[sidehack]

And then there's the consideration that anything operating on a wireless network, especially something as "plug and play" simple as most knuckledraggers are going to need, will probably be incredibly hackable.

[HyperMega]

Assuming 0.16 is bottom-clock efficiency, that puts it at about 10% better than BM1385. Not really revolutionary by comparison.

+1

21 1st gen was TSMC 40nm
21 2nd gen was Intel 22nm, power numbers of about 0.57 J/GH at nominal working point.
21 3rd gen was another Intel 22nm, they aimed for 0.22 J/GH according to their investors materials (taped out 24/8 2014, silicon was expected in November 2014)

I believe this is the 3rd gen. It's very bad number for a Intel 22nn, which is FinFET process.

A quote I liked from their presentation: "Approaching Moore's law: best efficiency is likely ~0.15 W/GH/s @ 14nm"

So funny.

I believe that they're working on TSMC 16nm, or Intel 14nm 4th gen.

They're not doing custom design, taking a standard cell brute force approach.

Look at the "ASIC Design Engineer" job description here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150821050459/https://21.co/#jobs

Pure waste of funds, IMHO.

As usual, you are very well informed, Guy!  

To be fair, with 0.16 J/GH this would be the most efficient chip in the wild so far.
The 0.6V BM1385 value is just quadratic extrapolations of the 0.66V value. Try it, it fits perfectly. IMHO too perfect for a measured value.

Anyway, 21 really screwed it up with the GH/mm2 value. In best case they have here about 2 GH/mm2 (for sure not with 0.16 J/GH). This is a good GH/mm2 value for 28nm, but for 22nm it should be 3 ... 4 GH/mm2. Otherwise this chip will be simply too expensive in production to be competitive for standard miners.

[Sine(X)]

It's a bluff, seriously.. 400$ for such device 
Chinese will do it for 50$ - why the heck?

[alh]

.......

As usual, you are very well informed, Guy!  

To be fair, with 0.16 J/GH this would be the most efficient chip in the wild so far.
The 0.6V BM1384 value is just quadratic extrapolations of the 0.66V value. Try it, it fits perfectly. IMHO too perfect for a measured value.

Anyway, 21 really screwed it up with the GH/mm2 value. In best case they have here about 2 GH/mm2 (for sure not with 0.16 J/GH). This is a good GH/mm2 value for 28nm, but for 22nm it should be 3 ... 4 GH/mm2. Otherwise this chip will be simply too expensive in production to be competitive for standard miners.

You have got to stop thinking about conventional economics here. The IoT bandwagon is impervious to conventional economic considerations. After all, folks are going to just be so happy to pay an extra $25 for their light bulb, it doesn't matter if the ASIC price is a little high. The fact that it's going to be part of the IoT relieves it from those pesky metrics.

If it's connected to the Internet, it MUST be great!!! 

[Guy Corem]

.......

As usual, you are very well informed, Guy!  

To be fair, with 0.16 J/GH this would be the most efficient chip in the wild so far.
The 0.6V BM1384 value is just quadratic extrapolations of the 0.66V value. Try it, it fits perfectly. IMHO too perfect for a measured value.

Anyway, 21 really screwed it up with the GH/mm2 value. In best case they have here about 2 GH/mm2 (for sure not with 0.16 J/GH). This is a good GH/mm2 value for 28nm, but for 22nm it should be 3 ... 4 GH/mm2. Otherwise this chip will be simply too expensive in production to be competitive for standard miners.

You have got to stop thinking about conventional economics here. The IoT bandwagon is impervious to conventional economic considerations. After all, folks are going to just be so happy to pay an extra $25 for their light bulb, it doesn't matter if the ASIC price is a little high. The fact that it's going to be part of the IoT relieves it from those pesky metrics.

If it's connected to the Internet, it MUST be great!!! 

Isn't Raspberry PI 2 + Sidehack's 1384 dongle is essentially the same for quarter of the price ?

[dimke_yu]

I think that you are correct... I am waiting for Antminer R1 that will be useful device unlike this overpriced piece of hardware...

[HyperMega]

.......

You have got to stop thinking about conventional economics here. The IoT bandwagon is impervious to conventional economic considerations. After all, folks are going to just be so happy to pay an extra $25 for their light bulb, it doesn't matter if the ASIC price is a little high. The fact that it's going to be part of the IoT relieves it from those pesky metrics.

If it's connected to the Internet, it MUST be great!!! 

I was not thinking about conventional economics with repect to this tiny "bitcoin computer", I don't have enough fantasy therefor.

I was just thinking about if one could build a competitive real miner based on the 21 inc chip. And I guess the one would have a Capex issue compared to e.g. miners based on BM1385 chips.

[notlist3d]

I think that you are correct... I am waiting for Antminer R1 that will be useful device unlike this overpriced piece of hardware...

I think R1 will be overpriced aswell.  Not to this point of almost crazy.  I almost think 21 want's a release without having to make many products.... so release high price and only sell a few.

With R1 it is still nothing revolutionary.  It should not be much higher then the usb micro tplink and one of sidehacks sticks.   But we will see they could surprise me and release at good price.

[bitsolutions]

Isn't Raspberry PI 2 + Sidehack's 1384 dongle is essentially the same for quarter of the price ?

I think the U3 would be about the cheapest in terms of $/GH but Sidehack's is more efficient.

[TheRealSteve]

Isn't Raspberry PI 2 + Sidehack's 1384 dongle is essentially the same for quarter of the price ?

If one were to add the software and backend ecosystem (however that pans out, exactly), yes.

Not sure if this is the thread I've mentioned it in, but I can see what they're trying to do - and while $400 is steep, I think we all know there's plenty of people who want to try to be at the forefront of [whatever] where $400 for a business is a pretty low expense compared to rent, insurance, payroll, etc.  I know I could easily convince my boss to get one.

The mining aspect, though?  Even with all the reasons given by people who seem like they're trying to position themselves as 21, Inc. mouthpieces (I'll await the Reddit AMA / verified social media outlets for some official statements) I don't think it makes any sense, certainly not in the form it's in.  Not now, not next year (hello halving), and not a few years down the road.  If the issue really were about trying to get a few satoshi into people's hands to start things off with, begging for some on reddit, posting a silly picture with a QR code, hitting a faucet or partaking in a sig campaign (ew) would do the job without adding an expensive component that requires active cooling and bulks the device up (I guess VC money aplenty for warehousing and shipping) unnecessarily.

[Biodom]

few points:

1. this is not a miner, most and foremost upon further reading.
2. I detect some jealousy from the SPT. Yeah, 0.16 is not great. Looking forward to something better than 0.16 from you at a stable/stablish price, otherwise this is just academic.
3. Miners that are only mining, then selling their coin do not make a ecosystem with a balance of buys and sells, hence the relentless price decrease in the last 22 mo.
4. This computer MIGHT provide an impetus for the development of services, which for me as a bitcoin supporter would be a good thing.
5. Obviously, $400 price is a bit steep for individuals, but maybe OK for somebody. Of course, around $200 would be much better (See #6).
6. somebody posted that the sum of parts for it is ~$250. In order to encourage use, they should sell it at cost initially.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1186115.msg12494550#msg12494550

[calichomp]

.......

As usual, you are very well informed, Guy!  

To be fair, with 0.16 J/GH this would be the most efficient chip in the wild so far.
The 0.6V BM1384 value is just quadratic extrapolations of the 0.66V value. Try it, it fits perfectly. IMHO too perfect for a measured value.

Anyway, 21 really screwed it up with the GH/mm2 value. In best case they have here about 2 GH/mm2 (for sure not with 0.16 J/GH). This is a good GH/mm2 value for 28nm, but for 22nm it should be 3 ... 4 GH/mm2. Otherwise this chip will be simply too expensive in production to be competitive for standard miners.

You have got to stop thinking about conventional economics here. The IoT bandwagon is impervious to conventional economic considerations. After all, folks are going to just be so happy to pay an extra $25 for their light bulb, it doesn't matter if the ASIC price is a little high. The fact that it's going to be part of the IoT relieves it from those pesky metrics.

If it's connected to the Internet, it MUST be great!!!  

Isn't Raspberry PI 2 + Sidehack's 1384 dongle is essentially the same for quarter of the price ?

Observe: this is the type of product philosophy that is likely to put you in a position to have to fire-sale your company and dilute yourself off of your own cap table.

[-droid-]

It seems pretty spendy for what it is... but then again we dont even know its full capability regarding software and whatnot.

I sure hope the R1 is around $100

[alh]

Personally I am just happy to have Spondoolies "surface" again and resume communication. Clearly they didn't say the right words or prepare the right kind of PowerPoint slide to extract $116M from the VC guys in California. Probably not the worst thing that could happen to them (IMHO).