the purpose of this thread is to provide transparency and keep our existing and potential customers up-to-date whilst we work out some unforeseen website integration issues.
Hello everyone, my name is Yifu. Despise my fairly-lengthy involvement with Bitcoin, most of you do not know me. Rest assured however, I am no stranger to many in the Bitcoin community that is currently building/have built exciting business and/or systems. I must confess it has been my intention to stay away from the forums from the start as I
enjoy being in the state of "doing"
rather than in the acts of "blowing hot air". Alas, I do what I must.
I decided to look into ASICs awhile back because a simple and powerful reason: the
lack of competition in Bitcoin mining dedicated hardware. Utilizing my well-traveled history, being multilingual and various skill sets is how I got involved with Avalon. Anyways, enough about me. Let's get to the
good stuff.
before I begin you may wish to catch up on
previous newsletters and a
reddit AMA I conducted a few weeks ago.
Avalon launched with a challenge to our competitors: a over 50% dollar per GHash gain. Our competitors since then has also increased their specifications in order to stay competitive. Deviated from their original plan the competition managed to even the playing field, yet we
simply proceeded with our
original design goals and have reached 64Gh/s, and now
66Gh/s! Once again taking the lead in $/Ghash. While the competition
promised early delivery dates but
kept pushing them back. Avalon instead gave an
very conservative estimate but now is scheduled to ship
even earlier at
Jan. 20th 2013.Specification. Chip Specification
Technology Summary:
TSMC 0.11- micron G process
5 Metal
Core Voltage: 1.2 V
I/O Voltage: 3.3 V
Core Frequency: 256+ MHz
Number of Pads: 48
8 Data
40+1 Power
Package Type: QFN48 -0.5 Pitch
Packaged Chip Size: 7 mm x 7 mm
Chip Interface
Data Pins (8 in total):
Clock i
Serial Data In [2] i
Serial Data Out [2] o
Serial Data Bypass [2] o
Reserved [1] -
Avalon since inception has been designed to be an
stand-alone unit, embed Linux openWRT equipped with WIFI capabilities and an Ethernet Port, while the competition is designed to operated over USB, depended on the need of a host computer. Continuing our trend, we have narrowed down our power estimates from 600W to
400W and this number is
guaranteed to
decrease further. Did I mention our power supply is a
standard ATX?
The
true genius of Avalon lies within its
modular design. need a better PSU? No problem! Install your own. In fact, it is within our schedule to release the controller ( openWRT ) image.iso before the end of the year to give eager developers a head start to spin
your own custom mining setups. Embrace open source!
Trade-Ins. Avalon believes in continuing the trust that have build up with our old customers. Reinstating our policy of $300 per Icarus, $400 per Lancelot, limited one FPGA trade-in per ASIC unit. The trade-in program will continue to be available and will apply to 1st-gen Avalons when the time comes.
Stress Testing. Avalon will not be testing these ASICs on the Bitcoin network period, whether it being the main-net, test-net, or
even test-net-in-a-box. Why is that you may ask?
We will be testing these ASICs to do what exactly they are designed for, that is computing double-SHA256 hashes. this algorithm is not bitcoin exclusive at all. It is just so happens to be the block hashing algorithm, thus it would be silly to even set up a mining pool or use the bitcoin network in and form or way. We will be testing using our own custom software written to stress test our chips.
Shipping We at Avalon understands the some what unreliableness of EMS in certain countries, to address this issue, all existing and future orders will have the choice to be shipped out via DHL at
no additional charge. This will ensure timely delivery of our products.
Inventory. Avalon learned from the mistake of our competitors and since conception has decided to release small order batches of 300 ( a number solely based on our estimated capacity) and only when a batch is close to finished, we will begin the sales of the next batch. When a new batch is announced, there will be another thread. In short, any units ordered so far, until further notice is part of batch #1, which is currently scheduled to ship at Jan 14th. In addition, as people fail to follow up with their orders, there are still some units left in the store, so if you missed your chance originally, now it's the time.
Facility Photos. Due to popular demand by the community, We have uploaded our facility photos. The
full res album is at
http://imgur.com/a/KPBTl
Retail Pricing.$1,299? Yep, to stay with the spirit of the competition.
$1,299 for 66Gh/s.
question, comments and grievances welcome.
