[Announcement] Avalon ASIC Development Status [Batch #1]

[BitSyncom]

I have a support ticket open which is now nearly 2 weeks old with no response other than 'Ticket Received',  re order number 200000363.
(ticket 13)
Can I please get some action on this?

This matter has been taken cared of, we did not get the new ticket notification. Excuses aside, if in the future, any tickets or email that has not been replied to within 3 days, feel free to address it here in the thread as many eyes will be looking at from our team, but only few people get the notification emails in case some problems arise.

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[DiabloD3]

The BFL reps responded to one of Avalons claims...with very vague mentions of a ~unique~ workflow arrangement enabling them to do...well, the impossible. (IMO)

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/500-josh-plz-give-us-some-comments-about.html#post7363

hm..

While I appreciate the technical prowess of the Avalon team, the fact of the matter is they simply don't have the resources or experience we have in this area.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


*deep breath*
...oh shit.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

are they being serious?


experience in what? delaying shit so many times?

"IT POPS POPCORN!" -- Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo of Japan

[bce]

This would make total sense. If your second shipment can beat BFL's first, a lot of people would switch, I'm sure. I for one would have to do some serious soul searching for sure after a bunch of layers of BS from BFL

BFL has apparently designed a fab technique based on layering BS on their chip. That is why they can grow/deposit those layers so darn quickly.

It will do everything (at lower power). As long as it is not seen by the human eye.

Ahh so it is the observer effect causing delays?

[caoxg]

Well Done, Guys!

你们才是真正的专业~~
干的好啊同学们！
给国人长脸了！

（求加塞预定......)  

[AndrewBUD]

The BFL reps responded to one of Avalons claims...with very vague mentions of a ~unique~ workflow arrangement enabling them to do...well, the impossible. (IMO)

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/500-josh-plz-give-us-some-comments-about.html#post7363

hm..

While I appreciate the technical prowess of the Avalon team, the fact of the matter is they simply don't have the resources or experience we have in this area.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


*deep breath*
...oh shit.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

are they being serious?


experience in what? delaying shit so many times?

"IT POPS POPCORN!" -- Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo of Japan

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

[Bogart]

BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

They're a market leader in microprocessor design.   It says so right on prweb.

[abracadabra]

BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

They're a market leader in microprocessor design.   It says so right on prweb.

My sarcasm detector is malfunctioning.

[abeaulieu]

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

Maybe they're referring to hiring someone, either as an employee or a contractor, who has experience making ASICs.

[creativex]

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

Maybe they're referring to hiring someone, either as an employee or a contractor, who has experience making ASICs.

That's not what it says, and if that IS the case then they should fire that person immediately...they've failed.

[SgtSpike]

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

Maybe they're referring to hiring someone, either as an employee or a contractor, who has experience making ASICs.

I think that's exactly what they are referring to.

It is common for companies to refer to themselves as having "51 years of combined experience" in such and such a field.  I think when BFL claims to be experienced in creating ASICs, they mean that their engineers have designed ASICs in the past, and thus have experience in designing ASICs.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

Maybe they're referring to hiring someone, either as an employee or a contractor, who has experience making ASICs.

I think that's exactly what they are referring to.

It is common for companies to refer to themselves as having "51 years of combined experience" in such and such a field.  I think when BFL claims to be experienced in creating ASICs, they mean that their engineers have designed ASICs in the past, and thus have experience in designing ASICs.

Bruno's Barn Wood & Beams has 2,783 years experience in building primitive barn wood furniture here in the US alone.

The way I did the math is add up all the years of experience of all the furniture makers I provide lumber for and voilà. I may be off by a decade or two, but you get the idea.

[Bogart]

I think when BFL claims to be experienced in creating ASICs, they mean that their engineers have designed ASICs in the past, and thus have experience in designing ASICs.

https://www.elance.com/s/nasser750gx/

If we have a look at Nasser's portfolio of past engineering projects, nearly all of them incorporate an FPGA, but nary a mention of an ASIC.  Not in the CV either.

Granted, that's probably only current as of 2007.  Still...

Maybe it's those secret ninja engineers they're not telling us about.

[DiabloD3]

The BFL reps responded to one of Avalons claims...with very vague mentions of a ~unique~ workflow arrangement enabling them to do...well, the impossible. (IMO)

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/500-josh-plz-give-us-some-comments-about.html#post7363

hm..

While I appreciate the technical prowess of the Avalon team, the fact of the matter is they simply don't have the resources or experience we have in this area.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


*deep breath*
...oh shit.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

are they being serious?


experience in what? delaying shit so many times?

"IT POPS POPCORN!" -- Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo of Japan

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

No, BFL has more experience in making highly efficient popcorn poppers.

[abeaulieu]

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

Maybe they're referring to hiring someone, either as an employee or a contractor, who has experience making ASICs.

That's not what it says, and if that IS the case then they should fire that person immediately...they've failed.

Your response is much more falsely conclusive than anything. There are no words used to say that this experience is not derived from someone or a team of someones they've hired. In fact, it's pretty obvious that's the only thing they conceivably could be talking about considering we are pretty confident those we know about in management in Josh do not have experience in designing ASICs.

Secondly, we have yet to tell if this person(s) has failed, at least in my book. I guess you should probably evaluate your metric of success.

[OgNasty]

Anyone interested in buying a discounted Icarus to lower the cost of their Avalon by $300?  PM me.

[PuertoLibre]

The BFL reps responded to one of Avalons claims...with very vague mentions of a ~unique~ workflow arrangement enabling them to do...well, the impossible. (IMO)

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/500-josh-plz-give-us-some-comments-about.html#post7363

hm..

While I appreciate the technical prowess of the Avalon team, the fact of the matter is they simply don't have the resources or experience we have in this area.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


*deep breath*
...oh shit.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

are they being serious?


experience in what? delaying shit so many times?

"IT POPS POPCORN!" -- Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo of Japan

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

No, BFL has more experience in making highly efficient popcorn poppers.

Are you sure? 65nm is pretty cool to the touch, just saying.  

[crazyates]

The BFL reps responded to one of Avalons claims...with very vague mentions of a ~unique~ workflow arrangement enabling them to do...well, the impossible. (IMO)

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/500-josh-plz-give-us-some-comments-about.html#post7363

hm..

While I appreciate the technical prowess of the Avalon team, the fact of the matter is they simply don't have the resources or experience we have in this area.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


*deep breath*
...oh shit.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

are they being serious?


experience in what? delaying shit so many times?

"IT POPS POPCORN!" -- Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo of Japan

I was wondering about that reply. BFL has more exeperience creating ASIC devices? I call BS.

No, BFL has more experience in making highly efficient popcorn poppers.

Are you sure? 65nm is pretty cool to the touch, just saying.  

DO ITTTT!

[PuertoLibre]

BFL says Avalon is too "hot" and "irresponsible" in an eco friendly sort of way:

So I have been very focused on our ASIC launch for the past few weeks obviously and have not given a lot of thought towards the overall climate / state of ASICs until this evening, whilest rooting a new Nexus 7 GSM model (it's still got that new Android smell)...

A few things occurred to me, after giving them some thought and I am just throwing this out here:

bASIC

The lack of information from Tom (which was endemic from the start, but people had blinders on for a number of reasons), coupled with the little bit of information he's given out points quite convincingly that he has basically gone back to the drawing board and is starting over from scratch, or close enough to it to make no difference.  Why this has happened, only Tom can say, but one can make a few educated guesses.  There are two likely scenario's I can see here, and I'm just speculating... but either the "team" that Tom had assembled never delivered anything but empty promises and Tom finally got fed up and switched teams, putting him at square one.  Another possibility is that he did in fact get some boards back and things just didn't work out like he was hoping, which means he had to go back to the drawing board.  I give equal credence to either issue, but the fact that he has absolutely nothing to show for the efforts indicates that he is either starting from scratch or never got off the ground to begin with.  In either case, a mid-January launch from Tom at this point is exceedingly unlikely, and if he does manage to get something out by the middle of January, I suspect it will underperform and the power consumption will be much more than he's indicated at this point.  I think he was basing his power and hashrate estimates off what his previous team was telling him, and he's all but admitted that previous team was useless... so any estimates coming from them are going to be suspect.  Right now, I would say out of all the ASIC vendors, Tom is the most likely to fold up shop if anyone is going to fold up.

Avalon

Avalon is like the turtle... slow and steady and they will eventually get there.  What you end up with is going to be large, loud and hot while it tears through kilowatts like a Silverback through a banana plantation.  Will it perform at the hashrate advertised?  Absolutely, I think they will nail that, but the cost to reach that performance at 110nm is going to be crippling to anyone but those with free power.  The fact that the Avalon team has publicly stated that anyone not using free power should not be mining should be a major red flag when it comes to people who have to pay for power and what Avalon is going to bring to the table.  This is to say nothing of the environmental cost and how irresponsible it is to advocate mining inefficiently and not caring about the power usage.  Having brought up the environmental issue, I do realize how potentially hypocritical it is to be a bitcoin miner and talk about the environmental impact of mining, but that doesn't it isn't and shouldn't be a concern, especially when alternates are available.  Even the bASIC as a worst case will be superior to the Avalon in terms of power usage and should be used before using an Avalon unit to mine... but the environmental impact is another discussion. 

I think Avalon is going to run into some integration issues with their all-in-one approach that they aren't expecting - how quickly they will overcome them is anyones guess, but it could potentially signal a delay, but it's not something I would bet for or against.

ASICMINER

What's going on here?  Last I heard they might have chips before the end of the year.  Their hashrate won't really affect the network as a whole very much, so it's not really an issue.

----

I think that about covers the leading ASIC scene apart from BFL.  That said, with Tom looking like he's either down for the count or severely delayed, the real race now seems to be between Avalon and BFL.  We are still on target to ship before Avalon, so that is not really an issue... but I was considering what would happen if Avalon pulled a slick one and was able to ship much earlier and something interesting occurred to me.

Avalon has 300 units they want to ship in the first batch - ok, at 66 GH/s, that increases the network hashrate about 20 TH... That is less than half the current network hashrate, which is comprised of a large portion of GPU miners.  Adding 20 TH to the network would knock many of those GPU miners out of the profitability envelope, resulting in a net increase in network hashing power between 5 - 10 TH by my estimations.  So even if Avalon shipped tomorrow, it would not throw difficulty out of whack too far and would not be catastrophic for any of the other ASIC companies.  If Avalon sticks to their timeline and is truly able to ship all 300 units in a reasonable time frame, the network hashrate would be affected only in a minor way before Avalon runs into Chinese New Year and everything is on hold for a month...  That means the total increased network hashrate between now and March (at the earliest) is 5 - 10 TH if no other ASICs ship.  This does not necessarily include ASICMiner, but the future of ASICminer is kind of murky at this point, so it's hard to predict where they will end up and what effect it will have.

"Current State of ASICs (Not a BFL ASIC update)"

Link: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/509-current-state-asics-not-bfl-asic-update.html

[Frizz23]

... resulting in a net increase in network hashing power between 5 - 10 TH by my estimations.  So even if Avalon shipped tomorrow, it would not throw difficulty out of whack too far ...

Sounds like damage control to me. BFL/Josh has come a long way from "kill-em-all jet fighter pilot first ASICs on the market nuke everyone else rarara" to "OK we might not be the first ones but it does not matter ... OK we suck but everyone else sucks too".

Lame, seriously lame.

...before Avalon runs into Chinese New Year and everything is on hold for a month...

Oh! I am sure that at least here BFL will be the first one! The first one to use the "unusual long Chinese New Year"-story as another excuse why they can't ship their ASICs

[PuertoLibre]

... resulting in a net increase in network hashing power between 5 - 10 TH by my estimations.  So even if Avalon shipped tomorrow, it would not throw difficulty out of whack too far ...

Sounds like damage control to me. BFL/Josh has come a long way from "kill-em-all jet fighter pilot first ASICs on the market nuke everyone else rarara" to "OK we might not be the first ones but it does not matter ... OK we suck but everyone else sucks too".

Lame, seriously lame.

You noticed it too, huh?

When the rep is on the defensive it is because he is worried about the competition. Hes done it to Tom, now to Avalon.

...before Avalon runs into Chinese New Year and everything is on hold for a month...

Oh! I am sure that at least here BFL will be the first one! The first one to use the "unusual long Chinese New Year"-story as another excuse why they can't ship their ASICs

<shrug>

Imagine if Avalon does ship first. The panic...the panic...

What he failed to mention is that Avalon customers will probably not affect difficulty, true. But that just means they might have made the right choice and will be mining green heaven. While his own customers sit and watch their computer screens for the next delay...

Enough profit so that even at 400watts they will be able to pay off the year of electricity use in less than a day. Thats IF, it stays at 400watts by the next update. Which should be soon I hope.