Bitfury: "16nm... sales to public start shortly"

[E]

not sure what you guys are talking about, but PR simply states "full custom design"

It was mentioned in the CEO's blog that all transistors were laid out by hand.

I searched CEO blog post (keep calm and ...) with "by hand"-no results.
Care to give a link? Thanks
BTW, V. Vavilov is CEO, Punin is CTO

http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic

Under the heading "Groundbreaking full-custom design".

Every transistor of the 8162 hash engines was drawn and positioned by hand for optimum performance.

[bileq]

what about the asics price?

[toptek]

 

BTW - you STILL haven't addressed my question about how Bitmain (or whoever) is supposed to be competative to the 14/16nm gear after the halfing kills the profitability on anything less efficient.

Every time i see something about the halfing and how bad it will be. I LMAO . then think how does anyone know for sure. The answer is you don't unless your god, i don't see how it going to bad other then 12.5 less coins and the chip makers will adjust and in four more years it happen again, if bitcoins are still here.

I try my best not to comment on anything i see that looks negative but from time to time you can't .

[toptek]

what about the asics price?

no one knows yet unless you have a mill and then you can find out but your under NDA.  

According to what others have said .

my bad
You can find some thing out without a mill

Punin's gotten in touch with me. There's no feasible way I'll get a million bucks but he's working on making small orders possible (if only in a roundabout way) which is definitely nice.

I trust sidehack a lot !!!.


so well see .

[Biodom]

not sure what you guys are talking about, but PR simply states "full custom design"

It was mentioned in the CEO's blog that all transistors were laid out by hand.

I searched CEO blog post (keep calm and ...) with "by hand"-no results.
Care to give a link? Thanks
BTW, V. Vavilov is CEO, Punin is CTO

http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic

Under the heading "Groundbreaking full-custom design".

Every transistor of the 8162 hash engines was drawn and positioned by hand for optimum performance.

Oh, thanks, this is just bad translation. They probably meant that they tinkered with design and optimized every transistor position manually (bad reverse translation from the russian word that in this particular case likely means non-automatic a.k.a with nonzero input from the engineer).

[dogie]

not sure what you guys are talking about, but PR simply states "full custom design"

It was mentioned in the CEO's blog that all transistors were laid out by hand.

I searched CEO blog post (keep calm and ...) with "by hand"-no results.
Care to give a link? Thanks
BTW, V. Vavilov is CEO, Punin is CTO

http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic

Under the heading "Groundbreaking full-custom design".

Every transistor of the 8162 hash engines was drawn and positioned by hand for optimum performance.

Oh, thanks, this is just bad translation. They probably meant that they tinkered with design and optimized every transistor position manually (bad reverse translation from the russian word that in this particular case likely means non-automatic a.k.a with nonzero input from the engineer).

But VV and Niko are both more than proficient in English, so why would it be translated?

[Biodom]

But VV and Niko are both more than proficient in English, so why would it be translated?

you got a point there...maybe that release was prepared not by them, but by a pr agency (in russian), then translated.
who knows...i can hardly imagine nano-size "engineers" moving transistors "by hand" on a chip, but could imagine normal size engineers doing it on a computer screen to optimize.

[QuintLeo]

BTW - you STILL haven't addressed my question about how Bitmain (or whoever) is supposed to be competative to the 14/16nm gear after the halfing kills the profitability on anything less efficient.

Every time i see something about the halfing and how bad it will be. I LMAO . then think how does anyone know for sure. The answer is you don't unless your god, i don't see how it going to bad other then 12.5 less coins and the chip makers will adjust and in four more years it happen again, if bitcoins are still here.

I try my best not to comment on anything i see that looks negative but from time to time you can't .

 Guarenteed half the Bitcoin income the day after vs. the day before, give or take difficulty adjustment.
 100% guarenttee, no question about IF on that part.

 I grant there is a significant probability that the price of Bitcoin will climb quite a bit a month or two before the halfing - but with the way difficulty increases have been going since the introduction of the S7, anything older is going to be LOSING money long before the halfing if you have to pay more than 1-2 cents/KWH and afterwards it looks like the S7 (and Avalon 6 and probably the B-Eleven) will be unprofitable as well at that point.


 No, it's not CERTAIN - but that's the way the trend is looking and the way it HAS been looking for months now.


 I strongly suspect that the only PROFITABLE miners after the halfing will be the 14/16nm generation - though I also suspect if that's the case, that hashrate will dip quite a bit for a short while, *MAYBE* giving the one-previous generation a short "last gasp" of profitablility if you have VERY VERY cheap electric.

[Mr. Kashif]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

[one4many]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

Get a mining calculator on the same day the ship is ship-able. Calculate the return the chip generates (at 100 GHash/s) per month with the NEXT (estimated) difficulty. Multiply that number by 8 (this is when it should break even). And there you have it ... the price of one chip.

Right now the cost would be:
Next est. Difficulty: 1.52542370411e+11
with 100 GH/s
per month: 0.01003473 BTC
multiplied by 8: 0.08027784 BTC total cost per chip (in a functioning miner ... PSU, housing etc. included) which currently results in 30.45 USD

Enjoy!

 

[J4bberwock]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

Get a mining calculator on the same day the ship is ship-able. Calculate the return the chip generates (at 100 GHash/s) per month with the NEXT (estimated) difficulty. Multiply that number by 8 (this is when it should break even). And there you have it ... the price of one chip.

Right now the cost would be:
Next est. Difficulty: 1.52542370411e+11
with 100 GH/s
per month: 0.01003473 BTC
multiplied by 8: 0.08027784 BTC total cost per chip (in a functioning miner ... PSU, housing etc. included) which currently results in 30.45 USD

Enjoy!

 

But this calculation was good for 28nm chips, so, you need to divide this number by 16(nm) and multiply it by 28(nm).
End result would be $53.28
 

[one4many]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

Get a mining calculator on the same day the ship is ship-able. Calculate the return the chip generates (at 100 GHash/s) per month with the NEXT (estimated) difficulty. Multiply that number by 8 (this is when it should break even). And there you have it ... the price of one chip.

Right now the cost would be:
Next est. Difficulty: 1.52542370411e+11
with 100 GH/s
per month: 0.01003473 BTC
multiplied by 8: 0.08027784 BTC total cost per chip (in a functioning miner ... PSU, housing etc. included) which currently results in 30.45 USD

Enjoy!

But this calculation was good for 28nm chips, so, you need to divide this number by 16(nm) and multiply it by 28(nm).
End result would be $53.28
 

LOL ... I guess more the other way around when it is based on 28 nm ... divide by 28 and multiply by 16  = 17.41 USD 

[Mr. Kashif]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

Get a mining calculator on the same day the ship is ship-able. Calculate the return the chip generates (at 100 GHash/s) per month with the NEXT (estimated) difficulty. Multiply that number by 8 (this is when it should break even). And there you have it ... the price of one chip.

Right now the cost would be:
Next est. Difficulty: 1.52542370411e+11
with 100 GH/s
per month: 0.01003473 BTC
multiplied by 8: 0.08027784 BTC total cost per chip (in a functioning miner ... PSU, housing etc. included) which currently results in 30.45 USD

Enjoy!

 

But this calculation was good for 28nm chips, so, you need to divide this number by 16(nm) and multiply it by 28(nm).
End result would be $53.28
 

So, what you guys mean to say is that these chips would cost $30 - $50 /Chip, am I right?


If I assume that the chips cost me $45/chip an I need to achieve a hashing power of 10.2Th/s on immersion cooling I would require 60 chips and these chips would cost me $2700 Whoa!! thats a staggering amount. Between I have my fingers crossed for the prices.

[brontosaurus]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

Get a mining calculator on the same day the ship is ship-able. Calculate the return the chip generates (at 100 GHash/s) per month with the NEXT (estimated) difficulty. Multiply that number by 8 (this is when it should break even). And there you have it ... the price of one chip.

Right now the cost would be:
Next est. Difficulty: 1.52542370411e+11
with 100 GH/s
per month: 0.01003473 BTC
multiplied by 8: 0.08027784 BTC total cost per chip (in a functioning miner ... PSU, housing etc. included) which currently results in 30.45 USD

Enjoy!

 

But this calculation was good for 28nm chips, so, you need to divide this number by 16(nm) and multiply it by 28(nm).
End result would be $53.28
 

So, what you guys mean to say is that these chips would cost $30 - $50 /Chip, am I right?


If I assume that the chips cost me $45/chip an I need to achieve a hashing power of 10.2Th/s on immersion cooling I would require 60 chips and these chips would cost me $2700 Whoa!! thats a staggering amount. Between I have my fingers crossed for the prices.

Unless it's a really bad design this chip should cost them about $3 to make (packaged). That's assuming 5 million chip quantities or 500 PH. What will they sell it for? Much more than this, that's for sure but I'd guess they want to give buyers a hope that they can pay back their costs in about 6-9 months, so probably around $8 for volume buyers, $10.50 for the plebs.

[HyperMega]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

Get a mining calculator on the same day the ship is ship-able. Calculate the return the chip generates (at 100 GHash/s) per month with the NEXT (estimated) difficulty. Multiply that number by 8 (this is when it should break even). And there you have it ... the price of one chip.

Right now the cost would be:
Next est. Difficulty: 1.52542370411e+11
with 100 GH/s
per month: 0.01003473 BTC
multiplied by 8: 0.08027784 BTC total cost per chip (in a functioning miner ... PSU, housing etc. included) which currently results in 30.45 USD

Enjoy!

 

But this calculation was good for 28nm chips, so, you need to divide this number by 16(nm) and multiply it by 28(nm).
End result would be $53.28
 

So, what you guys mean to say is that these chips would cost $30 - $50 /Chip, am I right?


If I assume that the chips cost me $45/chip an I need to achieve a hashing power of 10.2Th/s on immersion cooling I would require 60 chips and these chips would cost me $2700 Whoa!! thats a staggering amount. Between I have my fingers crossed for the prices.

Unless it's a really bad design this chip should cost them about $3 to make (packaged). That's assuming 5 million chip quantities or 500 PH. What will they sell it for? Much more than this, that's for sure but I'd guess they want to give buyers a hope that they can pay back their costs in about 6-9 months, so probably around $8 for volume buyers, $10.50 for the plebs.

The (QFN?) package should be about $0.20 .
This means, if your assumption is right, they would spend about $2.80 for the pure die.

How much is a 16nm wafer? Maybe about $9k if they make a good deal with TSMC?

This would result in about 3200 good dies per wafer. Right?

70000 mm² per 300 mm wafer and assuming 90% yield a single die size would be about 20 mm² (4.5mm x 4.5mm), which would fit to the package size.

8162 rolled cores; 65 clock cycles per hash -> equals about 125 unrolled cores;

A single semi-custom (standard cell based) unrolled core has an area of about 0.3 mm² in 28nm.
Implemented based on unrolled cores in 28nm a chip with equivalent performance would have a size of about 37.5 mm².
Taking the area scaling of a factor of 2 from 28nm to 16nm into account, the unrolled semi-custom version of the chip would have 18.75 mm² in 16nm (but would be probably not that efficient).

So I have to agree, your estimation is feasible and should be close to reality.

[jstefanop]

Does anyone know what the price of these new chips would be?

Get a mining calculator on the same day the ship is ship-able. Calculate the return the chip generates (at 100 GHash/s) per month with the NEXT (estimated) difficulty. Multiply that number by 8 (this is when it should break even). And there you have it ... the price of one chip.

Right now the cost would be:
Next est. Difficulty: 1.52542370411e+11
with 100 GH/s
per month: 0.01003473 BTC
multiplied by 8: 0.08027784 BTC total cost per chip (in a functioning miner ... PSU, housing etc. included) which currently results in 30.45 USD

Enjoy!

 

But this calculation was good for 28nm chips, so, you need to divide this number by 16(nm) and multiply it by 28(nm).
End result would be $53.28
 

So, what you guys mean to say is that these chips would cost $30 - $50 /Chip, am I right?


If I assume that the chips cost me $45/chip an I need to achieve a hashing power of 10.2Th/s on immersion cooling I would require 60 chips and these chips would cost me $2700 Whoa!! thats a staggering amount. Between I have my fingers crossed for the prices.

Unless it's a really bad design this chip should cost them about $3 to make (packaged). That's assuming 5 million chip quantities or 500 PH. What will they sell it for? Much more than this, that's for sure but I'd guess they want to give buyers a hope that they can pay back their costs in about 6-9 months, so probably around $8 for volume buyers, $10.50 for the plebs.

The (QFN?) package should be about $0.20 .
This means, if your assumption is right, they would spend about $2.80 for the pure die.

How much is a 16nm wafer? Maybe about $9k if they make a good deal with TSMC?

This would result in about 3200 good dies per wafer. Right?

70000 mm² per 300 mm wafer and assuming 90% yield a single die size would be about 20 mm² (4.5mm x 4.5mm), which would fit to the package size.

8162 rolled cores; 65 clock cycles per hash -> equals about 125 unrolled cores;

A single semi-custom (standard cell based) unrolled core has an area of about 0.3 mm² in 28nm.
Implemented based on unrolled cores in 28nm a chip with equivalent performance would have a size of about 37.5 mm².
Taking the area scaling of a factor of 2 from 28nm to 16nm into account, the unrolled semi-custom version of the chip would have 18.75 mm² in 16nm (but would be probably not that efficient).

So I have to agree, your estimation is feasible and should be close to reality.

very close

[NotFuzzyWarm]

<snip>
This would result in about 3200 good dies per wafer. Right?

70000 mm² per 300 mm wafer and assuming 90% yield a single die size would be about 20 mm² (4.5mm x 4.5mm), which would fit to the package size.
<snip>

90% yield?  
That is WAAAAAY off base. That yield is common for higher nodes like 28nm on up but currently 16/14nm production yields are around 40% good dies and lower. They only began to hit 40% late last year...

Now the foundries are of course trying to get better but the processes are still under development. Biggest issue is the EUV light source used for the photo lithography. That monstrosity is still pretty hairy to run and is in no way capable of running 24x7. Is more like 8-20hrs followed by around 6 hrs to a full day of cleaning/realignment/process verification before starting another run of chips.

[sidehack]

If going by area, wouldn't shrinking from 28nm to 16nm be a factor of 3 decrease?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

For general info on the light source being used and its current status https://www.gigaphoton.com/en/news/3770 Note the date of the release.
They mention hitting a 24hr benchmark but that was an extended test run on a prototype and do not mention that it was test run only. That time between rebuild has not yet hit the foundries floors. btw: Gigaphoton and 1 other vendor makes the system which incorporates modules from other suppliers. Both use the same laser source and basic process to generate the EUV from their interaction with tin droplets.

One good sign of the various foundries confidence that the current tech used to generate EUV will be viable is that the sole supplier of the laser system used in it spent 70M euro's last June on an expansion to dedicated to make the lasers needed. http://optics.org/news/6/6/31. Has a good is basic description of how the EUV light is generated as well.

For info on TSMC's 16nm pr http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/16nm.htm
Main consumers of TSMC's production http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/application_specific_platform_solutions.htm Note that boutique ASIC's (eg for miners) don't even make the list unless maybe they fall under Power IC.

From 6mo ago, a hint at one of the players that have been footing the bill to reach 16/14nm chips http://wccftech.com/tsmc-begins-volume-production-16nm-finfet-nvidia-pascal-gp100-gpu/ It is only due to folks like them that targeted mid-volume high-end commercial/consumer use pricing has become available. Also one guess what fruity company has bought up almost all the current 16nm production capability of TSMC leaving far less available for miners (so far).

One other bright light at the end of the tunnel: keep in mind what foundries like TSMC, GloFo, and Samsung (Intel and IBM don't count here) consider when talking production volumes. Those are the ONLY foundries able to produce high volumes of 16/14nm chips. Period. Talk several hundred million to around 3/4 billion or more chips per month and you have their rapt attention. They won't even talk to you about 'boutique'' runs of only a million or so per month. I can't see the combined demand from BitFury and Bitmain being more than around a few hundred million chips/mo at best once things are proven out. But, with the processes getting better, miner ASIC's are able to tag along in many of the production steps and that translates into a lot of available custom chips space per step. Hopefully by now BitFury is up to full wafer status (with the attendant ~40% yield per-wafer). With Bitmain probably not far but silently behind???

All that said and done, it will certainly be interesting to see how BitFury's chip comes out!

[2112]

90% yield?  
That is WAAAAAY off base. That yield is common for higher nodes like 28nm on up but currently 16/14nm production yields are around 40% good dies and lower. They only began to hit 40% late last year...

Now the foundries are of course trying to get better but the processes are still under development. Biggest issue is the EUV light source used for the photo lithography. That monstrosity is still pretty hairy to run and is in no way capable of running 24x7. Is more like 8-20hrs followed by around 6 hrs to a full day of cleaning/realignment/process verification before starting another run of chips.

90% is a lowball estimate. The actual yield will be higher. The mining chips are so repetitive that they are commercially valuable even if less than 10% of it is operating correctly. It is the same story as with NAND flash memories.