[Archive] BFL trolling museum

[MrTeal]

Wasn't the picture of the bubbled chip posted in late-ish October? Did you blow it up in October than then have the simulations done in December, and then decided to switch away from QFN?

It sounds like that's about how it went, yeah.  They got the QFN prototypes, figured out they couldn't cool them properly as they thought they could, did some "worst case scenario" self testing, bubbled a chip, decided to have an outside company do some similar testing in December, and then concluded they couldn't properly cool a QFN chip in a heated environment.

If that's the case and they knew about the problems with the QFN in early/mid-Oct, what was going on for the last half of October and November before they had the consultants run thermal simulations and start the move to a FC package in December?
Did they have an initial batch in Oct that ran too hot and blew the chip, tried another wafer run through November expecting to ship in December that still had too many issues, then ran the simulations and decided to switch to FC?

[SgtSpike]

Wasn't the picture of the bubbled chip posted in late-ish October? Did you blow it up in October than then have the simulations done in December, and then decided to switch away from QFN?

It sounds like that's about how it went, yeah.  They got the QFN prototypes, figured out they couldn't cool them properly as they thought they could, did some "worst case scenario" self testing, bubbled a chip, decided to have an outside company do some similar testing in December, and then concluded they couldn't properly cool a QFN chip in a heated environment.

If that's the case and they knew about the problems with the QFN in early/mid-Oct, what was going on for the last half of October and November before they had the consultants run thermal simulations and start the move to a FC package in December?
Did they have an initial batch in Oct that ran too hot and blew the chip, tried another wafer run through November expecting to ship in December that still had too many issues, then ran the simulations and decided to switch to FC?

Sounds like a distinct possibility to me...!

[becoin]

Assume that buying stuff with your BTC was like selling your BTC for USD.

I can not assume something that is incorrect. I didn't sell my BTC for USD. BFL did. I don't have any contract with BitPay. BFL have. This is why only BFL can sell BTC to BitPay!

I don't know how you are reasonning, but for me, it was clear that it was refundable in USD.

Read, read, read... I thought you have read all my reasoning so far and this is why you are annoyed?! For me, it was clear that I'm paying in BTC and it was refundable in the currency and amount that was originally paid.

[tvbcof]

I personally think that if you sent BFL payment in Bitcoins and they converted that to USD (back in the summer when preorders started), you shouldn't be whining. You basically took a gamble on BFL delivering on time.

The fact that the price rose is something you should have considered as part of your level of risk you wanted to take in entrusting BFL with your bitcoins for preorder.

I still view BFL as a bullshit company that is very unprofessional.

Much of what surrounds BFL now reminds me of BTCST.

Sorry to belabor an already made point, but some people still don't get it.

If BFL is paying their costs in USD (never mind that it's looking more and more laughable that they have any costs by the day) then it only makes sense that they would convert BTC to USD.  And refund accordingly.

OTOH, if it is true that they reserved all pre-order funds in an untouched pool (even more laughable) then they could have just sat on BTC.  If they were legit, however, they would have made it perfectly clear what they were doing in this regard and given customers an option.  Of course few of the dim-wit 'customers' (cough) envisioned the possibility to want their pre-order funds back (their minds being filled with visions of fast cars and attractive sex partners) so it's not surprising that this level of planning was neglected.  (To be fair, I am actually just guessing that this is the reality of how things went down, but if anyone wants to prove me wrong, go for it.)

[Korbman]

I can not assume something that is incorrect.

Yes you can.

I didn't sell my BTC for USD. BFL did. I don't have any contract with BitPay. BFL have. This is why only BFL can sell BTC to BitPay!

BFL never saw even one bitcoin from a customer. BFL creates an invoice for a price in USD, BitPay takes that invoice and converts it to BTC based on current market rates, the customer pays the BTC and is instantly converted to USD and sent to BFL.

[Littleshop]

Assume that buying stuff with your BTC was like selling your BTC for USD.

I can not assume something that is incorrect. I didn't sell my BTC for USD. BFL did. I don't have any contract with BitPay. BFL have. This is why only BFL can sell BTC to BitPay!

I don't know how you are reasonning, but for me, it was clear that it was refundable in USD.

Read, read, read... I thought you have read all my reasoning so far and this is why you are annoyed?! For me, it was clear that I'm paying in BTC and it was refundable in the currency and amount that was originally paid.

That is absurd and the only reason why you put that fabrication together is to try to game BFL.  By your logic anyone with a BFL order paid in BTC can ask for a refund of the BTC and then instantly replace (if desired) the order at a lower BTC cost pocketing the BTC.  Everyone gets a free OPTION call!! 

[SgtSpike]

Assume that buying stuff with your BTC was like selling your BTC for USD.

I can not assume something that is incorrect. I didn't sell my BTC for USD. BFL did. I don't have any contract with BitPay. BFL have. This is why only BFL can sell BTC to BitPay!

I don't know how you are reasonning, but for me, it was clear that it was refundable in USD.

Read, read, read... I thought you have read all my reasoning so far and this is why you are annoyed?! For me, it was clear that I'm paying in BTC and it was refundable in the currency and amount that was originally paid.

You are wrong.  A court would not agree with you on this.  BFL's orders were priced in USD, therefore you will receive a refund in USD.  If you believe differently, take it to a courtroom and prove us all wrong!

[MrTeal]

I wish the forum had an intelligent keyword filtering option so that I could still watch this thread, but it would hide every post related to ForEx, BTC refunds and credit card exchange rates.

[repentance]

No there won't..... Most of them will still stick to BFL cause they believe (like really religious "batshitcrazy" people) that their holy savior ASIC will arrive soon. Even if there is another delay

It's not as if they can "take their business elsewhere" at this point anyway.  No-one in their right might would place an order with bASIC.  ASICMiner isn't going to be selling to the public in the near future.  Avalon is due to deliver their first batch soon but orders are closed for that.  For BFL customers, the choice at the moment is to either hang in their or to get a refund and abandon the idea of ASIC mining for the immediate future (which they don't want to do because they'll be disadvantaged if BFL does deliver at some point - even if it's late - and they don't have an existing order).

[becoin]

BFL never saw even one bitcoin from a customer.

This is fully under BFL control and how do they setup their account with Bitpay.

BFL creates an invoice for a price in USD

This statement does not correspond to actual situation:

[Unacceptable]

Is it February or Febuary, because I prefer -uary, and what's with this Ru?

BFL-Josh, Inaba: Is there a time limit on using my fpga upgrade? I was planning on waiting to you guys shipped to put in an order, just wanted to make sure I will still be able to use the single fpga upgrade still. Thanks.

The tradein has been extended to June 1st 2013 

[Gyrsur]

Is it February or Febuary, because I prefer -uary, and what's with this Ru?

BFL-Josh, Inaba: Is there a time limit on using my fpga upgrade? I was planning on waiting to you guys shipped to put in an order, just wanted to make sure I will still be able to use the single fpga upgrade still. Thanks.

The tradein has been extended to June 1st 2013  

this means end of Q1 the product and trade-in until nearly the end of Q2?  

[julz]

Assume that buying stuff with your BTC was like selling your BTC for USD.

I can not assume something that is incorrect. I didn't sell my BTC for USD. BFL did. I don't have any contract with BitPay. BFL have. This is why only BFL can sell BTC to BitPay!

I don't know how you are reasonning, but for me, it was clear that it was refundable in USD.

Read, read, read... I thought you have read all my reasoning so far and this is why you are annoyed?! For me, it was clear that I'm paying in BTC and it was refundable in the currency and amount that was originally paid.

Good grief. The BFL website clearly puts the *price* in USD - and lists Bitcoin as one of the payment *methods*.
The deal is DENOMINATED in USD. End of story.
You're wrong and obnoxiously so.

[hardcore-fs]

More details on the QFN packaging and reasons for delays:

We made the decision to go with QFN in December. I can't really talk about our development process itself, but we have gone through extensive design and testing phases... at one point in early December we decided to look at a worst case scenario if the chips were in a really hot environment (you can see the bubbled chip in one of the pictures, I think someone pointed it out.). We paid a company out of California quite a bit of money to run a run of simulations under different scenarios on our boards, as well as if we made changes to various portions of the PCB if we could salvage the QFN package's thermal envelope. We were able to get the thermal loads down about 6C off the current mark, but we were still within single digits of the max temperatures of surrounding components once the heat started to migrate through the ground plane. If someone in a really hot area ran these things, the fan would be on full blast the entire time, and as dust and other detritus collected on the HSF the unit would start to overheat and throttle (or worst case, you'd get bubbled chips). The internal junction temp of our ASICs, if I recall is around 121C, however the MCU and a couple other components are around 100C or less if memory serves and we were butting up against that in some cases, in the 90's.

I've already touched on some of the roadblocks we've had. One of the more annoying ones was the diffraction issue ... for example, at 65nm if you try to make a square shape on a wafer, you can't just make a square shape on the mask, you'll end up with an ellipsis of some sort due to the wavelength of light. So you have to shape the mask to accommodate the wavelength so what ends up on the wafer is a square, though it looks very different on the mask. So you have to go through just about everything, making sure what you want is actually what ends up on the wafer... the delay this caused was not anticipated to the extent it delayed us and since this is a full custom, hand routed chip, basically it had to be gone over by hand from top to bottom.

Another delay we've had to endure is the fact that we have effectively tied the ASIC teams payment to the success of the chip. If the chip were to be a failure they don't get paid... so they have incentive to get it right but that has made them very cautious and slow to approve final masks (This is why we can refund all pre-orders we want and why we have the capital to do what we need to do without a failure putting us in bankruptcy).

Ultimately, it has all boiled down to the incredible complexity of the chip (I mean, look at that beast, it's all black in the shot it's so dense). If the chip were not so complex and so efficient there wouldn't be a heat issue, there wouldn't be the wariness of releasing the mask, etc... This is why I find it patently ridiculous that Tom kept claiming his 90nm sASIC or PnR chip would be 100w, it's ludicrous. Avalons claims are far more reasonable at 400w for their design and is why I haven't given them such a hard time. I think Avalon is going to run into some problems that we've run into, but I don't think they will be anything insurmountable, but I suspect it will delay them a bit while they try to figure out how to mount all the heat sinks or the giant heatsink they are going to need to keep the thing cool, and the board itself has to be massive. Tom was estimating 7 x 9" if I recall for his 16 chip 90nm process... the Avalon is 110nm with at least 80 chips I estimate... though I'm sure the chip footprint is much smaller, we're still talking about a bucket load of chips that all have to be cooled. If their package, and I think they are using QFN, is not letting enough heat out the top they are going to flood their thermal and ground planes with 300w+ of heat and cook everything in sight. We were fighting 60w of heat (granted, on a much smaller surface area) and it was a problem, I can't imagine trying to fight 300w of heat. For their sakes, I hope they have already considered these issues or it's going to be a nasty surprise the first time they turn a unit on and the chips start popping and letting the magic smoke out.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/690-13-jan-2013-asic-update-discussion-thread-6.html

Wasn't the picture of the bubbled chip posted in late-ish October? Did you blow it up in October than then have the simulations done in December, and then decided to switch away from QFN?

It sounds like that's about how it went, yeah.  They got the QFN prototypes, figured out they couldn't cool them properly as they thought they could, did some "worst case scenario" self testing, bubbled a chip, decided to have an outside company do some similar testing in December, and then concluded they couldn't properly cool a QFN chip in a heated environment.

That 121 is way too close to the failure at 125.. Even Xilinx starts to shut its chips down at 85.Then there is the issue of exactly what was the ambient when the die was reading 121... if it was the normal test temp of 85 deg c. then fine there is room in the design
but if it was measured at 25 deg. c... then we are all fucked.. the product is going to last less than a year.

[becoin]

By your logic anyone with a BFL order paid in BTC can ask for a refund of the BTC and then instantly replace (if desired) the order at a lower BTC cost pocketing the BTC.[/quote]
1. Let me use the favorite argument of BFL cheerleaders - If I ask for a refund I lose my spot in the queue.
2. How do I pocket the BTC if I get a refund of the same amount in BTC what I've originally paid?

Everyone gets a free OPTION call!! 
[/quote]
You don't have idea what an OPTION call is, do you? What is the strike price of such an option for me as a customer if I pay BTC and then get refund for the EXACTLY same amount in BTC?

There is free OPTION call only for FBL if they are allowed to refund USD for purchases made in BTC!

[BR0KK]

By your logic anyone with a BFL order paid in BTC can ask for a refund of the BTC and then instantly replace (if desired) the order at a lower BTC cost pocketing the BTC.

1. Let me use the favorite argument of BFL cheerleaders - If I ask for a refund I lose my spot in the queue.
2. How do I pocket the BTC if I get a refund of the same amount in BTC what I've originally paid?

Everyone gets a free OPTION call!! 
[/quote]
You don't have idea what an OPTION call is, do you? What is the strike price of such an option for me as a customer if I pay BTC and then get refund for the EXACTLY same amount in BTC?

There is free OPTION call only for FBL if they are allowed to refund USD for purchases made in BTC!
[/quote]

So you get the same ammount BTC back from BFL.... What then will happen is that you will exchange them at current market price?! Thus leaving you with a decent profit, out of nothing than thin air....?

Why the hell do you care about your "spot" in the line, if you want a refund?

[becoin]

Good grief. The BFL website clearly puts the *price* in USD - and lists Bitcoin as one of the payment *methods*.

No, julz. Wrong assumption. If I use credit card, paypal, or bank wire to pay USD I'd use different methods to transfer same currency. What you fail to understand is that BTC is a different story. In addition to being a different payment "method" BTC is also a different currency. I have clearly shown, placing a screenshot above, that the BFL invoice is DENOMINATED both in $ and BTC!

[boonies4u]

I remember people saying the very same thing about Pirate. He managed to keep his business running flawlessly for about 8 months. People kept asking : if he's a scammer, why hasn't he run with our money yet? Well because a good scammer never runs with his first money. He builds trust over time. He wants to get as many faithful clients as possible and he only runs with their money if the scam is no longer sustainable. Why? Because it's more profitable than to run away with the first few bucks he gets.

Pirateat40 had to make sure he was already on Pirate Island by the time he 'shut down'.

[tbcoin]

Good grief. The BFL website clearly puts the *price* in USD - and lists Bitcoin as one of the payment *methods*.

No, julz. Wrong assumption. If I use credit card, paypal, or bank wire to pay USD I'd use different methods to transfer same currency. What you fail to understand is that BTC is a different story. In addition to being a different payment "method" BTC is also a different currency. I have clearly shown, placing a screenshot above, that the BFL invoice is DENOMINATED both in $ and BTC!

So difficult is to understand that you are paying a price in dollars converted to bitcoin? And that therefore the refund is AGAIN the coversion of dollars to bitcoin.

[SgtSpike]

That 121 is way too close to the failure at 125.. Even Xilinx starts to shut its chips down at 85.Then there is the issue of exactly what was the ambient when the die was reading 121... if it was the normal test temp of 85 deg c. then fine there is room in the design
but if it was measured at 25 deg. c... then we are all fucked.. the product is going to last less than a year.

Hence the reason they didn't go with the QFN chip packaging after all... they knew it wouldn't be a good idea based on these tests.

Good grief. The BFL website clearly puts the *price* in USD - and lists Bitcoin as one of the payment *methods*.

No, julz. Wrong assumption. If I use credit card, paypal, or bank wire to pay USD I'd use different methods to transfer same currency. What you fail to understand is that BTC is a different story. In addition to being a different payment "method" BTC is also a different currency. I have clearly shown, placing a screenshot above, that the BFL invoice is DENOMINATED both in $ and BTC!

How is BFL supposed to tell you how much BTC to pay without writing it on the invoice somewhere?  Of course it's going to be on the invoice - it's how much you paid!  That doesn't mean the sale was based on BTC at all.

When you go to their website, you order a product for $1,299.00, selecting the option to pay with Bitcoin.  You then click on the submit button (or whatever it is), and are told to pay the BTC equivalent.  This is NOT the same as the sale being denominated in BTC - it simply shows that you paid BTC for a sale denominated in USD.

Please do go to their order page and tell me how much a single costs in BTC.  From their order page.  That should set the record straight on whether their products are listed for sale denominated in BTC or not.
http://www.butterflylabs.com/order-form-bitforce-sc-single/

Again, take it to a courtroom if you think we are wrong!