[Archive] BFL trolling museum

[MXRider]

User BFL has been online and I fins it very hard to believe he hasn't read this thread.

It tells a lot about their policy that they haven't posted a single word after the OP. I just don't see what is the point to pre-announce something that is 1mil and 6months away.

As a sidenote to BFL: what you will do, Enterpoint can do better and they will keep customers informed at all times. They are also trustworthy.

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[cst]

As a sidenote to BFL: what you will do, Enterpoint can do better and they will keep customers informed at all times. They are also trustworthy.

That won't really matter IF bfl can deliver ASIC, will it? But so far this thread has been nothing but FUD and panic (and entertainment:) so I think we're all safe from that for now.

[Dalkore]

Or Could it be that someone hacked into bfl's account and .... ?  Since there is no official announcement made on their website ..... (I know of the comment on their page to prepare for june. But there nothing more to that?)

This could be it.   I would hope that Sonny (BFL) would give us more guidance than this being that is kind of improvement is a game-changer.

[malevolent]

Anyone believes this is true???

[crazyates]

Anyone believes this is true???

I don't think it's a matter of IF BFL can produce an ASIC. It's a matter of WHEN, and in what quantities.

[dreamwatcher]

 

Wow, just finally finished getting 8 GPU's to play nice together, including (5) 5870's that have personality's of their own. Ranging from champ to the diva.
Multiple power supplies, some custom power wiring.

Hours of fun and frustration (I would say more fun, but still..), to get a little over 3 GH.

BFL is basically going to replace my system with a USB  "coffee warmer" @ 3.5 GH for $149.00

::This is where the slam head on desk smiley would go::::

 I guess it is just a matter of when to dump the GPU's before everybody else floods the market and I cannot get rid of them.

(I will keep the champ however..452 MH, 1.08 volts, under 200 watts @ 42 degrees  )

 

[bulanula]

Wow, just finally finished getting 8 GPU's to play nice together, including (5) 5870's that have personality's of their own. Ranging from champ to the diva.
Multiple power supplies, some custom power wiring.

Hours of fun and frustration (I would say more fun, but still..), to get a little over 3 GH.

BFL is basically going to replace my system with a USB  "coffee warmer" @ 3.5 GH for $149.00

::This is where the slam head on desk smiley would go::::

I guess it is just a matter of when to dump the GPU's before everybody else floods the market and I cannot get rid of them.

(I will keep the champ however..452 MH, 1.08 volts, under 200 watts @ 42 degrees  )

Now THAT is the REAL question in this FUD thread.

Anyone gullible enough to think BFL comes out with ASIC in near future is LOL.

12 months AT LEAST if it is real and this is not a fake "stop other FPGA folks dead" announcement.

[btcftw]

IMHO it's best to keep your cool, and check butterflylabs.com every second for the announcement, just in case this one is some kind of diversion.

[fuuka]

My best guess is that trade in policy will only be unit for unit within a product category.
Meaning you can only trade in 1 "old" single for 1 "new" single, 1 "old" minirig for 1 "new" minirig. And jalapenos will be sold without any trade ins. This way they will still be getting $$$ flow with every sale or trade in. Mark my words

Something interesting to consider.  I'll hold off purchasing another single until the trade-in in is clarified.

[nedbert9]

I'm making a couple assumptions here, but I don't imagine I'm far off. First, the MiniRig will use an array of singles PCBs, similar to the current setup. I would guess that the future SC MiniRigs will go in the same cases as the current MiniRigs, which probably cost BFL well over $100 in the small quantities they buy. I'm going to estimate power draw for 1TH at 500W-1kW or so, so there's going to be a pretty beefy power supply, as well as each of the 25 single boards carrying a 12V to Vcc power supply. Add on assembly and test costs, and I don't think a small outfit could reasonably get Minirigs out the door for less than $1000 with any kind of profit.

Well, considering their minirig SC will sell for $30K, some of those assumptions make sense. But once difficulty has gone up enough to require prices per GH to go down by >10x or 50x, it will make equal sense to redesign for cost efficiency and not have 25 daughter boards with their own power circuitry etc.

Anyway, this discussion is missing the big picture. Even if you are right and prices would bottom out above $1000 per TH, thats still, what,  500x lower than today? And therefore, difficulty would be ~500x higher. Good luck estimating the ramp on that and earning back the investment of your minirig sc.

P4man.  IMO, it's pretty clear that, NRE aside, cost to produce a SC Single is at least $1000 below what's stated in their announcement.  It's also clear that BFL will easily recover the NRE.

What situation are we left with?  For example, how much of that $1000 would an early adopter have to eat while BFL is lowering price due to difficulty spikes over, let's say, a 6 month period.

I guess what is the potential depreciation 6 months after launch of SC models.  Will BFL still be under pressure to recover NRE at that point and resist price drops.  I suppose time will only tell.

[Dalkore]

IMHO it's best to keep your cool, and check butterflylabs.com every second for the announcement, just in case this one is some kind of diversion.

Until we see something on their website or a real confirmation.  We should assume this may be fake.

[nedbert9]

haha, maybe retarded was too strong a word, maybe not. ;p  The part I bolded would keep me from making any sort of disruptive financial decission on a new investment there. Hopefully I am not alone and will be watch that factor very, very closely..

As will everyone else. But thats were the paradox here lies; if enough people "watch it closely" and dont invest, you might think that the ones that do buy them, should actually break even. But I dont think they will, because if too many people wait and see, BFL will just be enticed to lower their prices until they sell enough and the problem will remain exactly the same.

Its really quite an interesting economic case, but no matter how you slice it, in the end I cant see anyone other than a monopolistic vendor of the ASIC profiting significantly. Should a competitor appear around the same time, I can well imagine everyone ending up with a loss, including the asic vendors.

Ok, then.  Let's consider an open, community funded ASIC solution.  How does the problem change then?  I would think it's much less risky.

[P4man]

P4man.  IMO, it's pretty clear that, NRE aside, cost to produce a SC Single is at least $1000 below what's stated in their announcement.  It's also clear that BFL will easily recover the NRE.

What situation are we left with?  For example, how much of that $1000 would an early adopter have to eat while BFL is lowering price due to difficulty spikes over, let's say, a 6 month period.

I guess what is the potential depreciation 6 months after launch of SC models.  Will BFL still be under pressure to recover NRE at that point and resist price drops.  I suppose time will only tell.

NRE becomes a sunk cost. It doesnt factor in your pricing strategy after you spent it. BFL will not adjust its pricing in either direction depending on whether or nor they have already recovered it, they will price their hardware purely to make as much as possible. They are not a non profit organization.

Will they recover it? If they are the first asic provider on the market and maintain an asic monopoly for 12 months or more, I think easily and many times over.  If several ASIC providers would emerge in a short time frame triggering a price war, well, potentially none of them will recover their NRE.

[Syke]

It tells a lot about their policy that they haven't posted a single word after the OP. I just don't see what is the point to pre-announce something that is 1mil and 6months away.

The point is the same as their announcements have always been. To get customers to fund their development of new products and to prevent people from buying any competitor's products.

[Aseras]

Of course if the bfl Asic became too much of a problem one could modify bitcoin protocol just enough so that the ASIC doesn't work or is severely hampered. They are very specific. A fpga can be reprogrammed. An ASIC would be nothing more than a coffee warmer then, literally.

[MrTeal]

Of course if the bfl Asic became too much of a problem one could modify bitcoin protocol just enough so that the ASIC doesn't work or is severely hampered. They are very specific. A fpga can be reprogrammed. An ASIC would be nothing more than a coffee warmer then, literally.

Modification of the protocol requires that the majority of hashing power approve of the change. What percentage of hashing power is now tied to people with a vested interested in keeping BFL going, and what percentage will that be once this HW is in the wild?
If BFL sells 11 MiniRig SCs, even if no one else drops out BFL SC hardware will be 1/2 the network and there's no way the protocol will be changed to obsolete the ASICs.

[crazyates]

Wow, just finally finished getting 8 GPU's to play nice together, including (5) 5870's that have personality's of their own. Ranging from champ to the diva.
Multiple power supplies, some custom power wiring.

Hours of fun and frustration (I would say more fun, but still..), to get a little over 3 GH.

BFL is basically going to replace my system with a USB  "coffee warmer" @ 3.5 GH for $149.00

::This is where the slam head on desk smiley would go::::

 I guess it is just a matter of when to dump the GPU's before everybody else floods the market and I cannot get rid of them.

(I will keep the champ however..452 MH, 1.08 volts, under 200 watts @ 42 degrees  )

But setting it up is half the fun! Ok more like 70%...

You will still be capable of mining with GPUs for quite some time. Even long enough to pay off those GPUs, I think. I am definitely ordering some of these ASICs, but I'm also going to be buying more GPUs, as I think there will be plenty of time before these cause the *difficulty explosion of 2013* that make GPUs unprofitable to mine.

*TM

[Epoch]

Of course if the bfl Asic became too much of a problem one could modify bitcoin protocol just enough so that the ASIC doesn't work or is severely hampered. They are very specific. A fpga can be reprogrammed. An ASIC would be nothing more than a coffee warmer then, literally.

Why are some people seemingly under the impression that ASICs are 'evil' or 'a problem'? ASICs are not the boogeyman. They will be used for mining, just like FPGAs are this year, just like GPUs were last year, and just like CPUs were 2 years ago.

They are a natural evolution of an efficient solution for the proof-of-work problem that the bitcoin protocol presents. The fact that someone has the cajones to dump serious capital into development of something like this is evidence that bitcoin is thriving, in fact, growing. This is a good thing for all of us.

Yes, the large-scale deployment of ASICs will make GPU (and to a lesser extent, FPGA) mining obsolete. It will drive difficulty up to levels never seen before. That is, mining with GPUs and FPGAs will no longer be profitable. So what? Just like the arrival of GPU mining en-mass heralded the demise of CPU miners. So what? We either chose to embrace ASICs as miners, or we take our profits and GTFO of the mining scene.

What may happen is that when ASICs are deployed en-mass, the 'average miner' will have a farm that has 20x the hashrate of what they currently have. So instead of a 5Ghps miner being the 'average', it will be a 100Ghps miner. If that miner has $4k worth of GPU/FPGAs now, he can choose to 'upgrade' and buy $4k worth of ASICs. The difficulty will be 20x what it is now, so 30M instead of 1.5M. Bitcoins will still be $6 (they will still be generated at the same rate so supply remains the same).

And this all means that mining profits for the previously mentioned 'average miner' with $4k worth of 100Ghps ASICs will remain the same as they are now. If he is making 3BTC a day with his $4k 5Ghps rig now, he will continue to make 3BTC a day with his $4k 100Ghps ASIC rig. Nothing changes.

This is 'evil' or 'a problem' how? It is only a problem for those who are currently invested in GPUs and FPGAs and who don't want to change. Change or die. That's how it's always been. It was the case with the CPU-to-GPU transition, and we are seeing the beginnings of it now with the GPU-to-FPGA transistion, and we have already been warned that an FPGA-to-ASIC transition is looming. No one is forcing us to continue mining, but many of us will.

[rjk]

Wasn't Vladmir planning to fill a whole datacenter with ASICs, and still only have 5-8Th/s or so? Wonder how many times his big investors have crapped their pants today, since BFL's flagship product is supposedly specced to provide that much hash power in 5-8 compact units.

[cuz0882]

I'd take this with a grain of salt right now. The electricity efficiencies are insane. The prices make absolutely no sense. For all we know, BFL forum account could have been hijacked and the press release forged. I'm not going to believe any of this until there is real data and real products.

Smartest thing I have read on here.. Anyone could have posted this. The cup holder idea looks like it came from the new pic BF posted on their main page...