New BFL update. 25 February 2013.

[firefop]

Now we wait to learn how many of each unit BFL will manufacturer from the first 5,000 chips.  No matter what the answer, it's going to piss off some people everyone.

FTFY

 

[creativex]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

[repentance]

They should probably hurry up and get their order management software fixed. How are people supposed to update their shipping method when the rate calculator is returning stupid amounts which make no sense?

I also wonder how many of those who sold their pre-orders way back when have moved address by now.  BFL has always said they'll only ship to the address of the person who originally placed the order, so I expect we're going to see a couple of threads from people who bought a pre-order from someone else and never receive their unit.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

They should probably hurry up and get their order management software fixed. How are people supposed to update their shipping method when the rate calculator is returning stupid amounts which make no sense?

I also wonder how many of those who sold their pre-orders way back when have moved address by now.  BFL has always said they'll only ship to the address of the person who originally placed the order, so I expect we're going to see a couple of threads from people who bought a pre-order from someone else and never receive their unit.

So, if a person moved to a new home during the interim, the item(s) is shipped to the given address regardless? If not, then the system can be gamed.

[crazyates]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

Care to explain why you expect the BFL chips to have a 20% failure rate?

[Phinnaeus Gage]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

Care to explain why you expect the BFL chips to have a 20% failure rate?

Good point! From what I've seen on YT, it'll be either 0% or 100%--nothing in between.

[creativex]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

Care to explain why you expect the BFL chips to have a 20% failure rate?

Umm...you want me to explain wafer defects?

Their competition didn't go with 110 and 130nm for their first products because they mistakenly thought higher numbers were better.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

Care to explain why you expect the BFL chips to have a 20% failure rate?

Umm...you want me to explain wafer defects?

Their competition didn't go with 110 and 130nm for their first products because they mistakenly thought higher numbers were better.

Just like the thickness of sheet metal--the higher the gauge, the thinner the metal.

[creativex]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

Care to explain why you expect the BFL chips to have a 20% failure rate?

Umm...you want me to explain wafer defects?

Their competition didn't go with 110 and 130nm for their first products because they mistakenly thought higher numbers were better.

Just like the thickness of sheet metal--the higher the gauge, the thinner the metal.

I feel like I double-aught to know what you're talking about, but the wine is clouding my neurons.

[crazyates]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

Care to explain why you expect the BFL chips to have a 20% failure rate?

Umm...you want me to explain wafer defects?

Their competition didn't go with 110 and 130nm for their first products because they mistakenly thought higher numbers were better.

I understand they expect some chips to fail, but don't you think 20% is a bit high?

[dust]

Now we wait to learn how many of each unit BFL will manufacture from the first 5,000 chips.  No matter what the answer, it's going to piss off some people.

BFL has committed to their 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 shipping plan for the first batch.  I'm currently thinking the fairest way to follow this plan would be to split the chips into the three groups and build whatever units are required to fulfill those orders.

[creativex]

That 5000 will turn into less than 4000 when the defective chips are excluded. So yeah, after all this time waiting a whole lot of people are just going to be waiting moar and they'll be understandably displeased.

Care to explain why you expect the BFL chips to have a 20% failure rate?

Umm...you want me to explain wafer defects?

Their competition didn't go with 110 and 130nm for their first products because they mistakenly thought higher numbers were better.

I understand they expect some chips to fail, but don't you think 20% is a bit high?

For a first run 65nm product...nope, not at all.

[repentance]

Now we wait to learn how many of each unit BFL will manufacture from the first 5,000 chips.  No matter what the answer, it's going to piss off some people.

BFL has committed to their 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 shipping plan for the first batch.  I'm currently thinking the fairest way to follow this plan would be to split the chips into 3 the three groups and build whatever units are required to fulfill those orders.

They have 4 units.  It's possible (maybe even likely) that 5,000 chips won't even fill all the orders from the first batch.

The third group isn't really a group as such - they'll just randomly fill orders from either the new order queue or the upgrade queue out of sequence.

The likelihood of someone getting their order filled in the first batch of deliveries still depends on how many of each type of unit BFL decides to make.  The "fairest" way would probably be to devote 1/4 of the chips to each type of unit, but this would mean only 6 mini-rigs shipping in batch 1, which would understandably piss off those mini-rig customers whose Batch 1 orders weren't filled and it's probably preferable to piss off a $1,300 or $150 customer than a $30,000 customer.

28 Feb 2013 Update

The ASIC team has been working all day on testing the various aspects of the chip. There have been no problems so far and all 16 engines hash properly at 250 MHz. Full range tests are scheduled for tomorrow to see how high we can the engines past 500 MHz (the nominal speed the chips are slated to run at).

No update on the bumping at the moment, but I should have one tomorrow as to the disposition of that.

Usually when Josh says that he should have an update at the end of the week, no further information is available until the following week.

[dust]

Now we wait to learn how many of each unit BFL will manufacture from the first 5,000 chips.  No matter what the answer, it's going to piss off some people.

BFL has committed to their 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 shipping plan for the first batch.  I'm currently thinking the fairest way to follow this plan would be to split the chips into 3 the three groups and build whatever units are required to fulfill those orders.

They have 4 units.  It's possible (maybe even likely) that 5,000 chips won't even fill all the orders from the first batch.

The third group isn't really a group as such - they'll just randomly fill orders from either the new order queue or the upgrade queue out of sequence.

The likelihood of someone getting their order filled in the first batch of deliveries still depends on how many of each type of unit BFL decides to make.  The "fairest" way would probably be to devote 1/4 of the chips to each type of unit, but this would mean only 6 mini-rigs shipping in batch 1, which would understandably piss off those mini-rig customers whose Batch 1 orders weren't filled and it's probably preferable to piss off a $1,300 or $150 customer than a $30,000 customer.

No, devoting 1/4 of the chips to Jalepenos, 1/4 to little singles (which didn't even exist for months after preorders opened!), and 1/4 to singles would be an extremely unfair way of doing it.  A Jalepeno customer in August should not recieve their order before a minirig customer in June.  Minirigs only have an 8% Gh/$ advantage over SC singles.  It would be ridiculous to penalize people who ordered a minirig instead of 25 singles.

Ideally, they should build units so that roughly equal order numbers/order dates are reached by the different product lines.

Regardless, I'm not sure if BFL would rather have 1 angry $30000 customer or 25 angry $1300 customers.

Disclosure: I have a June minirig order.

[repentance]

Ideally, they should build units so that roughly equal order numbers/order dates are reached by the different product lines.

That's probably not going to work either, if any significant amount of mini-rig orders were placed very early.  As you said, the little single didn't even exist when pre-orders first opened.  If you go solely by payment dates, it's possible that the whole 5,000 chips would be exhausted before a little single order was reached, so the only hope someone with a little single would have of receiving their unit in Batch 1 would be if their order was selected in the "lottery" where place in the order queue doesn't matter.  By adopting the 1/3 shipping plan, they've committed themselves to building at least some little singles.

I don't think there's any "good" way for BFL to do this.  I think they realise this and it's one reason they've been reluctant to say how they're going to handle this issue.  There's going to be a backlash no matter how they decide to handle it.

I think that FIFO is how they should have handled it - even if it meant that the majority of the first 5000 chips went to mini-rigs - but sticking with the 1/3 shipping plan has needlessly complicated things, especially given that batch 1 is so much smaller than originally envisaged (it was supposed to be 12,000 chips).

[creativex]

I was under the impression that their overly complex 1/3 plan was for first month orders only, wasn't the little single introduced much later anyway?

[repentance]

I was under the impression that their overly complex 1/3 plan was for first month orders only, wasn't the little single introduced much later anyway?

Yep, but some people upgraded from Jalapenos to Little Singles, so the 1/3 upgrade thing applies because you hold your original order date when you upgrade.  No new Little Single orders will ship in the first batch, though.

BFL will produce X number of units per type (Jalapeno, LittleSC, SingleSC, Minirig SC) (We do not yet know how many X will be).

We will then ship:

1/3 of X number of units to those that ordered NEW orders.
1/3 of X number of units to those that ordered UPGRADED orders.
1/3 of X number of units will be randomly selected, based on order number, from all the orders received between June 23rd 2012 and July 22nd 2012.

For example, if we have 27 units of Jalapeno's, 18 Units of Single SC and 9 units of MiniRig SC, we would ship:

Jalapeno:

9 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
9 units to people who made orders for an upgrade for the pack of Jalapeno's coming from a Single.
9 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders.

Single SC:

6 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
6 units to people who made orders for an upgrade from a Single, starting with the lowest order number.
6 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders for the Single SC.

Minirig SC:

3 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
3 units to people who made orders for an upgrade from a Minirig, starting with the lowest order number.
3 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders for the Minirig SC.

The numbers above are all hypothetical and we have not determined the actual quantity that will be shipping in the first batch. We are still assessing how many units we are able to assemble per day and how many we will have already assembled and tested prior to our first shipment.

Some people wonder why we are doing it this way. We are shipping it this way, instead of piecemeal because the first people to receive BFL ASIC technology will have a decided advantage for a maximum of 2016 blocks. We want to avoid giving preferential treatment to any given segment of the mining community, providing a level and fair playing field for as many people as possible. We also want to distribute our technology as widely as possible so that no single entity can gain a potentially threatening amount of hashing power that may lead to an abuse of the bitcoin network or blockchain.

** Since the "Little" Single SC unit is a new product, not included in the first preorder phase, all SC orders up to and including orders placed on September 30th, 2012 will be assembled and shipped prior to shipping any NEW orders of the "Little" Single SC. UPGRADE orders will be shipping in the order received for your original order that you upgraded from, 1/2 for FIFO and 1/2 random from all orders.

Yes, it's overly complex.

[creativex]

I was under the impression that their overly complex 1/3 plan was for first month orders only, wasn't the little single introduced much later anyway?

Yep, but some people upgraded from Jalapenos to Little Singles, so the 1/3 upgrade thing applies because you hold your original order date when you upgrade.  No new Little Single orders will ship in the first batch, though.

BFL will produce X number of units per type (Jalapeno, LittleSC, SingleSC, Minirig SC) (We do not yet know how many X will be).

We will then ship:

1/3 of X number of units to those that ordered NEW orders.
1/3 of X number of units to those that ordered UPGRADED orders.
1/3 of X number of units will be randomly selected, based on order number, from all the orders received between June 23rd 2012 and July 22nd 2012.

For example, if we have 27 units of Jalapeno's, 18 Units of Single SC and 9 units of MiniRig SC, we would ship:

Jalapeno:

9 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
9 units to people who made orders for an upgrade for the pack of Jalapeno's coming from a Single.
9 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders.

Single SC:

6 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
6 units to people who made orders for an upgrade from a Single, starting with the lowest order number.
6 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders for the Single SC.

Minirig SC:

3 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
3 units to people who made orders for an upgrade from a Minirig, starting with the lowest order number.
3 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders for the Minirig SC.

The numbers above are all hypothetical and we have not determined the actual quantity that will be shipping in the first batch. We are still assessing how many units we are able to assemble per day and how many we will have already assembled and tested prior to our first shipment.

Some people wonder why we are doing it this way. We are shipping it this way, instead of piecemeal because the first people to receive BFL ASIC technology will have a decided advantage for a maximum of 2016 blocks. We want to avoid giving preferential treatment to any given segment of the mining community, providing a level and fair playing field for as many people as possible. We also want to distribute our technology as widely as possible so that no single entity can gain a potentially threatening amount of hashing power that may lead to an abuse of the bitcoin network or blockchain.

** Since the "Little" Single SC unit is a new product, not included in the first preorder phase, all SC orders up to and including orders placed on September 30th, 2012 will be assembled and shipped prior to shipping any NEW orders of the "Little" Single SC. UPGRADE orders will be shipping in the order received for your original order that you upgraded from, 1/2 for FIFO and 1/2 random from all orders.

Yes, it's overly complex.

lol

Forgot about the upgrade options, that was compounded when they upgraded the speed of the single, little single, and minirig a greater percentage than the lowly jalapeno.

Man what a nightmare.

[dust]

Ideally, they should build units so that roughly equal order numbers/order dates are reached by the different product lines.

That's probably not going to work either, if any significant amount of mini-rig orders were placed very early.  As you said, the little single didn't even exist when pre-orders first opened.  If you go solely by payment dates, it's possible that the whole 5,000 chips would be exhausted before a little single order was reached, so the only hope someone with a little single would have of receiving their unit in Batch 1 would be if their order was selected in the "lottery" where place in the order queue doesn't matter.  By adopting the 1/3 shipping plan, they've committed themselves to building at least some little singles.

Customers who ordered little singles when they were announced (September?) should rightfully not be included in the first batch.  BFL did allow jalapeno orders to upgrade to little singles, these orders will be included in the first batch if the original Jalepeno order was early enough.

I don't think there's any "good" way for BFL to do this.  I think they realise this and it's one reason they've been reluctant to say how they're going to handle this issue.  There's going to be a backlash no matter how they decide to handle it.

I think that FIFO is how they should have handled it - even if it meant that the majority of the first 5000 chips went to mini-rigs - but sticking with the 1/3 shipping plan has needlessly complicated things, especially given that batch 1 is so much smaller than originally envisaged (it was supposed to be 12,000 chips).

I agree completely with all of these statements.

[Bicknellski]

Hmmm doesn't seem like they made this date either... are there a lot of these posts where they miss a deadline?