[UPDATE] BFL ASIC Status (May 23 2013)
Today at 07:04:53 AM
#1
Taken from:
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-3.html#post34766-------------------START-------------------
BFL Josh:
Progress has not stopped here at the labs while we attended the 2013 Bitcoin Conference. We demonstrated a 5 GH/s, a 25 GH/s and a 50 GH/s miner at the conference that people could see, touch, stroke and pet, all while they were mining on an Android tablet. It was a good conference and we were glad that we could demonstrate working units and meet many of our customers and fellow bitcoiners. It was a pleasure meeting many of you.
We have resolved the issues with the long boards and are making some tweaks to the 5 GH/s boards that may reduce power consumption but will almost certainly reduce heat output. With that in mind, we should be getting about 200 5 GH/s boards on Friday, and we'll be shipping those out on Friday and Saturday.
As a term/jargon/technical note, here is the informal and/or official designations here at BFL:
Short Board = ~92mm x 92mm board that contains up to 8 chips and powers the 5 GH/s miner, typically with just 1 or 2 chips.
Long Board = The board that powers the Little Single, Single and Minirig and can contain up to 16 chips in two banks of 8.
Jalapeno is now called the 5 GH/s miner and is synonymous.
The Minirig is now a 500 GH/s unit.
Our chips consume about 3 - 3.5w per GH/s at the chip level, so there is some room for tweaking, which we will be focusing on as soon as we get the final rev out for the Long Boards. Speaking of Long Boards, we have what we are considering the last rev for shipment coming next Monday or Tuesday the 27th or 28th of May (they may even be done with manufacturing this Saturday the 25th) and we will continue to refine the firmware for that board until the final rev arrives in KC. Assuming no problems with it, we will be begin shipment shortly thereafter. The long boards will be powered by one or two PCIe style 6 pin Minifit Jr connectors. Please be aware that these connectors, while using the same form factor as PCIe connectors are not PCIe connectors, though they are electrically compatible with them (Meaning you can likely use an ATX PSU at your own discretion if you chose not to use our supplied power bricks). The Little Single and Single will have a 120mm fan at each end of the case in a push/pull configuration. Each bank of 8 chips will have a heatsink, heat baffle and 92mm fan on top of it. Cooling will not be an issue with these units and they will be fairly quiet to run if you are in a cool environment. The fan will scale up and down in speed as required due to heat. The units will be stackable and have a side to side or front to back airflow, depending on how you orient them.
We are expecting several thousand chips next week from our new packaging facility and expect to start shipping all product lines next week. Beyond that, we will be receiving thousands of chips per week at an ever increasing pace between now and until all of the remaining 68 wafers are used up. We have additional wafers on order and they should be ready about the time we've used up all 68 wafers should we need them. Soon after, we hope to have product on the shelf for immediate shipment, depending on how many orders come in between now and when we catch up the backlog.
-------------------END-------------------
I see something wrong here. BFL is expecting several thousand chips next week at their packaging facility as well as receiving the final rev. long boards for SC/Minirig around the same time. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say suppose all this actually happens next week without a hitch, are they seriously capable of maintaining such a large packaging and product line.. ALL in the same week? Will they be able to uphold their claim regarding shipment of all products lines starting next week? I swear if a SC or Minirig gets sent to another dev or some other PR-related recipient.. I'm going to give Josh more Quarters he can handle. Tongue
reg: tips: 1HuDKnHJy73CC2QjbqRrixTEzHd3EFEfRs
