wild and unsubstantiated speculation about BFL's power woes

[jayeeyee]

Wheres Josh and his rebuttals?  I miss Josh the troller.

[malevolent]

How BFL promised to begin shipping in late October or early November 2012 is beyond comprehension.  All the promises made to date regarding power use and performance have been based on simulations that now have proved to be wildly optimistic. 

I still can't believe how people fell for it after their previous history of over-promising. 1GH/s and 19.6W and $500, remember?

[Transisto]

I don't know if it's possible to quantify the damage BFL have done to the Bitcoin mining environment, but I have no doubt it's huge.

This, my friend, you are so right.  I'm crying thinks about it.

I will not accept they turn out being profitable while early investors get back a mere 25-50% of their investment in X many years.


There is only one solution a this time, Forget the shipment and mine however you can with this batch of failed chip,  Use liquid-nitrogen if so needed ! Get a rent neat a powerplant providing 150KW , And pay back customers what you can.

 

[BR0KK]

There is an option for bfl that I implied before:

1. Post some delivering pics (a stunt like lukeJr)
2. Tell preorder upgrade people to send in their old FPGA singles and rigs
3. Wait till old gear arrives unpack it do some tests with it.
4. Switch old gear payed by customers online at a pool of choice
5. Evaporate from earth with preorder moneys, old already paid for FPGA gear, and a half finished ASIC in hand.
6. Be rewarded with a scammer tag in bitcointalk
7. No other harm will be done to you. Live on with your life mining happily ever after.....
8. Buy some Avalon ASIC or Asicminer shares.

[nathanrees19]

7) BFL has said they are re-designing the boards to improve the power situation.  To me this is unclear what they are doing.  I think Josh said something about using 2 regulators instead of 1 - but I could have that wrong.

They may have made the power lines on the PCBs too thin. Even a milliohm of resistance between the power supply and the chips causes problems when you try to run 60+ amps worth of chips.

[JCviggen]

They may have made the power lines on the PCBs too thin. Even a milliohm of resistance between the power supply and the chips causes problems when you try to run 60+ amps worth of chips.

Thing is if you're "losing" power somewhere, that must be converted into heat. If the device is pulling 190 Watts instead of 60, it should be fairly obvious exactly where that energy is being lost. You can't lose that much to resistance in traces, the whole thing would simply melt and break down after a second or 2 of running. What you do get is a voltage drop the more current you're trying to cram through, but most of that power has to be lost to leakage in the chip, the power circuitry and DC-DC converters are unable to dissipate that kind of heat.

Either BFL are stupid or they are playing stupid. Any engineer working on this would have known exactly where the power is going within 5 minutes of turning it on.

Reminds me of that GH/s vs power consumption of the BFL chip chart I saw posted once (not sure if it was authored by BFL)....it was LINEAR. I'm sorry but it doesn't work like that. There will be a sweet spot in terms of efficiency somewhere well below the maximum clock/hash rate, anything more than that will start to use exponentially more power (as anyone who uses GPUs knows).

(been lurking here a long time, just wasn't able to post)

[johnyj]

I feel that first batch chips (June) going to generate the worst performed rigs and they might revise the design on later batch of chips to get better power/thermal performance

[creativex]

I feel that first batch chips (June) going to generate the worst performed rigs and they might revise the design on later batch of chips to get better power/thermal performance

Sweet, so ten+ months of waiting and early BFL ASIC investors get partially functional pre-production prototypes. Nice.

[axus]

I'm going to make a wild guess here and speculate that they ran all their pre-production SPICE simulations ...

The fact that only recently "discovered" the real power consumption of their ASICS shows that they never had a working prototype up until now.

What were those fuckers supposed to ship in October 2012 (their original shipping date) ? They had nothing back then. Literally nothing! Stringing customers along for months ...

The only difference between BFL and bASIC is that BFL has kept things together long enough to get to this point, where they have something to show.

[muyuu]

I'm going to make a wild guess here and speculate that they ran all their pre-production SPICE simulations ...

The fact that only recently "discovered" the real power consumption of their ASICS shows that they never had a working prototype up until now.

What were those fuckers supposed to ship in October 2012 (their original shipping date) ? They had nothing back then. Literally nothing! Stringing customers along for months ...

The only difference between BFL and bASIC is that BFL has kept things together long enough to get to this point, where they have something to show.

How do you know this?

They could have an FPGA there working for all we know. Until someone can verify ASIC-like consumption and ASIC-like performance, we are just speculating.

[Minor Miner]

Is there any truth to the rumor that you cannot use the BFL Single as a coffee warmer because it melts starbucks cups?    Someone said that this was the problem that most of the BFL engineers are focused on right now.   That person told me that the solution they came up with was to email Starbucks and ask them to change their cups to asbestos.   They are waiting for starbucks' decision before looking to other solutions.

[johnyj]

I feel that first batch chips (June) going to generate the worst performed rigs and they might revise the design on later batch of chips to get better power/thermal performance

Sweet, so ten+ months of waiting and early BFL ASIC investors get partially functional pre-production prototypes. Nice.

Normally first generation hardware users will become lab rats  Avalon team is awsome, so far not so much complains about their first batch units, very impressive!

[creativex]

I feel that first batch chips (June) going to generate the worst performed rigs and they might revise the design on later batch of chips to get better power/thermal performance

Sweet, so ten+ months of waiting and early BFL ASIC investors get partially functional pre-production prototypes. Nice.

Normally first generation hardware users will become lab rats  Avalon team is awsome, so far not so much complains about their first batch units, very impressive!

For the awesome bank early BFL investors would've have gotten had BFL met nearly any of it's promises then that would've been fine. For them to ship half baked junk now on top of being 5+ months late is ridiculously scammy. Rewards are halved and difficulty is multiplied. This is the kind of stuff that keeps lawyers in new BMWs. 

[cdog]

Why paint it black, this thing will be glowing red in a few hours.   It will set your wife's cat on fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6d8eKvegLI

[k9quaint]

Someone should necro all those threads from 6 months ago where the BFL fanbois where defending the power claims.

[Minor Miner]

Why paint it black, this thing will be glowing red in a few hours.   It will set your wife's cat on fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6d8eKvegLI

I hope they did not remove the miniRig just based on my analysis that the box would turn red and set people's cats on fire, because to be honest I am still unsure is 9000W in a one cubic foot space really will make a cat ignite.   I am still trying to find the data to back it up.   Please tell me their "engineers" actually figured it out before any felines were injured.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I hope they did not remove the miniRig just based on my analysis that the box would turn red and set people's cats on fire, because to be honest I am still unsure is 9000W in a one cubic foot space really will make a cat ignite.   I am still trying to find the data to back it up.   Please tell me their "engineers" actually figured it out before any felines were injured.

Google never ceases to amaze me.

[PuertoLibre]

Wheres Josh and his rebuttals?  I miss Josh the troller.

Do not invoke his name. And if you are unwise enough to do so, quickly invoke the Lord and he will flee.

-----------------------

So an update for those that are like me and stopped following BFL for a while as a prospective vendor.

!) BFL has raised the price of their product from $1,399 to $2,495 (or thereabouts).

!) They haven't delivered any [finished] units yet.

!) They are wildly "way over" their power specification. Gladfully you don't see Josh trolling the forums about how power saving going "poof" means that they will be as "unprofitable" as Avalon per month. I am sure he will hide that face from his customers....or just not bring it up anymore as a selling point.

Of course "electrical efficiency", that was just a joke and no longer applies.

!) Their devices are hotter than a potato it appears. Though I am not totally sure since Josh/BFL and physics are an estranged couple.

!) The new products are less than 60GH/s (now at 50 or less) but cost way more....did I mention they haven't yet shipped? (New capitol injection?)

!) Some more customers are bailing from way back in the day. New customers, are figuring out there are issues with the product...hopefully they are staying away.

!) Oh, the voucher program. BFL fucks it's users once again (I think?).

They gave early orders (from way back in June 2012) 25% off in a future voucher program that is only valid for 60 days after shipping products. (yet to be realized)

But...now that BFL has doubled their price...the voucher is seemingly useless. Hah. Very funny BFL.

[PuertoLibre]

!) Customers will seemingly be sent several units to comprise a high GH/s purchase. I am sure this will take a large notch out of BFL's profit margin.

Then again, who cares, they have new suckers...I mean customers to take up the slack at double the price.

!) The funniest punchline of the year....BFL downgrades their hardware offering through failed and over extended promises.

Avalon, continues to ship 66Gh/s through 80Gh/s systems to it's customers.

Will BFL ever catch up? Should you invest in their learning curve? I guess it's up to you!

[BitSyncom]

it is entirely possible they did not even use a 65nm processor node, just something to think about.