April 3 BFL ASIC update.

[Frankie Delaney]

We are all waiting anxiously to see what wafer 3 holds.. but it may be that all 6 wafers suffer and we'll need ot dig into 7+ but that won't stop us from shipping.

Wafer 1 was burned but power draw was only 1.76w/GH

Just a quick update, we've managed to get the power down to less than 150w just on firmware updates alone and there's still a big area we are tweaking that will likely increase the hashrate a bit.. if it works out like we are thinking it might, we'd be at ~34 GH/s at less than 150w merely on software tweaks. Once the hardware tweaks in the labs, taht will come down even further.

Wafer 1 was ONLY, 1.76w/GH. ONLY. That still means the jalapeno doesn't exist, and the minirig uses 2640 watts. They knew this a month ago, and said the problem wasn't with the chips, it was with the test rig, then the problem wasn't with the chips, it was with the boards. Everything he said today counters The update from a month ago(yeah, it really has been a month).

4 March 2013 Update

Today the bumped wafers were confirmed at the packaging facility and they have been "bumped nicely," so all is well as far as bumping goes. Packaging is currently scheduled to be done on Wednesday, although that's subject to change, I don't see any reason that is going to change at the moment.

The chips achieved 350 MHz hashing on 4 engines as well. We are going to have to wait until the chips are packaged to take the chips higher than that with more cores, as the test rig is not able to supply enough power and there are some wire bond issues that make it unstable beyond that. Once the chips are packaged, they will be tested more fully. Regardless, the chips are hashing properly and all IO appears to be correct, which is the important part. I will update when further testing is complete.

Timeline for the second set of 6 wafers is currently scheduled several days out after we have a successful test of the packaging (they'll have to make their way through bumping and packaging as well) and then the remainder is scheduled for ~7 days after that. I can't be more specific with regards to a date on the 6 wafers yet, as I don't have specific dates. I will update once I do.

1. A month ago he said they processed 5 wafers, now he says they're waiting for the third wafer
2. So the test wafer ran at 1.76w/GH only running 4 engines, and only running at 350mhz. How could they not expect higher power usage when running more than 4 engines, and running at 500mhz.
3. again, saying the second set of 6 wafers, when they only processed 1 wafer out of the first set of 6?

1/4 of the chip at 70% clockrate used 1.76w/GH.

[opentoe]

MODS, may as well just throw this post in "BFL FUCKS US OVER AGAIN".


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150803.0

[Frizz23]

... if it works out like we are thinking it might, we'd be at ~34 GH/s at less than 150w ...

LOL. That's a meager 0.2 GHash per Watt. Remember, Josh "Loudmouth" Zerlan, when you mocked Avalon because of their high power usage? Now it turns out your ASICS are not better.

[Dexter770221]

 I wanted to bet at announcement day that 300MH/s will be max what they can achieve.... They laughed, now I'm laughing

[smoothie]

omg this whole charade from BFL is so funny....

BFL's value as a company is the entertainment they produce. They may as well be a sitcom, broadway musical, or full fledged movie production in the comedy genre.

OMFG ROFL!  

[Logik]

But I thought BFL was shipping?

[Cluster2k]

I believe the phrase is a day late and a dollar short.  BFL is 150 days late and many watts short of their promised targets when customers were preordering items.

It always seemed strange to me that even before the ASICs were manufactured, BFL was busy creating plastic cases and shipping boxes.  Now all that is useless and wasted money since the Jalapeno is not going to look like the promised product.

[ninjaboon]

Wafer 1 was ONLY, 1.76w/GH. ONLY. That still means the jalapeno doesn't exist, and the minirig uses 2640 watts. They knew this a month ago, and said the problem wasn't with the chips, it was with the test rig, then the problem wasn't with the chips, it was with the boards. Everything he said today counters The update from a month ago(yeah, it really has been a month).

1. A month ago he said they processed 5 wafers, now he says they're waiting for the third wafer
2. So the test wafer ran at 1.76w/GH only running 4 engines, and only running at 350mhz. How could they not expect higher power usage when running more than 4 engines, and running at 500mhz.
3. again, saying the second set of 6 wafers, when they only processed 1 wafer out of the first set of 6?

1/4 of the chip at 70% clockrate used 1.76w/GH.

Looks like BFL is having too many assumptions and not enough facts.

[smoothie]

I believe the phrase is a day late and a dollar short.  BFL is 150 days late and many watts short of their promised targets when customers were preordering items.

It always seemed strange to me that even before the ASICs were manufactured, BFL was busy creating plastic cases and shipping boxes.  Now all that is useless and wasted money since the Jalapeno is not going to look like the promised product.

+1 carriage before horse?

[luffy]

BFL had a previousy bad record about delivery of FPGAs.
Did you really believed that with  ASICs (much harder ASICs) would be any better?
i am still hoping that they deliver oneday

[Gator-hex]

Wafer 1 was ONLY, 1.76w/GH. ONLY. That still means the jalapeno doesn't exist, and the minirig uses 2640 watts.

You're way out..

The Little Single prototype was 160w/25GH/s = 6.4w/GH. So a 1500GH/s Mini Rig SC would need 60x LS units = 9600 watts!  

It looks like it will be about 2x as power efficient as the Avalon (assuming it was real and not just a FPGA Mini Rig doing the mining).

[greyhawk]

omg this whole charade from BFL is so funny....

BFL's value as a company is the entertainment they produce. They may as well be a sitcom, broadway musical, or full fledged movie production in the comedy genre.

OMFG ROFL!  

I'm on my way to the trademark office to register "ComedyCoin".

[aTg]

BFL had a previousy bad record about delivery of FPGAs.
Did you really believed that with  ASICs (much harder ASICs) would be any better?
i am still hoping that they deliver oneday

Worst of all is that they are making exactly the same mistakes with FPGAs.
If you have overheating problems, admit your mistake, redesigns the pcb with one or two asics, changes a functional box with oversized heatsinksink, do not ridicule.



 

[Bogart]

BFL had a previousy bad record about delivery of FPGAs.
Did you really believed that with  ASICs (much harder ASICs) would be any better?

Clearly BFL did.

"Honest Abe".

[k9quaint]

BFL's plan B

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I believe the phrase is a day late and a dollar short.  BFL is 150 days late and many watts short of their promised targets when customers were preordering items.

It always seemed strange to me that even before the ASICs were manufactured, BFL was busy creating plastic cases and shipping boxes.  Now all that is useless and wasted money since the Jalapeno is not going to look like the promised product.

+1 carriage before horse?

Best caption wins! EDIT: I found a caption.

Sorry, but to say the product is miles away from what it was claimed is patently ridiculous.  Even at the power draw and hashrate I saw, which is IMHO a worst case scenario, the product is somewhat off.  It's not "miles away" by any stretch of the imagination.  20w vs 80w.  Yes, a factor of 4.  So is 1w vs 4w, but that doesn't mean it's a huge amount in absolute terms.  Whether it's 20w or 80w, it's still better by a factor of 6 (being generous here, it's more like a factor of 7 or to any GPU solution and at LEAST 3x possibly 4x better than any other FPGA solution... So trying to couch it in terms of "factors" on how off the power estimates were is disingenous.  Put it in terms of absolute values.  It's 80w (and likely the shipping version will be more efficient), compared to 20w.  I'll take the 60w increase in place of my power hungry GPUs screaming in my basement, thanks.  And personally, I'm not going to quibble over 170 - 200 MH/s as a worst case scenario, and likely less than that as well.  Would I like a 1.05 GH/s at 20w?  Hell yes, but the reality and the initial target are anything but "miles away" from each other. 

Fuck seriously.  I am trying to stay out of this, but the rampant hate and complete bullshit some of you are spewing are borderline pathological and far, far over the border of logical or reasonable.  I see mistakes and misunderstandings, but I see little if any outright dishonestly.  But I'll tell you what I do see, is a whole bucketload of a complete lack of understanding or experience in design, business operations, marketing and development.  Anyone who's actually done those things understands exactly what's happened so far and why... anyone who hasn't really shouldn't be speaking.

[needbmw]

New speed and pricing 

[Syke]

New speed and pricing 

I thought that image was 'shopped. But no, that image is for real!

Oh, look, they won't specify power usage anymore. WTG BFL.

[greyhawk]

What the flying...

That is actually for real.

https://products.butterflylabs.com/

[nagnagnag2]

https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/25-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html

Pre-order Terms: Bitforce SC (ASIC) products are in final stage development with initial shipping scheduled for the last half of April 2013. Products are shipped according to placement in the order queue, and delivery may take 2 months or more after order. All sales are final.

As usual; Still bullshit.