Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[titomane]

You draw conclusions without knowing the chip structure. You assume will have only one die, when is can have 2,3 or 4.

That's my point, dum@$$, KNC have given us the LEAST amount of data of any of the manufacturers.

Give me some more data, I'll happily revise my conclusions based upon the data.

I don't make decisions based upon hopes and dreams and the like.  Just upon the numbers.

When I show you pictures of chips erroneous calculations. Trying to show the difference between package and DIE again and again.

XBOX-WII & PS3 CPU's are BGA soldered. Their DIE size are less than 15 & 17% of package size.
XBOX
http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/xbox360/cpu/CPU.jpg

That's a 30-35% die vs. package size right there (the RAISED board is the "package" - the rectangle on it is the DIE).

I imagine without information, your calculations should be worse.

CMOS SENSORS   more than 750mm2 DIE size

[DPoS]

You draw conclusions without knowing the chip structure. You assume will have only one die, when is can have 2,3 or 4.

That's my point, dum@$$, KNC have given us the LEAST amount of data of any of the manufacturers.

Give me some more data, I'll happily revise my conclusions based upon the data.

I don't make decisions based upon hopes and dreams and the like.  Just upon the numbers.

and no one is beating a path to convince you either...  why do you think so?

You are a time suck.... why don't you just go all in with bitfury and be done with it?

[Sugarman]

Correct me if i am wrong,

but wouldn't not having to pay the VAT on 1 single jupiter cover half of the 6 month term (depending on your local VAT)?

[kano]

Just a little bit of info regarding KnC
They contact ckolivas and myself at the end of May regarding cgminer and related information.

They then stated they'd be sending (in July) mock up devices (with an internal RPi) for us to work with on cgminer, then in September the real (faster) devices to tune cgminer to.

I have, however, heard nothing since, but no doubt expect to hear something soon.

I'll keep everyone posted if anything happens

I've been waiting 5 days for a reply (to an email I sent Marcus and Sam) from KnC about their status ... still no response ...

[Anenome5]

Anyone considering their hosting option? Seems like a large amount of money to front coupled with the fact that you need to accept a 6 month contract...

For me it depends on the difficulty when my unit becomes available, the USD price of BTC at that time, as well as whether they will accept payment in BTC. If difficulty is way high and the profit margin is slim, I can run it less expensively at home, but would prefer it run there b/c of the guaranteed uptime. If they do come up with optimizations, I'm assuming they will make them available to everyone and not just hosted units...

I assume they'll be using something like Bitpay to let you pay them, naturally. What kind of asic seller wouldn't accept bitcoin on top of other options.

[Anenome5]

one question
if u choose hosting u don't pay shipping, electricity and VAT 
(u will pay VAT when u decide to import hw in ur country, right?)

Almost assuredly it includes electricity, and you might not even need to pay VAT if they don't ship it out? Dunno.

I priced out hosting at a major California data center, they wanted $330 a month (electricity included), and that was with me admining it, and twice that for the first month's setup.

As for KNC, they told me in an email that we would be able to switch from delivery to hosting, and that the cost we've paid upfront for delivery will be applied to the hosting cost initially. I assume this means the $130+ we paid will be used to buy the power supply. Then we'd be billed at the end of the month for the hosting cost with a choice of options, and likely a good $50 or so extra for the cost of the power supply.

Looking like an attractive option to me. Imagine if something broke down in your machine and you had to send it back? Weeks lost. Imagine too if they are overclocking it for you in their datacenter, and they're the pros on the machine!

[Anenome5]

We need to ask support for a hosting plan for the Saturns.

says right in news release that KNC will only host Jupiters

They take feedback just like they have with hardware im sure they can figure a solution if enough people ask for it. Doesnt seem to hard the same space is going to be taken up with less power.

Cant hurt to ask, but that is their published response right now

I know i asked them anyway, i plan on upgrading my saturn to a jupiter anyway within the first month, dont see the logic behind not hosting saturns or mercuries if people want to pay for it.

For one thing, they take up the same amount of space as a Jupiter but produce half the output, and datacenters are charging you by the cabinet. So...

[Anenome5]

Just as I thought... 2 gh/s per chip, about 50x slower, you had me there

:| you don't really know what a 'wafer' is in chip fabbing, do you? It's the large pizza-sized single-crystal of substrate (silicon) all the chips are lithographed onto before being cut into individual chips.

[pajak666]

As for KNC, they told me in an email that we would be able to switch from delivery to hosting, and that the cost we've paid upfront for delivery will be applied to the hosting cost initially. I assume this means the $130+ we paid will be used to buy the power supply. Then we'd be billed at the end of the month for the hosting cost with a choice of options, and likely a good $50 or so extra for the cost of the power supply.

Looking like an attractive option to me. Imagine if something broke down in your machine and you had to send it back? Weeks lost. Imagine too if they are overclocking it for you in their datacenter, and they're the pros on the machine!

Yeah and imagine all the decentralization gone. Imagine a scenario that one day bitcoin becomes major problem for anyone with bad intentions, much money and power in his hand, they are very desperate to bring bitcoin down. What would be smart move? destroy or somehow make some mess at KNC hosting datacentre and at some other major network hasher like ASICminer, what will happen then? due to lack of hashing power and high difficulty it will take ages for any transaction to confirm. Taaa Daaa here goes down your super hosting option.

[JohnyBigs]

We need to ask support for a hosting plan for the Saturns.

says right in news release that KNC will only host Jupiters

They take feedback just like they have with hardware im sure they can figure a solution if enough people ask for it. Doesnt seem to hard the same space is going to be taken up with less power.

Cant hurt to ask, but that is their published response right now

I know i asked them anyway, i plan on upgrading my saturn to a jupiter anyway within the first month, dont see the logic behind not hosting saturns or mercuries if people want to pay for it.

For one thing, they take up the same amount of space as a Jupiter but produce half the output, and datacenters are charging you by the cabinet. So...

Maybe some saturn owners still wouldnt mind paying the cost

[Anenome5]

BS. You are totally lying now. Welcome to the list of trolls.(bdpuke)
Bitfury's 110gh rack is HUGE, and consumes 10 kilowatts!!!!
http://www.bitfury.org/bitfury110.html

Obviously you haven't kept up much.

That's a rack of FPGAs, not ASICs.  It's over 2 years old.

This is what they are actively selling:
https://megabigpower.com/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59&product_id=50

Doesn't it seem ridiculously overpriced with KNC's offering on the table?

[nmat]

Maybe some saturn owners still wouldnt mind paying the cost

They probably don't have enough space or enough people to manage lots of devices. They could hire a big team and rent a big space, but they probably want to focus on production instead.

EDIT: Actually, there's a poll right now to vote for this feature in their frontpage, so they might allow it if people ask for it.

[Anenome5]

As for KNC, they told me in an email that we would be able to switch from delivery to hosting, and that the cost we've paid upfront for delivery will be applied to the hosting cost initially. I assume this means the $130+ we paid will be used to buy the power supply. Then we'd be billed at the end of the month for the hosting cost with a choice of options, and likely a good $50 or so extra for the cost of the power supply.

Looking like an attractive option to me. Imagine if something broke down in your machine and you had to send it back? Weeks lost. Imagine too if they are overclocking it for you in their datacenter, and they're the pros on the machine!

Yeah and imagine all the decentralization gone. Imagine a scenario that one day bitcoin becomes major problem for anyone with bad intentions, much money and power in his hand, they are very desperate to bring bitcoin down. What would be smart move? destroy or somehow make some mess at KNC hosting datacentre and at some other major network hasher like ASICminer, what will happen then? due to lack of hashing power and high difficulty it will take ages for any transaction to confirm. Taaa Daaa here goes down your super hosting option.

Meh, the difficulty is just over ~24 million. It can change by a factor of 4 every 2 weeks. So it could go down to 6 million. Not really that bad at all. It's a risk, to be sure, but so is hosting at home or in a local data-center. It's all a risk. If returns were guaranteed this would be a loan or a bond, not an investment, and the return would be correspondingly low.

[Anenome5]

More exciting to me is that they offer 6 month lease. I think my local datacenter wanted a 36 month lease! That's clearly not bitcoin-mining friendly.

But that also implies something else. If KNC gets the Jupiter out the door on time they will have proved they possess a development pipeline that no one can match and they instantly become the market leader ASIC provider.

I expect that by the time the Jupiters actually ship, assuming they ship on time, Knc will have begun work on their gen-2 device in the terrahash range, to be announced shortly after their first Jupiters ship, perhaps a month after, with a release date in another 4-6 months.

That will likely crush the Avalons and BFL rigs of the world, possibly even put pressure on AsicMiner, since they aren't the most efficient miner out there cost-wise, no doubt. Bitfury's design would probably withstand a gen-2 assault somewhat well, being the market leader efficiency-wise currently, but I'd expect a gen-2 to beat the Bitfury chip handily on that metric too.

If Knc can produce a gen-2 device in another 4 months after shipping, all of us will be able to afford to upgrade, most likely. And then if they produce a gen-3 device in another 4 months, they will really have blown the competition out of the water.

One of the reasons I think Knc chose a large package size is that it's a lot easier, cheaper, quicker, to solder four large chips on a board and ship the device than do deal with multiple daughter-boards and PCBs, like an Avalon has. That leads to production and shipping delays.

In fact, it's probably more accurate to think of KNC's first device as a gen-2 device already, though it's their first product. Knc and Bitfury I'd put in the gen-2 category already, with Avalon and BFL being gen-1 (even if Bfl has hardly shipped).

Hard to say what the parameters of a gen2/3 device will look like, what it's specs will be. Personally I'd love to see blade-style devices designed for datacenter installment, ala AMiner. Knc may yet do that with these devices. We shall see.

[ASIC-K]

we should just lock this once useful thread, and start a new one.

[Phoenix1969]

I'm in lust with the hosting idea admittedly. I pay .43 per kilowatt-hour, so a Jupiter costs 309.60/month just to operate here in Hawaii. If KNC can host this for me, I'll really only be paying $40.40 more per month to have it hosted in a professional data-center, by the same people whom developed the device, have every tweak & tune they do without having to lift a finger....    pay a competitive pool fee, etc...
no problem choosing here. I'm betting they can get it running faster there in the data-center & pool, than I can here at home as well.

[DPoS]

If Knc can produce a gen-2 device in another 4 months after shipping, all of us will be able to afford to upgrade,

I really dont understand this endless chase...  are we all in this just to make the miner makers money by reupping?? 

You have to have something besides this game going on..  it ain't going to last so please do something productive with your ROI since half of the coins are already mined

[Phoenix1969]

all coins are always mined, its about marketshare, in the  total hashrate across the cloud of miners.

[Anenome5]

If Knc can produce a gen-2 device in another 4 months after shipping, all of us will be able to afford to upgrade,

I really dont understand this endless chase...  are we all in this just to make the miner makers money by reupping?? 

You have to have something besides this game going on..  it ain't going to last so please do something productive with your ROI since half of the coins are already mined

With an expected ROI of something like 20-30 days, I'd be more than happy to mine profitably for four months only to trade up to a new gen device. That would still be a profit overall, even after paying for the new device, plus you still have the old one hashing all you like for another 8 months viably at least.

If you don't trade up as tech advances, you eventually get left behind anyway and will be forced to stop mining. Some will be happy with that, others, not so.

[erk]

With an expected ROI of something like 20-30 days, I'd be more than happy to mine profitably for four months only to trade up to a new gen device. That would still be a profit overall, even after paying for the new device, plus you still have the old one hashing all you like for another 8 months viably at least.

If you don't trade up as tech advances, you eventually get left behind anyway and will be forced to stop mining. Some will be happy with that, others, not so.

I think what is confusing people on the ROI, is that we are suddenly dealing with start-ups that have no money in the ASIC world.

We have been use to doing a rough calculation, going down the shop and buying the latest GPU, and starting mining. But now it's all changed, because the ASIC companies have no money, they have to go into this pre-order caper and accumulate funds to pay for the fabrication. That introduce the many month delays (in the case of BFL over a year) in the ROI calculations. This is a concept people can't get their heads around. Hopefully the ASIC companies will eventually work out better ways of funding their next generation products, like the GPU companies do, and announce product when it's ready to ship.