Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[freedomno1]

Sonny

I just heard Phineas' Head Asplode

Just passing through and... WTF! 

As you were passing through of course your head exploded XD ^_^

[1714979006]

1714979006

[1714979006]

1714979006

[Ytterbium]

Calm down people - they took a photograph together at a conference. Inaba has said again and again that he thinks KnC will miss their targets, it's not some secret conspiracy.

[BenTuras]

Sonny

I just heard Phineas' Head Asplode

Just passing through and... WTF! 

As you were passing through of course your head exploded XD ^_^

It did, he just forgot to update his avatar

[YipYip]

See my point?...More nonsense...Wah,,,,,,,, Wah, wah wah wah, somebody get the boy a bottle, please.

Crawl back down the hole you came out off noob !!

[YipYip]

Calm down people - they took a photograph together at a conference. Inaba has said again and again that he thinks KnC will miss their targets, it's not some secret conspiracy.

I gotta say

All they need is Dave from Bitfury and Asicminer and BOOM.....CARTEL !!!!

Maybe they were on speaker phone lolz

[frankenmint]

Seeks more pictures of a CASE or a prosepctive completed unit.  I know they have mockup rendered imgs on their store.kncminer.com website, but I'd really want to see some IRL photos...You've got literally 30 days to begin your make or break month of commitments.  If you guys can't pull through, I'm going to start giving up on BTC hardware vendors period   

[Bitcoinorama]

Seeks more pictures of a CASE or a prosepctive completed unit.  I know they have mockup rendered imgs on their store.kncminer.com website, but I'd really want to see some IRL photos...You've got literally 30 days to begin your make or break month of commitments.  If you guys can't pull through, I'm going to start giving up on BTC hardware vendors period  

So you want a picture of a prospective unit that isn't even a prototype yet. Why? To quell your discomfort for another five minutes before you can think of another demand? Why don't you take the next 30 days to read up on the subject? There are no in real life photos, you should know precisely why. If you understood the topic, you'd unsterstand what your money is being used for prior to parting with it. No one is holding a gun to your head, and they've already said the case itself is an aesthetic afterthought, bar some cooling consideration. If you want to look at pretty casing, go checkout Terrahash, or x-crowd, both have pretty mock-ups and no prototype. X-crowd doesn't even have design specs. Crikey they don't even have ASIC engineers in place. They (questionable if even plural, he) only have pretty casing mock-ups and a warehouse full of women's clothing. BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away. If you're not sure of what your investing in and the design team behind it, read up on the subject, instead of barking nonsensical demands and highlighting them in red that mean nothing in the scheme of things and drawing attention to the fact you have refused to inform yourself about the subject matter...

[Gyrsur]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

[androz]

All they need is Dave from Bitfury and Asicminer and BOOM.....CARTEL !!!!

paranoid thinking, now we saw an avalon - bfl "delay'n mine "alliance  

let's wait... september is coming  

[HyperMega]

$800k for a 28nm full-mask set? This is an amazing offer, at which foundry will I get it that cheap?

Get an itemized quote, do you think you pay the full $2MM up front?  If you do, let me know I will gladly negotiate for you next time for 10%.    that is the payment you will be making PRIOR to your mask.   There are other payments, but you seem to have an inkling of what you are talking about so you know that, don't you?
That I do not believe KnC is producing a fully designed asic should be obvious by now.

That only works if the foundry is convinced that you are worthy of credit. Normally this is not the case for start-ups and SMEs in this price category. For them it is cash in advance or no tape-out. Yes, I know what I'm talking about, it's hard to deal directly with companies like GF or TSMC if your are only a small customer.

I doubt that KnC or OrSOC is seen as a big customer for this project, because they probably will not order more than 50 wafers in the first year (which would be already about 3 PH). 1000 wafers a year would be a big customer. Why should a foundry take any risk for a bitcoin mining ASIC?
So I think they most likely have to pay the complete $1.5M to $2M in advance of the tape-out. And because they said tape-out done "some time ago", they probably paid it also some time ago.

From the commercial point of view I see no reason why KnC should not be able to produce a fully designed 28nm ASIC. They collected enough money by pre-orders to pay the complete 3rd party NREs in advance. But it should be clear, that if they are on track as they claimed, a great deal of the pre-order money isn't in their hands any more.

[Bitcoinorama]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

I had seen that, the guts are there, but no casing, which is a nothing for Bitfury investors to worry over, as long as no future casing inhibits airflow, but casing is what the previous poster was concerned about here.

Also, you do realise the CEO of ORSoC, the CTO of ORSoC, and a lead ASIC design specialist of ORSoC are on the board of directors of KnC alongside Sam and Andreas, and that KnC share the same building as ORSoC? ORSoC actually accommodate KnC, there's no trips to be made, design is not outsourced, or contracted, it's in-house, around the clock, which is a huge advantage they have over competitors paying consultants that have no equity stake for a few hours here and there...

They are not like BFL, they actually enjoy designing, it is not a chore, they play with this stuff all day long for fun, they are also competitive, which is why they are limiting information flow as stated. They have real competition now, this is common sense. Fair enough revealing casing won't have them loose ground, but it's just a protective cage from fingers, they said this at the open day. Originally the casing was to be like a mesh surround, but now with data centres and 19" rack format it's likely to be something generic. Rather they show nothing than a catalogue pic like KSlaughter, that's caused him grief...

[Gyrsur]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

I had seen that, the guts are there, but no casing, which is a nothing for Bitfury investors to worry over, as long as no future casing inhibits airflow, but casing is what the previous poster was concerned about here.

Also, you do realise the CEO of ORSoC, the CTO of ORSoC, and a lead ASIC design specialist of ORSoC are on the board of directors of KnC alongside Sam and Andreas, and that KnC share the same building as ORSoC? ORSoC actually accommodate KnC, there's no trips to be made, design is not outsourced, or contracted, it's in-house, around the clock, which is a huge advantage they have over competitors paying consultants that have no equity stake for a few hours here and there...

ok, thank you for the information. I remember you visited KnC in the past. And where will the chip manufacturing happen? Also in Sweden or in a other country.

[Bitcoinorama]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

I had seen that, the guts are there, but no casing, which is a nothing for Bitfury investors to worry over, as long as no future casing inhibits airflow, but casing is what the previous poster was concerned about here.

Also, you do realise the CEO of ORSoC, the CTO of ORSoC, and a lead ASIC design specialist of ORSoC are on the board of directors of KnC alongside Sam and Andreas, and that KnC share the same building as ORSoC? ORSoC actually accommodate KnC, there's no trips to be made, design is not outsourced, or contracted, it's in-house, around the clock, which is a huge advantage they have over competitors paying consultants that have no equity stake for a few hours here and there...

ok, thank you for the information. I remember you visited KnC in the past. And where will the chip manufacturing happen? Also in Sweden or in a other country.

Well fab will be in People's Rep. of China obv., same as all Bitcoin ASIC vendors, either at Global Foundries, or TSMC, assembly will be Sweden.

[FeedbackLoop]

I doubt that KnC or OrSOC is seen as a big customer for this project, because they probably will not order more than 50 wafers in the first year (which would be already about 3 PH).

3 PetaHash/s ? That's a very interesting number. Could you expand the calculation for us? If I am seeing correctly that would be 10 times the present total network hashing power.

Is 50 wafers some sort of bulk discount number or some sort of standard order? Maybe there;s some minimum amount of wafers?

Thanks!

[frankenmint]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

I had seen that, the guts are there, but no casing, which is a nothing for Bitfury investors to worry over, as long as no future casing inhibits airflow, but casing is what the previous poster was concerned about here.

Also, you do realise the CEO of ORSoC, the CTO of ORSoC, and a lead ASIC design specialist of ORSoC are on the board of directors of KnC alongside Sam and Andreas, and that KnC share the same building as ORSoC? ORSoC actually accommodate KnC, there's no trips to be made, design is not outsourced, or contracted, it's in-house, around the clock, which is a huge advantage they have over competitors paying consultants that have no equity stake for a few hours here and there...

ok, thank you for the information. I remember you visited KnC in the past. And where will the chip manufacturing happen? Also in Sweden or in a other country.

Well fab will be in People's Rep. of China obv., same as all Bitcoin ASIC vendors, either at Global Foundries, or TSMC, assembly will be Sweden.

The effect said glow in the editor so I tried it out.  Not trying for attention by all means I'll remove it from my orig. post lol.  I just want to see more at this point - October is pretty much 60 days away from now...All I've seen is Upgrades and Hosting news...As the other guy pointed out, I can see the bit-fury hardware.  I see the mars prototype and what appears to be two mars fpgas facing each other in such a way that they appear to only do 6 on the prototype and what I guess is 12 on the long version of the prototype.  Would I rather see Hardware and chip photos? For sure, but I figure if they were trying to not show/reveal internals that they would by now have a finalized design/concept/procurement maybe around September?  Maybe I want to feel like I'm getting a quality unit all around and not just the chips/board (not a 20 dollar two bit hacked together wire mesh enclosure) It looks like a large desktop old school style IBM PC.  I figured if they planned to keep it that way that by now more photos of stuff would be available.

[Bitcoinorama]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

I had seen that, the guts are there, but no casing, which is a nothing for Bitfury investors to worry over, as long as no future casing inhibits airflow, but casing is what the previous poster was concerned about here.

Also, you do realise the CEO of ORSoC, the CTO of ORSoC, and a lead ASIC design specialist of ORSoC are on the board of directors of KnC alongside Sam and Andreas, and that KnC share the same building as ORSoC? ORSoC actually accommodate KnC, there's no trips to be made, design is not outsourced, or contracted, it's in-house, around the clock, which is a huge advantage they have over competitors paying consultants that have no equity stake for a few hours here and there...

ok, thank you for the information. I remember you visited KnC in the past. And where will the chip manufacturing happen? Also in Sweden or in a other country.

Well fab will be in People's Rep. of China obv., same as all Bitcoin ASIC vendors, either at Global Foundries, or TSMC, assembly will be Sweden.

The effect said glow in the editor so I tried it out.  Not trying for attention by all means I'll remove it from my orig. post lol.  I just want to see more at this point - October is pretty much 60 days away from now...All I've seen is Upgrades and Hosting news...As the other guy pointed out, I can see the bit-fury hardware.  I see the mars prototype and what appears to be two mars fpgas facing each other in such a way that they appear to only do 6 on the prototype and what I guess is 12 on the long version of the prototype.  Would I rather see Hardware and chip photos? For sure, but I figure if they were trying to not show/reveal internals that they would by now have a finalized design/concept/procurement maybe around September?  Maybe I want to feel like I'm getting a quality unit all around and not just the chips/board (not a 20 dollar two bit hacked together wire mesh enclosure) It looks like a large desktop old school style IBM PC.  I figured if they planned to keep it that way that by now more photos of stuff would be available.

Which only shows you haven't read up on anything. There is nothing to show. They aim to have chips in hand by September, that's all they've ever promised. See they could show you other components, but with the earlier similie I gave with respect to this being a formulae one race; McLaren aren't about to show Ferrari their upcoming seasons blueprints for their car, or for that matter reveal anything about it until the press release before the race starts. Fact is they have been spending pre-order money and are committed. They have taped out and they say everything is progressing on schedule. There is an aspect of a leap of faith, but that's why I've chosen a company with past history in designing ASICs and with a team that has an equity share and resides within the company 24/7, well within reason, they do need to sleep occasionally...

That's my reasoning, but you need to find your own.

[Rampion]

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 that within July 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

Knc said that within July they were sending to Kano and Ckolivas mock up devices to work on cgminer implementation.

So, now we have passed a concrete deadline we can all verify.

Kano, did you receive the mock up device?

I sent a PM to Kano a few days ago. I asked if he had been in contact with him or CKolivas KNC

He answer this:

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/913/inpw.jpg

Lulz

I did post after that ... quoted post ...

So, did you actually receive the mock up unit within July as promised and are you working yet on cgminer implementation for Knc hardware?

[HyperMega]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

I had seen that, the guts are there, but no casing, which is a nothing for Bitfury investors to worry over, as long as no future casing inhibits airflow, but casing is what the previous poster was concerned about here.

Also, you do realise the CEO of ORSoC, the CTO of ORSoC, and a lead ASIC design specialist of ORSoC are on the board of directors of KnC alongside Sam and Andreas, and that KnC share the same building as ORSoC? ORSoC actually accommodate KnC, there's no trips to be made, design is not outsourced, or contracted, it's in-house, around the clock, which is a huge advantage they have over competitors paying consultants that have no equity stake for a few hours here and there...

ok, thank you for the information. I remember you visited KnC in the past. And where will the chip manufacturing happen? Also in Sweden or in a other country.

Well fab will be in People's Rep. of China obv., same as all Bitcoin ASIC vendors, either at Global Foundries, or TSMC, assembly will be Sweden.

I hope this is no information you got from KnC because it can't be correct.

Some semiconductor industry facts:
1) at the moment there is no 28nm fab at all in People's Rep. of China (they are of course working at building ten )
2) TSMC stands for "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company", all their fabs including 28nm are in Taiwan
3) The only 28nm GLOBALFOUNDRIES fab (former AMD production side) is fab1 located in Dresden, Germany

[Bitcoinorama]

...BFL who ordered their casing before refining their design got lumbered with a crapload of Jalepeno cases that didn't fit. Has Bitfury showed casing? If your not comfortable with what your investing in and the design team behind it, walk away.

definitely, they have at least pictures of all components.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0

EDIT: my guess is, they are nearly ready with most of the parts surrounding the chips. they are waiting for ORSoC, so they have time to make trips. after the chips will arrive (maybe end of August) there are two possibilities: everything will work as expected or like BFL it will not. IMHO it is to early to get a impression of if they are like BFL.

I had seen that, the guts are there, but no casing, which is a nothing for Bitfury investors to worry over, as long as no future casing inhibits airflow, but casing is what the previous poster was concerned about here.

Also, you do realise the CEO of ORSoC, the CTO of ORSoC, and a lead ASIC design specialist of ORSoC are on the board of directors of KnC alongside Sam and Andreas, and that KnC share the same building as ORSoC? ORSoC actually accommodate KnC, there's no trips to be made, design is not outsourced, or contracted, it's in-house, around the clock, which is a huge advantage they have over competitors paying consultants that have no equity stake for a few hours here and there...

ok, thank you for the information. I remember you visited KnC in the past. And where will the chip manufacturing happen? Also in Sweden or in a other country.

Well fab will be in People's Rep. of China obv., same as all Bitcoin ASIC vendors, either at Global Foundries, or TSMC, assembly will be Sweden.

I hope this is no information you got from KnC because it can't be correct.

Some semiconductor industry facts:
1) at the moment there is no 28nm fab at all in People's Rep. of China (they are of course working at building ten )
2) TSMC stands for "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company", all there fabs including 28nm are in Taiwan
3) The only 28nm GLOBALFOUNDRIES fab (former AMD production side) is fab1 located in Dresden, Germany

Sorry, yes, my bad about GF, although Taiwan is a long disputed province of the People's Republic of China.

[HyperMega]

I doubt that KnC or OrSOC is seen as a big customer for this project, because they probably will not order more than 50 wafers in the first year (which would be already about 3 PH).

3 PetaHash/s ? That's a very interesting number. Could you expand the calculation for us? If I am seeing correctly that would be 10 times the present total network hashing power.

Is 50 wafers some sort of bulk discount number or some sort of standard order? Maybe there;s some minimum amount of wafers?

Thanks!

KnC ASIC will have about 100 GH/s realised with 192 engine IPs (see KnC R&D news from 7/19/2013).

I assume that an engine IP is equivalent to a pipelined hash core. To realise 100 GH/s they must run at a little bit more than 500 MHz, what is feasible in 28nm.

Based on technology scaling (2x more logic on same area form technology node to next technology node) we get based on BFL hash core size (estimated based on BFL die including 16 cores removing spare area and pad frame overhead) from 65(55)nm -> 45(40)nm -> 32(28)nm an estimated area per hash core of 0.6 mm2 in 28nm.

This results in an overall KnC die area of about 115 mm2 (0.6mm2 x 192).
Adding some area for supporting logic, I would say max 120 mm2 would be a good target.

An 28nm 300mm wafer has an area of about 70000 mm2. So we get 583 dies per wafer (assuming 100% yield, not realistic I know, but you can scale it yourself to your yield assumptions).

For 50 wafer:

583 dies/wafer -> 58.3 TH/wafer
50 wafer -> 2915 TH

Minimum ordering at foundries is normally one lot (25 wafer). Maybe also half lots are possible. But keep in mind, additional wafers costs nothing compared to the initial mask costs.