See folks, as some of us said before.. Q2 is a strong likelihood.. Not next month like some folks were thinking, for some doped-up reason.
And those certain folks took it quite quite badly when it was pointed out how self deluded they were acting. Still, it's Easy2SaySorry
I now think WELL INTO Q2 is the more realistic date. I was giving knc the benefit of the doubt that they could possibly tape out before the end of January and maybe deliver, at best, April:
KNC Technical Update: As you can tell by our silence, we are presently still working on Neptune chip design. If it all goes well and we manage to finish it by the end of January, we might be able to deliver neptune by April 2014 (Q2). There or there abouts.
If it isn't finished by start of February (i.e. in time for 2 weeks of new year holidays in China), we will not be answering any phonecalls/emails until June 2014. We will, however, be offering Bitcoinorama as a human sacrifice to angry customers. Just no refunds.
But did you read this:
Neptunes are still very much in the preliminary design phase.
What a bombshell! If this is really the situation, (which it must be or else he wouldn't admit it, knowing it will mean people go elsewhere for hardware), then you gotta be realistic and conclude knc are going to deliver knobtune (you know you love it
) more likely in Q2/Q3.
Early December last year I was saying, because knc have 100% success at delivering late, that the Q2 could easily become Q3 i.e. July/August 2014 delivery.
Which started to look silly when they said they were working over Xmas period, which gave the impression they were somewhere close to completing a satisfactory design. But they are today, mid January, still in
preliminary design phase? That really is unbelievable.
It's a pretty sneaky tactic from knc - they stay completely silent, give the impression they are making good progress, wait for their product to sell out and then announce they are in the still in
preliminary design phase.
I wonder how knc expect people *not* to ask for refunds when they've now spelled out they don't expect to ship until much later than most estimated? I guess they know the first 10k batch is safe, the last 10k batch didn't have a refund option in the sales terms, so they are screwed. So they really only have to worry about the batch of 13k machines in the middle asking for refunds.
Fun times.
-snip overblown waffle-
... The Neptune project whilst adhering to aspects of the aforementioned must focus upon power consumption as it's primary trait if customers (you guys) will be able to compete successfully over a longer period....
-snip overblown waffle-
I won't even mention how much bs this is. To compete successfully over a longer period? Higher hashrate is the only way to achieve that, not power consumption
Unless knc realise that knobtune will be mining next to nothing out of the gate and just hope people will be satisfied to mine for 12 months to slowly get a roi? Hmm. That is only valid if the difficulty stops rising, which orama claimed last year and was no where near accurate.
You'll notice that does not say "increasing hashing power". Anyone who dreamed that knobtunes 3TH might turn into 5TH by delivery must now realise that, due to power concerns - not gonna happen. If the primary concern is power consumption, it's probably going to be closer to 3TH than anyone thought.
So the big question is - will anyone make good on knobtunes? You gotta imagine the "customer loyality" 10k rigs are the only option likely to do okay. But that's totally down to knc getting it right first time and not shipping a bunch of lemons, like they did to a lot of us in October. At that time, they were doing something (28nm) that had been done before, just quicker. Now they are doing something not done before, just as quick
The only thing for certain - the guys who pre-ordered knobtunes are going to get a few grey hairs this summer
