BFL silent these past days?

[mezzomix]

At this point, I am absolutely sick and tired of the lying and BS that comes out of MTGox BFL.

FTFY

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[mobodick]

They are also preparing several dev units and were able to up the performance of Luke-Jr's unit to 34 GH/s.

34? Looks more like 28 GH/s.

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/1CdcYVP4T4hjHwt353pEnGHrigeDLvuvZL

Just quoting a rumor heard in the BFL forum shoutbox. Maybe it was wrong.

Those are straws, not rumours... It is what BFL customers investors grasp at these days.
:/

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Just watched the vid... something seems fishy that all of a sudden they have a bunch of workers, when the reddit guy who did an unaccompanied tour didn't report many people actually working.

Guys, guys, guys!  They were obviously off doing a team building exercise!  It takes a lot of coordination to descend upon anything like a swarm of locusts and not get in each others' way.  I hope they release a video of that, by the way.  A swarm of 22 locusts...  Can you imagine it??!?

Wikileak image from ICE's computer depicting a fiesta on the grounds of BFL, rewarding the temps for exceeding a 60% quality rating during the week by serving up a mess of locust whom failed miserably with their shipping performance.

[Unacceptable]

Cute, that is the single in the back row: Two mini single connected together with a water block 

The dual waterblock unit is 2 FPGA's sandwiched together,not ASIC's.The one with the black"clamp" thing on it may be an ASIC,can't see from this angle.

God,I hope they ship soon 

[PuertoLibre]

They are not silent at all - today they released a promotional video on their website.
They are also preparing several dev units and were able to up the performance of Luke-Jr's unit to 34 GH/s.

Just watched the vid... something seems fishy that all of a sudden they have a bunch of workers, when the reddit guy who did an unaccompanied tour didn't report many people actually working.

While I am hear eager to receive what I ordered and prepaid 9 months ago, this is not the time to panic, nor is it a time to bitch and moan. If I want to hear bitching, I listen to my wife. If I want to hear moaning, I listen to "Bella", a trained professional.

In a nutshell: Good things come to those who wait.

I'm not bitchin, im not moanin. I've refrained from doing that for going on 9 months now. I've got a second month order that I'm waitin to receive. Sure hope the price figures out what it wants to do so that we can resume a somewhat steady mining setup.

Just like British Petroleum after the oil spill. (BP for those that don't know)

They used to intentionally build an atmosphere when reports were coming around. With someone shouting "Look Busy!" just as the reporters were about to get there.

It is all an act and a show. (IMO)

[Logik]

So BFL just tweeted the "Luke-Jr's Little Single is now running at around 27-30GHash/s". They don't mention anything about power consumption.

My speculation is that they can't fix the power issues without new ASICs from China. They are conspicuously silent about power consumption in their updates apart from relative measures like gaining a small % here from a board redesign, or a small % here from firmware - but I think they actually need entire new chips to be manufactured before they can meet power requirements and they know if they let on to this fact then it's all over.

They will stall and stall with power and firmware and 'developer units' (like Luke Jrs) until they get new chips in like a month. Mass shipping in 2 months if they don't go bankrupt.

[Logik]

I mean think about this one tweet (it was like a Q and A type deal)

Has the ASIC firm got back to you on why they think just the chip is  running about twice as much power as expected, and will power consumption come down for wafers 76+?" We are in process with that. We have a theory as to what's going on and we're trying to confirm that's what happened at the foundry and if so, it bodes very well for us

Just ponder on that for a moment.

1. Evades the question straight away.
2. "That's what's happened at the foundry" - as in "we need the foundry to fix it and give us more chips".
3. classic BFL, "it bodes very well for us" - how in the world does a problem in the manufacture of the chip (or the chip design, it's not clear) bode well?

[hardpick]

So BFL just tweeted the "Luke-Jr's Little Single is now running at around 27-30GHash/s". They don't mention anything about power consumption.

My speculation is that they can't fix the power issues without new ASICs from China. They are conspicuously silent about power consumption in their updates apart from relative measures like gaining a small % here from a board redesign, or a small % here from firmware - but I think they actually need entire new chips to be manufactured before they can meet power requirements and they know if they let on to this fact then it's all over.

They will stall and stall with power and firmware and 'developer units' (like Luke Jrs) until they get new chips in like a month. Mass shipping in 2 months if they don't go bankrupt.

I agree they have a major power problem -    170 watts at 28 GH is not a good sign for a pcb designed for 60 watts-- but good engineers always come up with a solution to use the current asic
eg  3x 20 GH = 60 GH single -each miner at about 100 watts---  or change the power adaptor plug and use a power supply that has all the voltages external --- less heat on pcb and no power supply issues  ----- lots of other option are avaiable

the only problem is that the pcb may have to be redesigned ---10 layer proto type pcb may take 3-4 days but a production pcb  run of a few thousand may take a few weeks

[CoinHoarder]

At least they finally admitted they don't have a set shipping date. No more next month next month next month next week next month business. That was good comedy while it lasted though!

[Miner99er]

I just want them to start shipping, or at least Kano and ckolivas get theirs soon. Luke-jr "owning" the only one that's been "shipped" and mining just rubs salt in the wound.

[Logik]

At least they finally admitted they don't have a set shipping date. No more next month next month next month next week next month business. That was good comedy while it lasted though!

You say this right? It was only 7 days ago

https://www.facebook.com/ButterflyLabs/posts/561388687226275?comment_id=6319490&reply_comment_id=6319537&total_comments=3

[mezzomix]

I agree they have a major power problem -    170 watts at 28 GH is not a good sign for a pcb designed for 60 watts-- but good engineers always come up with a solution

They don't have good engineers. The ASIC is designed and produced by an external company. BFL has no knowledge about ASIC design and manufacturing. They allowed this external company to make the most stupid beginner errors with this ASIC.

There is not so many detail known about the board, but some things stinks here too. Maybe they outsourced the board design as well. Unfortunately the BFL people seems to have no clue what their suppliers are doing. In addition they are really bad in prjoject management.

I think we have to wait for at least one additional wafer run until Custom Silicon Inc. is delivering an ASIC that could be used to build a product.

[hardpick]

I agree they have a major power problem -    170 watts at 28 GH is not a good sign for a pcb designed for 60 watts-- but good engineers always come up with a solution

They don't have good engineers. The ASIC is designed and produced by an external company. BFL has no knowledge about ASIC design and manufacturing. They allowed this external company to make the most stupid beginner errors with this ASIC.

There is not so many detail known about the board, but some things stinks here too. Maybe they outsourced the board design as well. Unfortunately the BFL people seems to have no clue what their suppliers are doing. In addition they are really bad in prjoject management.

I think we have to wait for at least one additional wafer run until Custom Silicon Inc. is delivering an ASIC that could be used to build a product.

I think I read they have at least 85000 asic --- the asic works ok but use more power than expected --- they need to find a easy design solution to the problem --- note these asic use less than 50% power  of avalon (bfl asic will be better in long term - less power ) --- so design may end up in a much larger case with bigger power supply

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I mean think about this one tweet (it was like a Q and A type deal)

Has the ASIC firm got back to you on why they think just the chip is  running about twice as much power as expected, and will power consumption come down for wafers 76+?" We are in process with that. We have a theory as to what's going on and we're trying to confirm that's what happened at the foundry and if so, it bodes very well for us

Just ponder on that for a moment.

1. Evades the question straight away.
2. "That's what's happened at the foundry" - as in "we need the foundry to fix it and give us more chips".
3. classic BFL, "it bodes very well for us" - how in the world does a problem in the manufacture of the chip (or the chip design, it's not clear) bode well?

He meant bowl's well.

There is not so many detail known about the board, but some things stinks here too. Maybe they outsourced the board design as well.

Surely, they're not using the only PCB outfit in Chicago owned by Greeks who have relatives in KC, are they?

[mezzomix]

I think I read they have at least 85000 asic --- the asic works ok but use more power than expected --- they need to find a easy design solution to the problem --- note these asic use less than 50% power  of avalon (bfl asic will be better in long term - less power ) --- so design may end up in a much larger case with bigger power supply

I don't know how many ASICs they have, and they seems to work - well kind of - but I don't think those ASICs are working good enough for a product. At those little details in the videos, messages and pictures you can get from them leads me to this conclusion. If you have experience with ASIC design and manufacturing, read between the lines of their success messages. Those messages sounds good, but if you read about their remaining problems and the planed solutions you get another- very different - picture.

And then there is another major point: BFL is not Avalon - if they could really ship the products this month you would read victory messages from Josh in all forums. This silence alone speaks for itself!

[hardpick]

I think I read they have at least 85000 asic --- the asic works ok but use more power than expected --- they need to find a easy design solution to the problem --- note these asic use less than 50% power  of avalon (bfl asic will be better in long term - less power ) --- so design may end up in a much larger case with bigger power supply

I don't know how many ASICs they have, and they seems to work - well kind of - but I don't think those ASICs are working good enough for a product. At those little details in the videos, messages and pictures you can get from them leads me to this conclusion. If you have experience with ASIC design and manufacturing, read between the lines of their success messages. Those messages sounds good, but if you read about their remaining problems and the planed solutions you get another- very different - picture.

And then there is another major point: BFL is not Avalon - if they could really ship the products this month you would read victory messages from Josh in all forums. This silence alone speaks for itself!

I have a few orders of 60 GH mining rigs so I am hopefull they will ship this month--- and Josh being silent is not good news --- and  bfl taking about 4 week after getting asic to get a working proto  type running make me thinks that the problem are greater than stated --- all I am trying to say is if the asic is ok and only has power problem --- it is fixable with a good engineer

[Logik]

The ASIC is designed and produced by an external company. BFL has no knowledge about ASIC design and manufacturing. They allowed this external company to make the most stupid beginner errors with this ASIC.

I'm pretty sure there is no engineering team. The ASIC designer is some guy who works full time at a bank in France and works for BFL nights and weekends (probably like 10 hours part time), and the other parts of the "team" are the contract PCB manufacturers. BFL = sales & marketing hoping like hell they can stumble their way into shipping a product before people pull their pre-orders.

[Cablez]

The ASIC is designed and produced by an external company. BFL has no knowledge about ASIC design and manufacturing. They allowed this external company to make the most stupid beginner errors with this ASIC.

I'm pretty sure there is no engineering team. The ASIC designer is some guy who works full time at a bank in France and works for BFL nights and weekends (probably like 10 hours part time), and the other parts of the "team" are the contract PCB manufacturers. BFL = sales & marketing hoping like hell they can stumble their way into shipping a product before people pull their pre-orders.

Honestly I can't really see a KC company being a successful ASIC company. Shortage in the talent pool anyone?  Maybe if they relocated to where engineers are plentiful, say........California, they might have a chance of delivering this year.

[mezzomix]

The ASIC designer is some guy who works full time at a bank in France and works for BFL nights and weekends (probably like 10 hours part time), and the other parts of the "team" are the contract PCB manufacturers.

No! There was a post with an ASIC metal layer schematics. Custo msilicon Solutions Inc. is deisgning and manufacturing this ASIC. I don't know what this french guy is doing but it's not the ASIC, not the PCB and not the software. Maybe it's their project lead?!

[Transisto]

BFL official update channel.

As a serious investors with self respect I do not resort to monitoring troll-box to get updates.

So here's the latest official update I've had :
Email :

Butterfly Labs Announcement
January 2013
Hello everyone. It's been about a month since our last update and it's high time we had another, since we have lots of information to share this time around....This means our delivery date is expected the week of the 10th of February...

In the meanwhile I've made some forum diving and subscribed to get notice of new post in the /Announcements/ section.

Here's what I've got so far:
Announcements :

15 March BFL News

    Apparently BFL has now attained the vaunted status of being large enough to attract a DDoS. This morning, starting about 1AM CST, the BFL sites started getting over 1 Gbs of traffic, effectively knocking everything offline....

Oh and they're also making contest for the best BFL drawings.

I've heard rumors they would give a discount for early investors but I can't confirm that.

This isn't what I'd call professional communications.

To be honest I did search the forum and 90% of what I saw looked like this : A troll or a customers with a Jalapeno or less whining, people telling him to STFU or get a refund ... and Josh coming from time to time to insult someone at random shedding doubt on their capabilities.