April 15 BFL ASIC update

[mezzomix]

That's only the new larger box of fans.

[marra]

That's only the new larger box of fans.

these threads are the best sitcoms available...

[AlexBBB]

Actually, they can made 5 gh units (1 chip on ea. pcb) by use old PCB's (they says that ASIC chips are Ok).
All they need - connect all VoltageConverters on PCB parallel via additional shottky diodes 1N5819 or cheeper ($10 for 1000 pcs.)

They CAN do it now, but question is.... why they won't

[marra]

Actually, they can made 5 gh units (1 chip on ea. pcb) by use old PCB's (they says that ASIC chips are Ok).
All they need - connect all VoltageConverters on PCB parallel via additional shottky diodes 1N5819 or cheeper ($10 for 1000 pcs.)

They CAN do it now, but question is.... why they won't

pcb alone draws 150w-ish as they noted... too much joules could cause strange heating effects...

[John Self]

These press updates are bit like those coming out of North Korea.

Our Nuclear missiles will be launching against the US mainland soon (TM).

Our ASIC chips are in final stages of development and will be shipping soon (TM).

[BR0KK]

How to cool a minirig:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

[cdog]

They just released pics of the new Minirig power supply:

[jayeeyee]

1.You're not shipping yet.

2.You've missed your power mark of 1w/GH

3.You don't have a time frame for the new boards.

4.You can;t fit 1.5 TH into your cases you amassed.

5.You have interesting solutions (i.e. increase size of case?) (correct "interesting solution": decrease the # of chips and turn 1.5TH to 750GH while charging 2x the original cost - just like what they did with the Single)

6.The "delay is strictly due to having to re-engineer the power system on the boards".

You mean the delay since...

October 2012?
November 2012?
December 2012?
January 2013?
February 2013?
March 2013?

Wow that wasn't much of an update at all. I think everyone here could have guessed all of those points Josh. LOL so fucking fail.

[Cablez]

They just released pics of the new Minirig power supply:

Linky?  EDIT: NVM pic wasn't showing.

[Frizz23]

[glendall]

These press updates are bit like those coming out of North Korea.

Our Nuclear missiles will be launching against the US mainland soon (TM).

Our ASIC chips are in final stages of development and will be shipping soon (TM).

Heheh totally...

North Korea : We are now officially at war! 

BFL: We are now officially shipping ! 

You can't really take either parties too seriously after awhile.

[alexuk]

hahahaha, brilliant

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Back in stock soon, for they've finally solved the cooling issue.

[rograz]

tbh it would be much more awesome if my 5 singles were built and delivered in minirig chassis, at least they would look cool (Big is always better right? ;P)

[Logik]

Since it seems nobody has done this yet, here are the actual power specs of what BFL has right now.

BFL_Josh - With our current power subsystem and it's inefficiencies, I would expect  ~170 MH/J  performance.  That will most likely improve over time as we  refine many aspects of the project

Source https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1811-reason-behind-luke-jrs-asics-improved-performance.html#post24151

So based on the original pre-order specs, and based on 200MH/J performance ('cause it's BFL so we'll assume their fudging the truth)

5GH/s	60GH/s	1500GH/s
25W	353W	8.8KW

Now you might think "that's cool I'll just take the 25W". But the problem isn't that the power works and it's just not acceptable, the problem is that they can't get 25W to the board - it was never designed for that much power. In electronics you can't just shove as much power as you want into something. All of the power delivery components (supply, regulator, etc) have to handle it.

So they are redesigning the board to handle more power. Then they will have a theoretical Jalapeño. And, god willing, they might actually be able to produce one. But what about the 60GH/s single? That's an entirely new story.

My speculation is pre-order SC singles and Mini rigs are going to be cancelled and a deal offered along the lines of

- One of the new-spec 50GH/s or 10 of the pre-order Jalapeños if you had a pre-order SC single
- 30 of the new spec 50GH/s if you ordered a mini rig

I think the reason they changed the prices and terms is so they can ship the new-spec products, with the new chips, to new customers in a few months. In the mean time they will use progress on Jalapeño to keep the remaining pre-order "customers" at bay, then pull the single and mini rig at the last minute.

[pikeadz]

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-3.html#

15 April 2013 Update

Short update today, more to come in the next day or two, hopefully.

We've been working on getting the software and firmware nailed down. Things are mostly stabilized at this point and with our current boards (we do not have the redesigned boards in house yet), power usage exceeds the 1w/GH, unfortunately, but it's much better than anything out by 40 - 50%, at the wall. We are gearing up to start shipping out some dev boards and a few Jalapeno's most likely this week (at least a few dev boards) and then as more chips roll in we'll be shipping out the Jalapeno's. When the new boards land in KC, we'll start shipping Little Singles and Singles at that time. I don't currently have a time frame for those, but I should have something later this week in regards to that.

Obviously, the minirig can't fit 1.5 TH/s in a case the size of what we were planning, but we have some interesting solutions with regards to that. Expect and update on there as well, but I did want to let everyone know we have several solutions to solve the minirig issue and we are moving forward on that front.

I did want to quash any rumors that there was something wrong with the chips; there isn't. The chips themselves are fine (other than using more power than we expected), the delay is strictly due to having to re-engineer the power system on the boards (which requires a larger PCB redesign to a degree) and refine/streamline our processes for getting chips from silicon to mounted on boards. Things will be rolling along soon, albeit a bit slow at first, and then picking up speed as the whole process is optimized and finalized.

What a train wreck.   

[Phinnaeus Gage]

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-3.html#

15 April 2013 Update

Short update today, more to come in the next day or two, hopefully.

We've been working on getting the software and firmware nailed down. Things are mostly stabilized at this point and with our current boards (we do not have the redesigned boards in house yet), power usage exceeds the 1w/GH, unfortunately, but it's much better than anything out by 40 - 50%, at the wall. We are gearing up to start shipping out some dev boards and a few Jalapeno's most likely this week (at least a few dev boards) and then as more chips roll in we'll be shipping out the Jalapeno's. When the new boards land in KC, we'll start shipping Little Singles and Singles at that time. I don't currently have a time frame for those, but I should have something later this week in regards to that.

Obviously, the minirig can't fit 1.5 TH/s in a case the size of what we were planning, but we have some interesting solutions with regards to that. Expect and update on there as well, but I did want to let everyone know we have several solutions to solve the minirig issue and we are moving forward on that front.

I did want to quash any rumors that there was something wrong with the chips; there isn't. The chips themselves are fine (other than using more power than we expected), the delay is strictly due to having to re-engineer the power system on the boards (which requires a larger PCB redesign to a degree) and refine/streamline our processes for getting chips from silicon to mounted on boards. Things will be rolling along soon, albeit a bit slow at first, and then picking up speed as the whole process is optimized and finalized.

What a train wreck.  

Besides getting software and filmware nailed down, and not having the boards in yet, what exactly are the assemblers doing?

[marra]

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-3.html#

15 April 2013 Update

Short update today, more to come in the next day or two, hopefully.

We've been working on getting the software and firmware nailed down. Things are mostly stabilized at this point and with our current boards (we do not have the redesigned boards in house yet), power usage exceeds the 1w/GH, unfortunately, but it's much better than anything out by 40 - 50%, at the wall. We are gearing up to start shipping out some dev boards and a few Jalapeno's most likely this week (at least a few dev boards) and then as more chips roll in we'll be shipping out the Jalapeno's. When the new boards land in KC, we'll start shipping Little Singles and Singles at that time. I don't currently have a time frame for those, but I should have something later this week in regards to that.

Obviously, the minirig can't fit 1.5 TH/s in a case the size of what we were planning, but we have some interesting solutions with regards to that. Expect and update on there as well, but I did want to let everyone know we have several solutions to solve the minirig issue and we are moving forward on that front.

I did want to quash any rumors that there was something wrong with the chips; there isn't. The chips themselves are fine (other than using more power than we expected), the delay is strictly due to having to re-engineer the power system on the boards (which requires a larger PCB redesign to a degree) and refine/streamline our processes for getting chips from silicon to mounted on boards. Things will be rolling along soon, albeit a bit slow at first, and then picking up speed as the whole process is optimized and finalized.

What a train wreck.   

Besides getting software and filmware nailed down, and not having the boards in yet, what exactly are the assemblers doing?

they're probably waiting for design vendors... or they're in the pitch process of finding the new ones which could do the job...either way not good  for the people who gave money... I think the new ASIC machines will show up before the BFL due to the chip sale from Avalon and open source pcb gerber file...