Why is the cost of ASIC development >1M??

[Viceroy]

So yeah TL;DR is 1M total, where 50% is employee costs, 50% is manufacturing costs (including ASIC fab and PCBs and whatnot).

What if they had simply used the open source FPGA designs for the first version of their ASICs?

done.   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179033.0

[1715198380]

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[Signus]

So yeah TL;DR is 1M total, where 50% is employee costs, 50% is manufacturing costs (including ASIC fab and PCBs and whatnot).

What if they had simply used the open source FPGA designs for the first version of their ASICs?

ASIC's != FPGA's.

They have their similarities, but the way you implement a design with them is entirely different.

[John Self]

If kncminer were to get 1000 orders at their asking prices, which is what they are asking for in full before the first unit is shipped, they'd have 2,250,000. It's an obvious business model, get as much as possible up front through wildly optimistic lies about the specs and/or shipping date, and let the suckers customers rot. You'll have made the amount of money that would be justified by a miracle production cycle and manufacturing process, for something pretty basic that half of your customers might not even break even on, but all without breaking any laws. BFL didn't really put much thought into what they were doing, which is why we probably won't see a good miner from them until they figure out how to plagiarise avalon's software when it becomes open source, and by this stage when they're shipping 30GH/s electricity drinkers anyone with the price of a minirig preorder can probably build something powerful enough to run the large hadron collider.

[Mylon]

technically it won't be a mil+, it all depends on how much you can do yourself, still the most expensive parts are going to be to get the chips made, and your not gonna get under the prices MRB linked for that. But yes a combination of knowledge, capital and preorders should get you pretty close on getting on created. And you might need a little extra capital, but by that time your around in the bitcoin forums and irc long enough, to have some buddies who can loan you some. And yes while FPGA's are a good stepping stone to ASIC's they are not the same, and an ASIC will always overpower an FPGA. (depending on what they are designed to do ofc)

[pizza]

If kncminer were to get 1000 orders at their asking prices, which is what they are asking for in full before the first unit is shipped, they'd have 2,250,000. It's an obvious business model, get as much as possible up front through wildly optimistic lies about the specs and/or shipping date, and let the suckers customers rot. You'll have made the amount of money that would be justified by a miracle production cycle and manufacturing process, for something pretty basic that half of your customers might not even break even on, but all without breaking any laws. BFL didn't really put much thought into what they were doing, which is why we probably won't see a good miner from them until they figure out how to plagiarise avalon's software when it becomes open source, and by this stage when they're shipping 30GH/s electricity drinkers anyone with the price of a minirig preorder can probably build something powerful enough to run the large hadron collider.

Wrong thread, and its called a paypal dispute. And before you actually pay anything they will tell you specs.

[pizza]

technically it won't be a mil+, it all depends on how much you can do yourself, still the most expensive parts are going to be to get the chips made, and your not gonna get under the prices MRB linked for that. But yes a combination of knowledge, capital and preorders should get you pretty close on getting on created. And you might need a little extra capital, but by that time your around in the bitcoin forums and irc long enough, to have some buddies who can loan you some. And yes while FPGA's are a good stepping stone to ASIC's they are not the same, and an ASIC will always overpower an FPGA. (depending on what they are designed to do ofc)

I mean if you can get fpga chips cheap enough it can rival ASICs.