Eyes to the horizon: A bitcoin ASIC project will be announced in June

[aiwill]

A project of ASIC bitcoin mining is ongoing by our group, named btc-garden (www.btcgarden.com).  At the moment, we are at the stage of TAPE OUT.

We have started our project since Feb.2013.Also, according to our timetable, we will have around 100T hashrate online on this August or September as our best situation. The following paragraphs are written to give out a brief introduction of this item. A relative detailed version will be posted on this board & our website at the beginning of June, 2013. Any questions or advices are welcomed in this thread.

A brief introduction

1.   About Us
BTCMAN (WWW.BTCMAN.COM, portals & information site in Chinese,with 15k registered members by far) is a full time bitcoin-related team from china; we currently have a decent PV of our forum & the main site.
 

In terms of the project of BTC GARDEN, all of our core members were graduated from CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences), after graduation, some of them stayed there to do research works till now, while others make a living at Intel or Nvidia, I.e. we have both R&D Personnels from institute and practical engineers from mature industrial system. From a technical perspective, the difficulty of this project is really easier than many of our previous ASIC projects.
List of Us
ID：W.J, team leader, 8 years experience in system design.
ID：D.M , 3 years Intel experience in VLSI design( front-end and back-end ),5 years
Experience in system design and software design. In charge of ASIC design and software design.
ID: Xrange.G, 8 years Spreadtrum experience in VLSI design (front-end). In charge of RTL design, RTL verification.
ID: Kevin.S, 12 years HuaWei experience in VLSI design (front-end and back-end). In charge of FPGA verification, synthesis.
ID: Y.S, 4 years NIVIDA experience in VLSI design (back-end). In charge of physical design.

2.   Tech Exhibition
a)   Project Milestone
i.   March 15th: We also signed the confidential contract with the IC manufacture and got the library for synthesis and layout.
ii.   April 10th: Our RTL design, optimization and simulation were finished. We have some data to predict the specification of actual chips.
 

iii.   May 16th: layout Version 1 finished.
 
 

b)   ASIC brief introduction
SMIC 0.13um;
Core Voltage: 1.2V;
I/O: Voltage: 3.3V;
Core Frequencey: 400MH/s;( @vdd 1.25V);
Number of Pads; 64;
Package lqfp64;

3.   The Business Idea

see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=264696.0


4.   Q & A

Q:Do you guys have any relationship with ASICMINER or AVALON?

A: No, but we do have a similar background. We also had some contacts with them through either IM tools or in person, although some of their thoughts / behaviours are hardly accepted by us.

Q: how to guarantee the transparency ? I know that a 100% provable openness is impossible in BTC world,but what can you offer as your best?

A: A daily video will be upload every day to show out how much we have digged out. It will be better than pure pictures or photos which can easily be photoshoped. We may adopt a lot of methods like this to reduce the probability we do anything dirty.

Q: Is there a list to show out all the solutions of those possible accidents? For instance, chips broken within first year; unexpected huge hashrate influent our income so much;equipments in the machinery rooms get stolen; Website get hacked;how long time is needed for deploying the first 100T;how to define the”first year”, if there are some offline-days in the first year, is any kind of compensation/refund offered…etc.

A:As we metioned on the 3rd part, we still haven’t decided which mode to choose yet, if we finally prefer Mode B to A, then all kinds of questions may be posted on somewhere at our website and will be replied asap.



Again,any questions or advices are welcomed in this thread.

[papamoi]

hi

are you planning to sell your hardware directly?

what is the hashing speed of your chip?

you know that 130 nm is an outdated tech and asic from bfl or else are working on 65 nm?

let me know

thanks

[glendall]

Well this looks promising to me.

Good luck !  Will be following your announcements.

[bearsworth]

do you guys have a subscription or newsletter to get updates?

[wrenchmonkey]

hi

are you planning to sell your hardware directly?

what is the hashing speed of your chip?

you know that 130 nm is an outdated tech and asic from bfl or else are working on 65 nm?

let me know

thanks

RIF, dude, the question regarding sales and chip speed are answered quite clearly, if you take the time to read.

130nm isn't outdated until it's outdated. Others may be WORKING on 65 nm technology, but it is still in R&D. It's not available yet, and we don't even know how much progress is actually being made on that.

This thing sounds like it's near release, and if that's the case, the technology will still be current at launch. Who is to say they aren't already looking to the future for a smaller wafer size as well? Cross that bridge when they come to it. For now, there's still a HUGE demand for ASIC, and 110-130nm is still plenty acceptable, assuming they're able to get their equipment online/selling within the next few months. Hell, people are still buying GPUs and FPGAs, and there are people paying 2BTC for the ASIC Miner 300Mhash USB unit. Anything even REMOTELY competitive in price with that nonsense will sell like hotcakes.

They said details will be available in June. Sit tight and let's see what they actually have to show us.

[bennybong]

b)   ASIC brief introduction
SMIC 0.13um;
Core Voltage: 1.2V;
I/O: Voltage: 3.3V;
Core Frequencey: 400MH/s;( @vdd 1.25V);
Number of Pads; 64;
Package lqfp64;

[kaerf]

have you already arranged for the infrastructure to deploy your hash rate? the power and physical space needed for such a deployment is one of the biggest concerns for an effective rollout.

[auto2nr1]

This project looks promising. Would like to see the detailed version of your business plan at the beginning of June. This is exciting news. Please keep us updated.

[tigerfree]

can i ask how much the project cost you ?

[Bakemono]

What are the graphs in the OP about? 

[glendall]

Took a few moments of puzzlement and contemplation, but do believe for the graphs, PV is 'page views' . Not sure of the other metric. But the graphs show the amount of traffic their site is getting in the lovely China part of the world.

[yeemartin]

CHINESE ARE DOMINATING ASIC MINING!!!

[minternj]

So MODE B is just a hosted situation, meaning they don't ship you the unit correct?

[auto2nr1]

CHINESE ARE DOMINATING ASIC MINING!!!

 

This was bound to happen. Cheap labor and production cost in China + Bitcoin is a perfect storm.

[cedivad]

Cool. How do I short AM?

[tempestb]

I think everyone is using the same chips from the same supplier in China.  They all appear to have like performance and the same 130nm architecture.  That can't be coincidence.  100t is a lot of boards and a LOT of power to get up and running.

That said, my biggest problem with operations like this and Asicminer is that there is no escrow in the event their operation shuts down.  Your stock purchase instantly becomes worthless.  If they have a fire, theft, disaster, vandalism, hostile takeover, political motivation, whatever, the whole thing ends instantly.

So the ROI has to be worth it.  Buying a share to maybe see it pay for itself in a year's time isn't worth the risk of the company just vanishing before that happens.

[tom_o]

I think everyone is using the same chips from the same supplier in China.  They all appear to have like performance and the same 130nm architecture.  That can't be coincidence.  100t is a lot of boards and a LOT of power to get up and running.

Nope if you paid attention they are 64 pad chips at 400mhz that they seem to be designing themselves looking at the pics posted.

In a lqfp no less, ie something like this.


At last a seemingly properly professional development without daft amounts of pre-hype.

[tempestb]

Ok fair enough, my mistake.  I just don't understand why they would go with 130 considering power would play such an important role in their ROI.  That just lead me to believe they are using the same fab and the chips are easier to acquire.  I mean, if you're going to make your own, why 130?  Cheap? 

[thatbluedude]

1 vote for lifelong dividends.

   

[yeemartin]

Ok fair enough, my mistake.  I just don't understand why they would go with 130 considering power would play such an important role in their ROI.  That just lead me to believe they are using the same fab and the chips are easier to acquire.  I mean, if you're going to make your own, why 130?  Cheap? 

Cheaper, shorter time to manufacture, so there is way less risk than investing in 65nm technology. Also, electricity is not expensive in China.

With the money they can make from the 130nm, they can then migrate to more advance process.