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 UsBTCMAN (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 UsID: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 Exhibitiona) Project Milestonei. 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 introductionSMIC 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 IdeaInitially we have the following two possible modes. The final decision will depend on several factors like the feedbacks from BTC world, the exchange rate of BTC in JUNE…etc.
Mode A: we spend our own money in creating the first 100T, DIY everything without any requests from public: imagine everything go successfully, we shall be able to mine new blocks with 100T hashrate after that , we will then launch a bitcoin-stock for IPO, the stock can trade freely on our site later. Also, all of shareholders will get lifelong dividends every several weeks, which means that no matter how much more new hashrate be added by us, shareholders will get corresponding share dividends with 100% profit. (I.E., we will allocate all profit without any retained earnings in every term.)
Mode B: we simply sell out our hashrate to public, with a price around 1000-1200 BTC/T/first year(50G as minimum unit, there will be around 100-200T for sale.)We will get in charge with everything. All buyers will get their income weekly. Within this mode, we probably open a two-months-long period for people to buy and pay , then close it up after that time/sold out. Mode B will be acceptable only if we can sell out at least 40T.
In terms of the mining method, we will prefer solo to any pools because of the instability of them. (The point that pools can help preventing deceptive practices is inexplicable, transparency can never be guaranteed by this )
(BTW: Most likely,we will also try single mining hardwares like BFL`s products or avalon`s chips in next generation)
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.