Butterfly Labs Announces Bulk Chip Sales

[k9quaint]

So... I haven't been paying attention.

Are all the engines equivalent performance, and if so... what is the performance per engine?

2 chips per Jalapeno
~28 engines for 5000 MH/s, if we assume each engine produces 1 hash per clock then the engines are running at ~180Mhz and doing 180Mh/s

Imagine how much it stung to go from 1 chip  @ $40-60 apiece to 2 chips per Jalapeno. That probably blew up their margins on all of their $179 era pre-orders.

Heatsink + fan: $15
PCB: $20
Case, cable, and power brick: $15
2 chips: $100

Estimate COGS of Jalapeno is $150. Those are some slim margins @ $179 retail.

I think you are prob a little bit off here. With BFL offering the $100 upgrade from 5-7 gh/s for Jalapeño I am assuming that what that 'upgrade' consists of is that they use Class A chips instead of class C/D. This gives them a little better margins if they can use 13-15 engine binned chips for the 5 gh/s jalapeños.

Still not impressive margins, OR of course they may have MASSIVE margins on the bulk chip sales. Hard to know.

Yes, the upgrade was just chip binning and some firmware to run them at a different clock speed. The $100 is so they stay afloat while processing the pre-orders.

One can look up how much a square MM costs in an MPW production run. It ballparks them around $40-60 a chip which fits with their announced prices.
It also explains why so much time was spent tinkering with the chip & boards trying to get 5GH/s out of just 1 chip. They couldn't just slap in 2 chips per jalapeno and ship them without wrecking their margins @ $179. Since they promised 5GH/s, they would get lynched if they tried to deliver only 3GH/s for $179.

[SebastianJu]

So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

[hl5460]

BFL is always behind Yifu!

[PuertoLibre]

BFL is always behind Yifu!

You are wise beyond all men!

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I'm selling the blades.

[TheSwede75]

So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when I am considering converting my orders to chips because I trust yet unnamed DIY builders to deliver working miners before a multi million dollar company that has had 12 months to get a product out.

 

[PuertoLibre]

So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when I am considering converting my orders to ships because I trust yet unnamed DIY builders to deliver working miners before a multi million dollar company that has had 12 months to get a product out.

 

It makes you wonder what is wrong with the general design that it needs that many revisions. Lets hope they will provide technical support for those that take the reins in the future.

[pikeadz]

So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when I am considering converting my orders to chips because I trust yet unnamed DIY builders to deliver working miners before a multi million dollar company that has had 12 months to get a product out.

 

This is the irony of it all.  The grass isn't always greener elsewhere.  There is power in numbers.  With hundreds/thousands of pissed off customers, BFL was forced to actually DO something (however bad they are at it).  Divide all that business among 100 or so fly-by-night operations that have little to no experience in mining and assembling hardware, and the opportunity is ripe for scamming.  A company with only 100 customers as opposed to 60,000 has far less to fear in the way of legal challenges.  I think people are going to be disappointed in these chip sales, both on the BFL and Avalon side.  Not everyone, but enough to make the scams go wild.  

[SebastianJu]

So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

I don't think that's right.  Isn't $97 for 16 engines about 29.7 mh/sec per dollar (180mh/sec is per engine not per chip).
Whereas the avalon chip gets 2.3 mh/sec per dollar,
and the ASICminer USB device gets 1.3 mh/sec per dollar.
I realize the 100 day shipping date and BFL history are problematic but the price seems cheap to me or is my math wrong?

I took the number from this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=222983.msg2344464#msg2344464
Im not sure if the numbers are correct or not.

[dwdoc]

So... I haven't been paying attention.

Are all the engines equivalent performance, and if so... what is the performance per engine?

2 chips per Jalapeno
~28 engines for 5000 MH/s, if we assume each engine produces 1 hash per clock then the engines are running at ~180Mhz and doing 180Mh/s

Imagine how much it stung to go from 1 chip  @ $40-60 apiece to 2 chips per Jalapeno. That probably blew up their margins on all of their $179 era pre-orders.

Heatsink + fan: $15
PCB: $20
Case, cable, and power brick: $15
2 chips: $100

Estimate COGS of Jalapeno is $150. Those are some slim margins @ $179 retail.

Forget how little they are making on the Jalapenos.
At $50 per chip (if that's correct) the 1.5 TH/sec mini rig will cost them $26,000 in chips alone to manufacture!

[saveawedge]

This really feels like a sinking ship.

approximately 100 days

...and more wild speculation. If anyone truly believes they would have the ships in their hand after 100 days then they are delusional. BFL are just trying to buy their time - and they are failing miserably. If BFL were a person, they would be a manic depressive crack-head.

[cryptograd]

WTF!

what a piece of shit person/company

how are you going to announce chip sales when you havent even delivered 1% of your ridiculous 6,000+ order queue 8 MONTHS AFTER TAKING PEOPLES MONEY!

BFL is the the biggest disgrace to bitcoin, they are taking the entire mining community for a bunch of fools, and frankly dont give a flying fuck about the bitcoin community or the network. TRUE AMERICAN SLIME

[Bitcoinorama]

Forget how little they are making on the Jalapenos.
At $50 per chip (if that's correct) the 1.5 TH/sec mini rig will cost them $26,000 in chips alone to manufacture!

Dude ASICs cost between $0.5 - $2 each to manufacture dependant on volume of chips and intricacy of mask layers.

[CanaryInTheMine]

Chip delivery schedule is approximately 100 days through end packaging once your order is placed.

~100 days + 2 weeks, right?

Yes, it's always in the next 2 weeks.

[cryptograd]

Yifu Guo of Avalon skeptical of Butterfly Labs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVx26LlNXA

[Bitcoinorama]

Yifu Guo of Avalon skeptical of Butterfly Labs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVx26LlNXA

It's Luke Jr. In the background.

[Exoskeleton]

So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

Yes there is something wrong there. As soon as I saw this chip sales I did the math on it.

$89 per chip x 10k chips is $890,000 -10% for $801,000. When Avalon sold chips in april (when most of us bought chips) it was about $80,000 for 10k chips. So you get about 10x the number of chips from Avalon as you do from BFL.

This is important to note because 10x the speed of an Avalon chip is 2.8Gh and thats just under what a BFL chip can do. Its about more than just delivery times and speed. Avalon pcbs are hard enough for us to sort out. Trust me, Im working on it and its not easy.

Just imagine how hard it will be to get the BFL pcb straight and working perfect compared to the Avalon pcb we are still sorting out. Not only that but the cost and time to assemble these boards vs Avalon pcbs could make it even worse. You end up with a BFL unit that costs way more in time and money to finish. If you ever get your chips that is.

[dwdoc]

So... I haven't been paying attention.

Are all the engines equivalent performance, and if so... what is the performance per engine?

2 chips per Jalapeno
~28 engines for 5000 MH/s, if we assume each engine produces 1 hash per clock then the engines are running at ~180Mhz and doing 180Mh/s

Imagine how much it stung to go from 1 chip  @ $40-60 apiece to 2 chips per Jalapeno. That probably blew up their margins on all of their $179 era pre-orders.

Heatsink + fan: $15
PCB: $20
Case, cable, and power brick: $15
2 chips: $100

Estimate COGS of Jalapeno is $150. Those are some slim margins @ $179 retail.

Forget how little they are making on the Jalapenos.
At $50 per chip (if that's correct) the 1.5 TH/sec mini rig will cost them $26,000 in chips alone to manufacture!

Dude ASICs cost between $0.5 - $2 each to manufacture dependant on volume of chips and intricacy of mask layers.

$1 to $2 is probably the correct marginal cost per chip. I was just quoting the guy (see above) who said the cost to produce chips for the Jalapeno was $40-$60/chip.

[Bitcoinorama]

Just imagine how hard it will be to get the BFL pcb straight and working perfect compared to the Avalon pcb we are still sorting out. Not only that but the cost and time to assemble these boards vs Avalon pcbs could make it even worse. You end up with a BFL unit that costs way more in time and money to finish. If you ever get your chips that is.

So absolutely nothing's changed then?

[erk]

They probably don't need to sell chips, no doubt they have been badgered to death about the Avalon chip sales.

It's good to see two chip sources on the horizon, even if neither have actually shipped any batches of them yet.