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Author Topic: [Group Buy] BFL ASICs, + Board Design Underway.  (Read 15334 times)
MrTeal (OP)
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June 02, 2013, 05:54:13 AM
Last edit: June 18, 2013, 06:52:36 AM by MrTeal
 #1

As many of you are aware, BFL has announced that they are going to begin bulk sales of their ICs. The Product Page has the description of the chip as well as the updated pricing ($75/chip).

Quote
Specifications:
    Technology: Global Foundries advanced 65nm technology (IBM core)
    Die size: 7.5 x 7.5 mm
    Substrate package: 10 x 10 mm
    Package type: Standard BGA 144
    Design type: 100% Hand routed for performance density
    Power consumption: 3.2 Watt per GH/s
    Performance: 4 GH/s
    Performance design: 16 engines @ 250mhz nominal (294mhz max)

Advantages of Butterfly Labs chips:
    1/2 the power usage per GH as the closest competitor
    1/10th the silicon area per GH as the closest competitor (Very high performance density)
    Proven design currently operating in the field and ready to go.
    Unlike some QFN packages which require underside heat sinks, you can use off the shelf heat sinks due to the FCBGA package. No need to design and manufacture heat sinks!

Terms of purchase:
    Delivery:  100 days
    Payment:  50% deposit on order and 50% upon delivery
    Cancellation:  All sales are final and deposits will not be returned if final payment is not made prior to delivery.
    Minimum purchase:  100 chips

 Considerations:
    Chip grades:  Chips come in four grades of performance.  Chips are sold in mixed grade lots.  A grade has 16 engines, B grade has 15 engines, C grade has 14 engines and D grade has no less than 12 engines.  All chips run at a minimum of 250 mhz.  Higher grade chips will run up to 294mhz.  The percentage distribution in each lot is 60% Grade A, 20% Grade B, 15% Grade C and 5% Grade D.
    Reference documentation:  Butterfly Labs is releasing it's PCB schematics & MCU code to open source.  Links to this documentation will follow shortly.
    Limited availability:  Chip availability is limited to 100,000 units.



Unfortunately, the minimum quantity while lower than Avalon is still higher than many people would want to put down on their own.
The basic idea will be similar to the Avalon group buys. I (or an escrow if it is demanded) will collect the initial 50% required and purchase the ASICs through BFL.
*Please note, BFL's products are priced in USD, not BTC. Thus if you want 100 chips now, you would have to put down 50% of the USD equivalent in BTC.

Group Buy Terms
  • Payment will be in Bitcoin
  • The chips are expected to be of the mix stated by BFL. It appears that the chips will not be binned prior to shipping by BFL, so it will be a lottery. Some chips in the batch will be tested at verify the batch is function prior to shipping them out, but QA for each chip to determine its grade is up to you.
  • Lead time is 100 days. This will be foundry and package dependent, while it shouldn't depend on BFL I don't guarantee it is accurate.
  • 50% of the chip cost will be due prior to the placement of the order. When the chips are ready and the final 50% is due to BFL, the remaining 50% will be due.
  • I am not responsible for taxes/duties on your end.

Cost, Coupon Codes and Escrow
    • Price for each chip will be $81, inclusive of tracked shipping. This will be fairly basic; if you want something extremely fast the extra cost will be on you but we can work that out.
    • If you have chip credit codes, those can be applied and will credited at full value as long as you purchase that number of chips. IE, if you transfer credit for 16 chips and purchase 16 chips you will pay $56*16=$896 for all of them. You can't purchase send a 16 chip code and expect to apply $400 in discounts to an order of 6 chips.
    • I have a limited number of codes available for people that are interested in the group buy. If you don't have codes I am willing to accept a limited number of chips at $65 per chip. This number is quite limited though, so this line will eventually disappear.
    • Escrow: At this point, I have more than enough people to do a large group buy I'm not willing to jump through too many hoops in order to set up an escrow. I have spoken with JohnK about doing an escrow and he's expressed willingness depending on the conditions. If you are uncomfortable with me, I am perfectly willing to allow you to escrow the funds through JohnK if you cover the cost of it.

    BFL has now provided the source code for the microcontroller, and a design document for the chip. They have also said they will release reference schematics in the future. My own design can really begin in earnest, and so I will actually open up this group buy to people.

    Timeline
    I will begin accepting orders and securing the deposit (either direct or through JohnK) starting right away. I plan to place the order on Friday June 21st, so all transactions will need to be done before then.
    Once this group buy is done, I may do another.

    Shipping Options
    At this time, you have 3 main options for shipping.
    • Shipment direct to you
    • Shipment to someone else to get assembled for you
    • You decide to go with our design and have the chips mounted onto PCBs, which then get shipped to you.
    Obviously there's be extra charges associated with the third option.

    If you're interested, post in the thread. For those of you that have already expressed interest, I'll be contacting you through PM. Feel free to ask any questions, I'll try to answer them and stick them into the FAQ.
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    MrTeal (OP)
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    June 02, 2013, 05:54:41 AM
    Last edit: June 16, 2013, 05:20:36 PM by MrTeal
     #2

    Reserved - FAQ and Other Information
    What country are you based in?
    We are based in the US and Canada.
    MrTeal (OP)
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    June 02, 2013, 05:55:01 AM
    Last edit: June 11, 2013, 02:52:47 PM by MrTeal
     #3

    DIY ASIC Design

    I have begun preliminary planning on a miner design using the BFL ASIC chips. While details are still being worked out and the concept is not entirely finalized (pending the release of documentation and code from BFL), some basic points of the first unit will be below.

    • 4 chips - nominally 15-16GH/s depending on grade
    • Dynamic clock and voltage control
    • USB control, 12V 6pin PCIe for power
    • Hole spacing designed to allow standard CPU coolers to cover the ASICs
    • Designed for high density
      • Each module will be designed to be run stand alone, or chained together
      • Module form factor will standardized to allow easy mounting in a 19" rack case
      • Preliminary size ~ 100mm x 150mm max

    This will probably be spun off into its own thread once it gets more developed and linked to from here, along with any other community designs.
    wrenchmonkey
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    June 02, 2013, 06:00:32 AM
     #4

    I'll be holding off until there's actually a real plan in place, including chip specs/reference design, and the chips are ACTUALLY for sale.

    If you ask me, you're putting the cart before the horse. They're not even officially selling the things yet.

    Block Erupter Overclocking 447 M/Hash, .006 (discounts if done in quantity) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300206.msg3218480#msg3218480

    Buy and sell mining shares (Bitfury). https://cex.io/r/1/wrenchmonkey/0/
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    June 02, 2013, 06:02:08 AM
     #5

    i LOLed at the TITLE.  Tongue

    Translation: "Let's put our money together and get scammed as one!"  Cheesy

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    Bicknellski
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    June 02, 2013, 06:14:27 AM
     #6

    Ignoring the OP and this thread. Silly to buy from BFL just silly

    Dogie trust abuse, spam, bullying, conspiracy posts & insults to forum members. Ask the mods or admins to move Dogie's spam or off topic stalking posts to the link above.
    ecliptic
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    June 02, 2013, 06:15:49 AM
     #7

    I will leave the question of escrow up to the buyers. I haven't talked to JohnK about it and he's expressed hesitation to escrow a BFL transaction.

    Can you clarify this?   This sounds pretty damn important.  JohnK would be the guy to go to for escrow, and he doesn't want to do it for anything involving BFL?
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    June 02, 2013, 06:21:10 AM
     #8

    I will leave the question of escrow up to the buyers. I haven't talked to JohnK about it and he's expressed hesitation to escrow a BFL transaction.

    Can you clarify this?   This sounds pretty damn important.  JohnK would be the guy to go to for escrow, and he doesn't want to do it for anything involving BFL?

    awgilyas
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    June 02, 2013, 06:21:54 AM
     #9

    TBH, I have more faith in Bitfury than BFL at this point.  Grin  Needs documentations for the chip, only then I might consider.

    1AwangATDktxLw8e6VaDijw9AMWz5wy8bx
    MrTeal (OP)
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    June 02, 2013, 06:39:12 AM
     #10

    The idea is to start the process and get interest in place early, so that there isn't and delays in organizing once move information is available.

    I'm not going to defend BFL, their track record speaks for itself.Thjs thread is for people who are interested in buying BFL asics, not people who want to debate whether they're a scam or not. I think their FCBGA package opens up interesting enough new board designs that I want to make a.few, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
    bystander
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    June 02, 2013, 06:41:16 AM
     #11

    i LOLed at the TITLE.  Tongue

    Translation: "Let's put our money together and get scammed as one!"  Cheesy


     Cheesy That's what I thought too.  Interesting typo here, "1/10th the silicon area per GH as the closest competitor"
    For a lot of folks, they would say it's about "0/10th the silicon area per GH."
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    June 02, 2013, 06:45:14 AM
     #12

    Just FYI, I'm still sceptical of whether I should escrow BFL chip group buys. :/ I would prefer that the chips were somewhat more confirmed before even starting this as given their track record, 100 days could easily turn into 1000 days... (and I'll need to hold the coins for god knows how long Shocked)

    Wise words.

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    June 02, 2013, 06:48:24 AM
     #13

    Just FYI, I'm still sceptical of whether I should escrow BFL chip group buys. :/ I would prefer that the chips were somewhat more confirmed before even starting this as given their track record, 100 days could easily turn into 1000 days... (and I'll need to hold the coins for god knows how long Shocked)

    Wise words.

    John stay far away. You don't need gray hairs at your age.

     Smiley

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    MrTeal (OP)
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    June 11, 2013, 02:54:11 PM
     #14

    Bumping this up now that BFL is live with chip sales.

    At this point, I am in for in the range of 30-50 chips.
    MrTeal (OP)
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    June 11, 2013, 02:59:01 PM
     #15

    Also, from talking to Josh it seems that now that they are shipping a limited number of Singles and close to volume shipment, Nasser will be working on prepping the documentation for the units. While some work is happening now, I really expect design work to take off soon once preliminary documentation gets out the door.
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    June 15, 2013, 02:32:14 AM
     #16

    Put me down for 32 chips.

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    June 15, 2013, 04:02:33 AM
     #17

    There is nothing in this thread about board design.
    MrTeal (OP)
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    June 15, 2013, 04:24:31 AM
     #18

    Put me down for 32 chips.
    Great, sounds good. I am currently awaiting some more information from BFL on their timelines, but hope to be able to place an order sometime in the next week.
    MrTeal (OP)
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    June 15, 2013, 04:29:26 AM
     #19

    There is nothing in this thread about board design.

    Third post. The design is being slowly worked on doing things like getting the overall purpose nailed down, building packages for the chips that will be needed, and getting some work done on the DC/DC. Unfortunately even a prototype won't be possible until BFL releases more information on their chips and design. At this point it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend a lot of time on work that might either be invalidated with more information, or just duplicated by the reference design released by BFL. Ideally we'll be able to get really serious about it next week if and when BFL starts releasing documentation.
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    June 15, 2013, 05:02:28 AM
     #20

    There is nothing in this thread about board design.
    ...if and when BFL starts releasing documentation.
    I read something about "2 weeks" for Docs and samples to Devs on another thread About BFL chips. 100% escrow or something. Who knows, but it'll be hard to convince people until they "put up"; if and then, the race will be on for Avalon 2.0
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