[BitCentury] Metabank 120Gh 65nm Pre-Order Proxy [CLOSED]

[dwdoc]

Thanks for the clarification. 

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[digitalmagus]

Hi guys,
We've had some further communications with Metabank, and below is what we can share. Note: any references to "we", means 'Metabank'

(paraphrased...)

- Metabank has received the chips as expected
- Metabank is ready to begin production process starting with prototypes. (This would in theory confirm they have finished their board design)
    - A close to final prototype is being tested this week
    - Assuming all goes well, very small batches of first gen boards will be produced soon there after (expect this to take 1-2 weeks).
    - We will do extensive testing on these and only after produce large quantities
    - While we are on schedule right now, our manufacturers are warning of possible delays
     (They have hinted at this before in their last forum post under the username "metabank.ru" re: shoutout needing help with access to electronic components: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=14120;sa=showPosts)
    - With this, we are currently targeting September for delivery date to customers.

Cheers,
Luis

[stripykitteh]

Thanks Luis. It looks as though we will soon be at the stage where there will be more to report and updates will be more frequent, which is welcome.

[digitalmagus]

Hi guys,

It seems we may have another, but this time *unofficial* update, in the sense we didn't get the below info directly from Metabank ourselves, so it is at least second if not third hand information, but just thought I'd share it regardless.

A guy by the name of Mu3aHTP0n here on bitcointalk has posted the following today in regards to Metabank devices...
Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg2890286#msg2890286

Hoвocти:
a) 5 плaт гoтoвo (пpoтpaвкa), pacпaяны кoмплeктyющиe, идeт oптимизaция coфтa, пoкa 2,9 гx c чипa.
б) пocлe пpoвepки плaт зa ceгoдня-выxoдныe линия дoпeчaтывaeт ocтaвшиecя тыcячи плaт, pacпaивaeтcя тo чтo пaяeтcя нe вpyчнyю (этo cл. нeдeля).
в) кopпyca нe кacтoмныe, из тoгo чтo ecть в нaличии y интeгpaтopoв.
г) дoлгo изoщpятьcя, чтoбы из 2,9 cдeлaть 3 нe нaмepeны - бyдeт oбъяcнeнo кaкиe пapaмeтpы кpyтить в coфтe для дocтижeния кaкoгo эффeктa (вoт этим cчac и зaняты, плюc пpoвepкa пpoбныx 5 плaт). Bce пoнимaют чтo лyчшe paньшe oтдaть 2,9, чeм нa 2 нeдeли пoзжe 3.

Oффтoп: ктo cилeн, мoжeт ecть вepcии?

This supposedly translates to something like:

1) 5 boards are hashing, software is being optimized, it's 2.9GH per chip now.
2) After testing of the boards, the rest thousands of boards will be printed until the next week. Components will be soldered the week after that.
3) Cases are not custom and are selected from available ones.
4) They're not going to optimize them further from 2.9 to 3 GH/chip. Software tuning instructions will be provided. Everyone understands that 2.9GH now is better than 3GH in 2 weeks.

So, this still looks like last week of August / 1st week of Sept for them to *start* making units available for shipping/pickup. I will remind you guys right now that:
a) Metabank sold at least many hundreds of units (the above post makes reference to thousands). Perhaps they can get them all assembled within a week, but if it is really in the thousands, this is definitely questionable.
b) Metabank did not provide us with an order # for each of our units. The order# we provided you guys with is directly from us, so we could track which of our customers ordered first etc, but of course all of this also depends on when Metabank gives us their units.

Cheers,
Luis

[stripykitteh]

Yeah, I've also been running google translate over everything that guy has been saying; he seems to know a lot and other posters in the thread pay a lot of respect to his reports.

It would be good to get an official update, of course.

I'm probably wrong but I thought I saw a reference somewhere to having 5 boards with 8 chips each and a single backplane per device. I can't find it now though. Anyway, if it is right they would be printing 5 pcbs per device, so the number of boards could be in the thousands even if the number of units is in the hundreds. Speculation on my part.

[digitalmagus]

Hi guys,
Right after my previous post yesterday, I thought I'd get my Russian contact to make another call to confirm the info and also ask a pile of other questions. I had 13 questions lined up (see below) for him to ask, again we get barely any answers out of them. At this point, I'm a bit disappointed, because while before they had a good excuse not being able to answer them because the design wasn't finished and/or they hadn't confirmed a fully functioning prototype, supposedly (and I haven't been able to confirm this first hand), they now do, and as such, most of the technical questions should be answerable. I can try another call middle to end of next week and maybe by then the info will have trickled down to the front line staff answering the phones.

So we will definitely keep trying by making periodic calls on our end, but I think at this point if anybody can get answers out of them by whatever means (and I mean in a nice way of course ;-), I think it'd be good to have others also try by whatever network contacts you have to ask questions and share your answers.  With this in mind, we will also try some alternate ways than just phone calls , and I will let you know in the next few days if and what info I was able to get.

Just so we're not all spamming the same people at the same time. Later today and over the weekend, I will try the following people (so please wait a few days yourself before you call/email/pm these same people, unless you are good friends or have been able to communicate with them before).

a) timur (via email), the head of the Metabank operation, we have his email address, but maybe 1 out of 6 times the guy replies back
b) "metabank.ru" user in this forum
c) bitfury
d) Mu3aHTP0n user in this forum who claims to have a direct contact with Timur, who is the head guy running the Metabank operation.
e) The 65nm Russian thread that Mu3aHTP0n participates in.
f) punin/tytus - although they are not involved directly with the metabank operation, I believe the Metabank chips were supplied by them and they speak Russian. I'd rather not bug these guys too much, as I know first hand that they have lots going on with their own operation, but will make at least 1 attempt.

Here's the little info I was able to get from our Metabank call yesterday... I will quote verbatim from my Russian contact's phone call the info he emailed me this morning....

- He (guy answering phones at Metabank) confirmed that the devices should be ready in the beginning of September.
- He didn't give me a definite address, just told me to call him again in the end of this month, when everything will be settled.
- Technical/packing questions he couldn't answer. I believe I was talking to the same sales non-tech-savvy guy. He said I can find those on forums (really? where?)
- I told him it'd be nice for us to know the location et al ahead of time, as we have to make various arrangements ahead of time. He said he can't provide more info at this time.
- He confirmed that the devices should be ready in a month, I asked if September 15 is a safe bet to arrange our trip, he said "well, let's better say 20-ish"

The questions I had lined up....

1. We heard you guys have 5 boards hashing and chip hashing is at 2.9GH/s, can you please confirm this?
2. Will you be providing a case? What kind of case will the units have?
3. What is the current best case scenario ETA for when customers can go pickup the units from you? (Should be last week of August or 1st week of Sept, if longer than that ask why)
4. The units we will be picking up, are they going to be inside cardboard boxes that can be shipped long distance (i.e. will they have enough Styrofoam/sturdy box that can survive shipping?)
5. Can you please give me the exact address where I can go pickup the units from you?
6. Will there be a power supply capable of 110/220v?2
7. What is the targeted Watt power draw of the entire unit?
8. Will there be a box provided for the product that can be shipped internationally?
9. Will your device be CE, UL and RoHS certified?
10. Which software will come with your board? (i.e. cgminer?)
11. Which communication method(s) will the board have:  Wifi, USB or Ethernet ?
12.  How many chips will each unit have and what kind of cooling will be used on each chip because at 2.9GH the chips will be well above 80 degrees Celsius.
13. What are the dimensions and weight of each unit? Will it be a single board or a multi-board (i.e. avalon / H & M like c-scape setup)


Thanks in advance for any additional info people can provide.
Cheers,
Luis

[digitalmagus]

....I'm probably wrong but I thought I saw a reference somewhere to having 5 boards with 8 chips each and a single backplane per device. I can't find it now though. Anyway, if it is right they would be printing 5 pcbs per device, so the number of boards could be in the thousands even if the number of units is in the hundreds. Speculation on my part.

Hi stripykitteh,
Thanks for this, if true, then it would mean that the previous design image we posted from bitfury may not have been a final design, or maybe they have multiple designs going on. I really wish the info was easier to attain. Let's see what we can figure out, hopefully very soon they will be more forthcoming with updates/info so we're not all left guessing.

Cheers,
Luis

[fpgaminer]

He confirmed that the devices should be ready in a month, I asked if September 15 is a safe bet to arrange our trip, he said "well, let's better say 20-ish

Well that's disappointing.  Looks like the c-scape based boards will ship before Metabank's design ... and those are U.S. local and were bought much later. 

On the other hand, we paid less, so it's not all bad.  I'll keep dreaming and hope Metabank can deliver early September.

Thank you for keeping us up-to-date, digitalmagus!

[digitalmagus]

Hi fpgaminer,
Well, assuming the "Mu3aHTP0n" guy really has direct access to Timur, and assuming the Russian text translation above isn't too mangled, I'd almost trust his info more than the front line guy answering phones at Metabank who can't seem to answer a single technical question (yet). So at this point we have 1 guy saying end of august/1st week of Sept, and another guy saying 3rd week of Sept.

As for c-scape boards. Yes the bare boards are ready and already at generation 3, which is pretty amazing actually. However, none are available until October now for US delivery as per MegaBigPower: https://megabigpower.com/shop/, although I think he sold a few (dozen?) August units, and probably likewise for the EU distributers (puinin/tytus) over at: http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/shop/.

As far as I understand only initial investors like Metabank, punin/tytus and Dave of 100TH got July chips in any substancial volume, anybody else who wanted Bitfury July chips had to buy them at the very expensive price of $308,000 USD / 3,000 chips.  I have a feeling they didn't sell too many of those reels if any at all, but maybe somebody did buy 1 or 2? I have no idea.  More than likely people bought 3,000 chip reels in volume for the October delivery @ $60,000 USD, but this would mean no high volume chips hitting network until very late October or more realistically, some time in November from Bitfury perspective.  This of course, excluding the 100TH project. I haven't kept a close eye on Dave's thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.0) , but I believe earlier this week he mentioned that his units are in the process of being assembled, which means at least part of his 100TH by end of this month being up and running is not out of the question.
Luis

He confirmed that the devices should be ready in a month, I asked if September 15 is a safe bet to arrange our trip, he said "well, let's better say 20-ish

Well that's disappointing.  Looks like the c-scape based boards will ship before Metabank's design ... and those are U.S. local and were bought much later.  

On the other hand, we paid less, so it's not all bad.  I'll keep dreaming and hope Metabank can deliver early September.

Thank you for keeping us up-to-date, digitalmagus!

[Foofighter]

First proto pics here`?

https://metabank.ru/asic

[dani]

Anymore infos on those pictures in another thread? Those seem a lot of hardware errors, also ~1,9% rejected. anyone can tell what the "SHORT test 6s" parameters tell? 1st half? 2nd half?

[fpgaminer]

Nice!  Thanks for the cross-post Foofighter.

[digitalmagus]

Hi guys,
My apologies for no posts in the past week. I was sick for several days and then inundated with backlog of work and other personal stuff. I will try to provide an update as soon as I am able to.
Thanks for your patience,
Luis

PS. Thanks foofighter for posting the prototype board pic.

[auto2nr1]

Hi guys,
My apologies for no posts in the past week. I was sick for several days and then inundated with backlog of work and other personal stuff. I will try to provide an update as soon as I am able to.
Thanks for your patience,
Luis

PS. Thanks foofighter for posting the prototype board pic.

Get well soon and hopefully you can give us a update on when we should start seeing the products ship. Thanks.

[Foofighter]

Hi guys,
My apologies for no posts in the past week. I was sick for several days and then inundated with backlog of work and other personal stuff. I will try to provide an update as soon as I am able to.
Thanks for your patience,
Luis

PS. Thanks foofighter for posting the prototype board pic.

Hey Luis,

pidobir mentioned something that shipping starts at 5 of september, can you check this info?

[dwdoc]

 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg2964113#msg2964113
 1. Cases will be made of plexiglass
 2. MetaBank will receive 1400 boards in 8 days.
 3  ATX PSU will be in the devices.
 4  Photos will be tomorrow.
 5  Devices will be testing  before shipment

[digitalmagus]

Thanks guys. I am fine now, but my cold knocked me down in bed for several days.

Here's the updates I have so far:

1 - Email to Metabank from several days ago still no reply back
2 - Email to Timur from several days ago, still no reply back
3 - My main Russian friend in Moscow is ready to deal with orders, but obviously there's none yet.
4 - I've spoke with Bitfury. He has some portion of his own purchased chips being handled by Metabank, that said he is not in daily contact with them, but obviously has contacts high up, likely Timur directly. He said that as far as he knows, Metabank is still on track for a late August / early Sept delivery.  Bitfury doesn't like to deal with customer relations as he'd rather spend his time heads down doing technical work. You may have noticed he hasn't made a bitcointalk post since late July. All he told me is that he is very busy "working".
5 - I've created a bitcointalk.org acct for my main Russian translator (not same guy as in Moscow). I will be asking him to start interacting in the 65nm Metabank threads later this week to ask our questions and get back to us here on generally what is going on. I'll also try to get him to talk to Mu3aHTP0n.  This as opposed to me doing it in transliterated Russian and likely being the target of jokes/insults - as already goes on there daily.
6 - My goal for this week is to start my Russian Visa application form. I am *potentially* targeting a trip for around 1st or 2nd week of Sept, but this depends on various factors including: a) Getting holidays approved from work (this should not be a problem) b) Getting a visa timely approved (Russian Embassy in Canada states one can be obtain in as little as 3 business days {excluding processing time by visa agent companies that deal with embassy} for rushed requests, but no idea on approval rates ) c) Metabank actually announcing delivery/pickup dates or customers showing they actually received working units d) Booking an available flight.

While I fully trust my main Moscow friend  as well as his more technical work associate, given the size of our orders and to ensure everything goes as smooth as possible we (bitcentury) have decided that if I am able to go to Moscow to oversee the delivery operation, that I should go. Again, I offer no guarantees on this part at this point, but am working towards this. If in the meantime Metabank delivers earlier, I still have my friend in Moscow ready to start working on our orders.

I'll keep posting more details as we get them. In the mean time, keep an eye in the usual places (65nm Metabank thread,  and bitcointalk users: Mu3aHTP0n, Bitfury, Metabank.ru) and by all means, please keep sharing info on here and asking questions.

Cheers,
-Luis

[digitalmagus]

Hey Luis,
pidobir mentioned something that shipping starts at 5 of september, can you check this info?

Hi foofighter.

pidobir (his posts: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=50909;sa=showPosts), is in a similar position to us, in that he is also waiting for orders from Metabank although on a smaller scale. My understanding is that he ran a group buy operation. In his posts he has claimed several times to have been in contact with Metabank. Obviously, I can't vouch for the statements he makes as I don't know him, but given Metabank's lack of public information announcements it doesn't hurt to keep an eye on another guy who claims to have info. When we make another call, I will try to get confirmation on dates.

Luis

[fpgaminer]

Thank you for the update!

[dani]

Thanks for the update guys, I don't know how many outside russia ordered via metabank, but finding information is very hard, the russian thread is full of shit, insults etc. So any updates given are appreciated a lot - keep it up!