[ANN] labcoin ASIC - v.1 @130nm/300Mhz -16 cores chip - European / Chinese Team

[labcoin]

Curious how you get 500mh/s per chip? are you using liquid cool? What was the watts consumption per chip?

To reply to your technical questions :

Just some optimizations on the HDL by our engineers, no cooling as there's no actual chip yet. Only simulations and post-simulation verifications that were successful with a 500mhz clock.
Power estimations are about 2~2.5W per GH but they will definitely be optimized.

[auto2nr1]

I think the main concern is deploying a massive amount of hashing power as fast as possible. The question now is how much money does Labcoin need in order to fund the order of 100,000 chips? How about going bigger and ordering more chips? In order to compete with competition now and future competition how much of the network would Labcoin want to capture once the hardware is deployed. Please share your thoughts and the direction you want to take. More hardware sales or more mining? Or a balance of both? I think you need to set up some kind of foundation and we can build on top of that. Hope this helps. Thanks.

[labcoin]

I think the main concern is deploying a massive amount of hashing power as fast as possible. The question now is how much money does Labcoin need in order to fund the order of 100,000 chips?

We will get exact numbers directly from TSMC Shenzhen office, hopefully tomorrow or the day after. This is an important question definitely.

[dan99]

I think the main concern is deploying a massive amount of hashing power as fast as possible. The question now is how much money does Labcoin need in order to fund the order of 100,000 chips?

We will get exact numbers directly from TSMC Shenzhen office, hopefully tomorrow or the day after. This is an important question definitely.

The chip fabrication itself is not expensive, maybe the more you fabricate the cheaper they will give you.

[auto2nr1]

I think the main concern is deploying a massive amount of hashing power as fast as possible. The question now is how much money does Labcoin need in order to fund the order of 100,000 chips?

We will get exact numbers directly from TSMC Shenzhen office, hopefully tomorrow or the day after. This is an important question definitely.

Also if an IPO was to happen how much % of the shares would Labcoin's management keep vs the % of shares to be sold? How much has Labcoin invested until now? I think a good place to start would be to put value to the operation and disclose how much capital has been invested by you and your team. I hope to hear back from you in detail.

[superduh]

well, first you should fully verify yourselves.. credentials of some sort, names etc to build TRUST.
then you figure out how much money you need for optimal funding, risk.
then you figure the rest out

[labcoin]

I think the main concern is deploying a massive amount of hashing power as fast as possible. The question now is how much money does Labcoin need in order to fund the order of 100,000 chips?

We will get exact numbers directly from TSMC Shenzhen office, hopefully tomorrow or the day after. This is an important question definitely.

Also if an IPO was to happen how much % of the shares would Labcoin's management keep vs the % of shares to be sold? How much has Labcoin invested until now? I think a good place to start would be to put value to the operation and disclose how much capital has been invested by you and your team. I hope to hear back from you in detail.

We will disclose those figures in detail as soon as we get all the costs of the operation panned out.
 

well, first you should fully verify yourselves.. credentials of some sort, names etc to build TRUST.
then you figure out how much money you need for optimal funding, risk.
then you figure the rest out

We are still waiting for a final quotation from the fab, in order to evaluate the real possibility of going for an IPO.
Every other logical step will follow. By the way, you will find our certificate of incorporation somewhere in this thread if you want to take a peak at it.
Risk, definitely is also a factor to consider in the equation, and we're not ignoring it.

[auto2nr1]

That sounds great. As start as you get things together and find out more detailed information please let us know. When do you think you will be able to present us with a plan?

[labcoin]

That sounds great. As start as you get things together and find out more detailed information please let us know. When do you think you will be able to present us with a plan?

We should get a reply from TSMC within 12 hours, otherwise we will contact them by phone, or worst case our Chinese team leader will reach out to their sales offices in Shenzhen. 
A plan is expected to be sorted out within 24 hours, but it will still need some refinements probably.

[labcoin]

From a technical perspective we do not have any updates at the moment. The Chinese team is running more verifications on the 65nm/ 500Mhz/ 2~2.5WxGH design, all these computations take hours or standard workstations.

[carlotech]

Interested.

[klee]

Do both. Private IPO and accept pre-orders, offering escrow until a prototype is available.

This! I want to minimize risk as possible so more options is always the best

[TheSwede75]

Do both. Private IPO and accept pre-orders, offering escrow until a prototype is available.

This! I want to minimize risk as possible so more options is always the best

Escrow is a horrible idea for larger sums. Far better to just do an IPO at btct.co where IPO funds are in automatic escrow until trading time. No one wants to put $100,000s of dollars in escrow at 2%

This is the whole point of an IPO. Share holder bear the risk and provide capital.

I myself think that a IPO to cover additional chip orders (depending on price/gh) and fund Gen 2 development, in conjunction with sales of the first Gen mining rigs (with dividend from sales going towards share holders) is prob the strongest option.

In my opinion, ASICMINER has a brilliant approach to mining and hardware sales and there is no shame in copying is approach. Thou I think personally that ASICMINER has gotten quite overvalued at current market price.

[labcoin]

Today we have a very important update, the Chinese team is simulating a lot of design simultaneously and worked almost non-stop for the last 48 hours  targeting different process sizes.

The results are more than positive, i will try to outline them in the clearest way possible.

1) The 65nm 500Mhz is still undergoing post-verification phase, while another simulation is ongoing at 600Mhz and we're waiting for the results.

2)  Post simulations yielded positive results on a 130nm, 300Mhz, Power 0.8W, 6.5x6.5mm design.
    
     The team is working on HDL optimizations to get 16 cores for chip.

     Some math, quoted from the tech team

    "300M*16=4.8G, 0.8*16=12.8W, Area=130,0000*16=2080,0000, make the utilization ratio to 50%, the chip size will be about 4160,0000um2, about 6.5mm x 6.5mm"

     "Power consumption per GHash is 12.8W/4.8G=2.7W/GHash"

      "Estimated selling price for chip, 8-9 USD"

What does this mean ? i think it's not hard to get.  130nm process and 5GH speed at slightly higher power consumption, but competitive prices.

Shoot any question guys

Sam
Labcoin team

[dan99]

Now you prefer 130nm? since it is cheaper to produce?  "Power consumption per GHash is 12.8W/4.8G=2.7W/GHash" compares to 65nm at 500mh/s at 2.5W?

[labcoin]

Further elaborating, there's a TSMC Shuttle for 130nm on 5 August.

NRE costs for a full-mask at 130nm are affordable enough to be crowfunded, and the cost of full wafers are affordable as well. This is probably ASICMINER secret.

Chip output would be of about 1500 chips for each full wafer.

Estimate delivery of the already packaged chips would be around mid September.

[labcoin]

Now you prefer 130nm? since it is cheaper to produce?  "Power consumption per GHash is 12.8W/4.8G=2.7W/GHash" compares to 65nm at 500mh/s at 2.5W?

We have multiple designs under test/simulation obviously to maximise the ability of obtaining results. 65nm results are not competitive with what we reached at 130nm.
NRE costs at 65nm are very high for a full-mask set, and since we're going for mass production, 130nm is not only cheaper, with 16 cores chip this is absolutely the way to proceed at the moment.
65nm chip is currently undergoing more simulations and verifications but it will definitely come shortly after this batch.

[cchan]

Any updates on IPO or order open?

[tinoki]

would this add up to more power consumptions, a 5w difference per chip is negligible, however if you have a 1000 chip or even a few hundred chip the power bill will shoots up? 1000 chip x 5w = 5000w

[labcoin]

Any updates on IPO or order open?

We are evaluating different possibilities in this regard. News should be flowing soon.