Buying Bitmain or Bitfury ASIC chips directly

[alh]

I reached out to Bitfury recently.  They quoted 8.15 U.S. a chip and minimum buy of 2 million dollars. not realistic for the hobby engineer.....

An interesting question: Over what time frame would BitFury supply your roughly 245,000 chips if you were to cut them a check for $2M USD? I can understand why you wouldn't have pursued it, but I would think that 245K chips would be a pretty good sized run at a Fab facility, no? I also wonder what level of testing/screening has been done for those parts? I am hardly an ASIC guy, but I have seen the results of poorly screened processors, before the processor vendor has figured out what has to be screened for. Does the recipient of the parts have to speed sort (aka "bin") them?

Maybe NotFuzzy would care to speculate on this (keeping his flame on "low")?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

I reached out to Bitfury recently.  They quoted 8.15 U.S. a chip and minimum buy of 2 million dollars. not realistic for the hobby engineer.....

An interesting question: Over what time frame would BitFury supply your roughly 245,000 chips if you were to cut them a check for $2M USD? I can understand why you wouldn't have pursued it, but I would think that 245K chips would be a pretty good sized run at a Fab facility, no? I also wonder what level of testing/screening has been done for those parts? I am hardly an ASIC guy, but I have seen the results of poorly screened processors, before the processor vendor has figured out what has to be screened for. Does the recipient of the parts have to speed sort (aka "bin") them?

Maybe NotFuzzy would care to speculate on this (keeping his flame on "low")?

How many chips per-wafer mainly depends on 2 things: The wafer size and the die size. A decent write up on this is found at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics) I would hazard that TSMC and Samsung are both using 11 or 12 inch (300mm) wafers. What die sizes that Bitemain, Canaan and, BitFury use so far is a secret... Possibly 2x2 or 4x4mm?

As for spec testing for performance binning, safe bet BitFury will only guarantee a minimum range of speed/Vcore that 'work's' along with quote-unquote Average performance expected from any given lot of chips. Given that even the Avalon chips constantly tweak their speeds when running I doubt any single narrow range of specs can be given. The 14/16nm node seems still just too unpredictable, at least for hot-running miner chips.

[Mahmoodtava]

Hi all
It seems bitmain sell bm1387 chips
About 7 $ for 10k pieces
As mentioned above if any body wants to buy i am in

[bsp]

Hi all
It seems bitmain sell bm1387 chips
About 7 $ for 10k pieces
As mentioned above if any body wants to buy i am in

Where did you hear that?
Link?

[sidehack]

That's certainly interesting.

[cableiso]

A 12" wafer gives you about 65kmm2 after accounting for edge die and defects.  My die size estimate is 8mm2, or about 8500 dpw.  A standard lot is 25w, or roughly 215K units.

This would suggest that bitfury is probably selling one wafer lot for $2M, and suggests my estimates are conservative or their yield is optimistic.   Their price is quite ridiculous as the wafer cost is probably $5K/w, although that is my own guess as I don't work in that node and don't know the latest prices.

My guess is that they throw this number out to weed out punters and fish for suckers.  

[Mahmoodtava]

Hi all
It seems bitmain sell bm1387 chips
About 7 $ for 10k pieces
As mentioned above if any body wants to buy i am in

Where did you hear that?
Link?

Some seller in china and indonesia sell this chip about 7 to 9 $
I think it is expensive and big problem is NO DATASHEET
What do u think about this?
With no data sheet it seems very dificault to do

https://ibb.co/mVCoAR
https://ibb.co/ewpJAR

[cableiso]

Ali is a notorious liars den, but who knows.  Just like the sales page here, let's see if any who claim to hold the chip can produce a photo of the goods. 

[Mahmoodtava]

https://m.alibaba.com/product/60722789277/BM1387-ASIC-Chip-Bitcoin-Miner-Chip.html?spm=a2706.7843667.1998817009.1.3x97EL#show_specifications

This is the link

[cableiso]

Sure, lots of suppliers claim to have access, but if you press the story is that they will try to get the chip if you prepay for 10K units using wire transfer.  Tread carefully, ali does not have protection like aliexpress.

I have a quantity of s9 that were purchased around $1385 and $1425 USD.  I could disassemble them and get several thousand chips at roughly $7/unit. But that's not a good deal, of course. 

Let's see if anything pans out.  Has anyone RE'd the s9 to the point that the comms format is known?

[sidehack]

I would bet it's not much different from previous generations. We used the BM1385's datasheet's comm specs to write a BM1384 driver which previously had been adapted from BM1382 code. Seems likely they wouldn't start over from scratch when four generations have already proven it works.

I might have torn into an S9 by now if they hadn't stayed balls expensive for the last year.

[cerberusmining]

I reached out to Bitfury recently.  They quoted 8.15 U.S. a chip and minimum buy of 2 million dollars. not realistic for the hobby engineer.....

An interesting question: Over what time frame would BitFury supply your roughly 245,000 chips if you were to cut them a check for $2M USD? I can understand why you wouldn't have pursued it, but I would think that 245K chips would be a pretty good sized run at a Fab facility, no? I also wonder what level of testing/screening has been done for those parts? I am hardly an ASIC guy, but I have seen the results of poorly screened processors, before the processor vendor has figured out what has to be screened for. Does the recipient of the parts have to speed sort (aka "bin") them?

Maybe NotFuzzy would care to speculate on this (keeping his flame on "low")?

I've recently reached out myself (12/20) and can corroborate this. I was quoted "We can offer our 75GH/s chips at USD8.15 per chip, with a minimum order value of USD2M."

Also offered was an Integrator Pack:

"The integrator pack consists of 1 full B8 server, 100 chips and 15 control chips. Price for the integrator pack is USD7500."

I asked further questions regarding delivery, pickup, and timelines:

"Due to current market demand it can take up to 6/7 months"

"The integrator pack can usually be delivered within 25 days"

"Delivery time on the B8 at the moment can be up to 6/7 months"

"All products are sold ex works, so will require pick up. The integrator pack will need to be picked up in Amsterdam, the subsequent chip order in korea"

To purchase any of this, it all needs to be a part of the $2M order, which is a bummer since now that BitMain raised the price of their miners in the last batch the $/TH is in their(BitFury's) favor.

[cableiso]

Anyone have a sick or dead s9 board they would sacrifice for the reverse engineering gods?  There is some chance it would be brought back to life after pulling a few chips and tracing, but no promises.

[Isaac_]

If I understand correctly, with their integrator pack you can build your own?

$7500 for 7.5 th/s doesn't seem like such a bargain.

[cerberusmining]

I should have probably included this:

"The integrator pack consists of 1 full B8 server, 100 chips and 15 control chips."

I believe the B8 Included with the pack is ~50TH

A standalone B8 is $7000 is available as well but needs to be part of that $2M order.

So when you consider the price of an S9 (~14TH @ $2830) compared to a B8 (~50TH @$7000) you get ~$202/TH (s9) vs ~$140/TH (B8). Previous to BitMains price increase the S9 was at ~$107/TH. None of these numbers factor in shipping costs.

[Isaac_]

The specs are different for 100 chips specified hashrate above.

Perhaps their unit uses different chips? Have I done a mistake with hashrate?

edit - their B8 unit has almost 600 chips

[cerberusmining]

The specs are different for 100 chips specified hashrate above.

Perhaps their unit uses different chips? Have I done a mistake with hashrate?

The B8 itself houses 576 chips according to their specsheet.

The 100 chips included in the order are for prototyping purposes.

I asked them that same question since they advertise the chip differently on the site and got this as a response:

"The 75GH/s I stated is based on very conservative test results. In the right environment, the chips can run up to 100GH/s."

[Isaac_]

The specs are different for 100 chips specified hashrate above.

Perhaps their unit uses different chips? Have I done a mistake with hashrate?

The B8 itself houses 576 chips according to their specsheet.

The 100 chips included in the order are for prototyping purposes.

I asked them that same question since they advertise the chip differently on the site and got this as a response:

"The 75GH/s I stated is based on very conservative test results. In the right environment, the chips can run up to 100GH/s."

Thank you. Sorry for not doing any research first. Shame they don't sell directly for less than $2m, I would love their B8.

[bsp]

I was quoted $20k for integrator pack. Do you have hey just throw numbers around to see what sticks?

[cerberusmining]

When (time of year) did you ask for a quote?

The messaging was rather disjointed, but I'm still not sold that more than two people (BF side) were involved in the exchange. I watched an interview with a BitFury guy at some conference from Oct 2017 where he said the price for B8 units was 5200 and I was quoted $7k. Maybe they do it to see if you balk at the price tag or ask more questions?