Buying Bitmain or Bitfury ASIC chips directly

[x8664amd]

Does anyone know how to buy bitmain or bitfury chips directly? I am thinking about doing a group-buy of custom rigs. The Bitmain wait is absolutely insane.

What do people think about this idea?

[VRobb]

Been tried, didn't work then, probably won't now unless you gots mega$$ and inside contacts!

[wavelengthsf]

Does anyone know how to buy bitmain or bitfury chips directly? I am thinking about doing a group-buy of custom rigs. The Bitmain wait is absolutely insane.

What do people think about this idea?

I believe Bitfury's minimum order size is $1m. Bitmain doesn't sell their naked chips - even if they did, since there is wait for their units, why would they sell a key component so someone can beat them to market?

[fanatic26]

Considering it would take months to build prototypes with the naked chips and all sorts of other things it makes no sense whatsoever since bitmains shipping time is normally under 60 days from the time of order.

Why instead of having a modicum of patience are you wanting to tank your entire business with some poorly thought out scheme to build your own stuff?

[x8664amd]

Been tried, didn't work then, probably won't now unless you gots mega$$ and inside contacts!

Hmm  I guess the circuitry isn't that complicated when I looked at my Antminer S9. Why does it take mega bucks $$ to do this?

[c-none]

Only Bitfury sells chips along that companies. Minimum order is $500k and $7 per chip.
They were talking about sample orders but since last year there's no update yet. I think it's better to go their HQ and check.

You will have 71.4xx chips in total each can be o/c'ed upto 185 GH/s.

Not a bad idea, this is what I am thinking since a few months but I don't have that much capital yet.

[hakokur]

Been tried, didn't work then, probably won't now unless you gots mega$$ and inside contacts!

Hmm  I guess the circuitry isn't that complicated when I looked at my Antminer S9. Why does it take mega bucks $$ to do this?

Because ASIC chips are not cheap, that's it. Once I've contacted a manufacturer and they said don't write us if you don't have 4M dollars

[floppydisk]

Only Bitfury sells chips along that companies. Minimum order is $500k and $7 per chip.
They were talking about sample orders but since last year there's no update yet. I think it's better to go their HQ and check.

You will have 71.4xx chips in total each can be o/c'ed upto 185 GH/s.

Not a bad idea, this is what I am thinking since a few months but I don't have that much capital yet.

If it's possible to get the chip, then is there anyone who can complete the puzzle to get the chip as working hardware ?

[impulse110]

maybe we can crowdfund our own fab.

[coinrecs]

From what I understand you can't buy the Bitmain chips direct.  You'd need to order miners with BCH and break them out.  I suppose there is a chance if the order is big enough, but considering demand far outweighs supply I wouldn't expect a deviation without paying a sizable premium.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

maybe we can crowdfund our own fab.

Would make for a record-breaking GoFundMe....
Objective: Build stete-of-the-art IC fab for producing 16/14nm node Crypto coin mining ASIC's
Target to be Raised: $4,000,000,000
Time-frame for building fab after raising capital: 4 years.

Do you have ANY idea what it takes to produce integrated circuits?

[sidehack]

He probably meant design and have produced a batch of chips, not build a factory from scratch.

Leastways I hope that's what he meant.

All would change is knocking off a couple zeroes from the campaign - still pretty unattainable.

[x8664amd]

Been tried, didn't work then, probably won't now unless you gots mega$$ and inside contacts!

Hmm  I guess the circuitry isn't that complicated when I looked at my Antminer S9. Why does it take mega bucks $$ to do this?

Because ASIC chips are not cheap, that's it. Once I've contacted a manufacturer and they said don't write us if you don't have 4M dollars

I am seriously thinking about doing a group-buy of chips and making our own boxes. I'm seriously sick of being held at the neck by BITMAIN.

Who's interested? I think we should be able to group together $4mm (in a pseudo serious tone) 

[Serg_777]

Hello. We here in Russia also want to work on new machines, Bitfury B8, 5200 usd but minimum order 2 mln usd, now I put the machine on the boards, Bitfury with Georgia and Iceland on old 28 nm chips and consumes 6.5 KW of electricity, but you can disperse 20 to 28 Th, they fails there change to a new 16 nm. But how to buy nobody sells that sold me the grey party is not clear how and where brought. Maybe someone knows where to get and then I have a lot of energy of 1 MW to 4 rubles, and if to do with gas 1.26 ruble

[cableiso]

I got the same reply from BF, $2M min order.

I have the ability and the contacts to produce the PCB and the machine, but the budget is far beyond my disposable cash.

Anyone who is serious, get in touch.  I'm wondering if we can get 50 units of the BF chip from some other buyer to debug the design.  Once that's done, there is much less risk is going to mass production.

As for starting a fab, no that's not possible.  I have been designing IC's for 15 years, that is not feasible.  Better to buy a used fab from a company going fabless.  BTW that's also not feasible, but way better than trying to build one.

[floppydisk]

If this continues, I doubt they will grow (as fast as competitor) except keep luring deep pocket customer to acquire their customized mining chips/system.

For 2 mill $, chip of similar efficiency than those in S9, with chances of design failure to get it working as a system  / not working at all versus S9 which is already in existing market, well known (good & not so good experiences). It's bleak future for those chips.

Technology must be accessible by means of cost and availability. If it's too expansive, very less exposure to it's technology, least likely it would grow.

[helen_davis87]

He probably meant design and have produced a batch of chips, not build a factory from scratch.

Leastways I hope that's what he meant.

All would change is knocking off a couple zeroes from the campaign - still pretty unattainable.

Even though it's a very expensive process to build a batch of chips, since creating masks require cleanrooms for starters...
It's not feasable for a startup company, so why bother

[bsp]

Only Bitfury sells chips along that companies. Minimum order is $500k and $7 per chip.
They were talking about sample orders but since last year there's no update yet. I think it's better to go their HQ and check.

You will have 71.4xx chips in total each can be o/c'ed upto 185 GH/s.

Not a bad idea, this is what I am thinking since a few months but I don't have that much capital yet.

BF says $7/chip and $2M order.
I have connections to make a buy like this. BF salesguy said: "I've forwarded your info to my colleague and he will be in touch shortly".
It has been 3 weeks since then...
Hmmm
Maybe BF is not very keen on selling their 16nm chips?

[BoardDesigner]

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.....

[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.....

Even *if* does one get hold of chips you then still have to write a driver for them. It is not just a matter of talking to them via I2C or SPI. You need to format the data and establish the work protocols the chips use.

Ever since the s7 Bitmain has stopped providing any of that information. If you do manage to get chips from BitFury only then will they provide the needed resources to write a driver.