-

[Frankthechicken]

Excellent!  The incoming equipment sounds great.  The new rigs look cool.

I'm really excited to see how the new partnership progresses.

[M31]

Lab_Rat is a total math geek... I wanna see some of that powerful IQ in the form of projections (luckily he's also a spreadsheet geek - oh, and no Lab_Rat, that doesn't make you weird as nothing can be weird around this place).

Hit me with the BTC forecast LR!  The this-Thursday-through-Christmas would do it

Nice job dude...

[mufa23]

I just jizzed my pants. Having a nerdgasm over here...

WOOHOOO!!!!

[MrTeal]

Out of curiosity, who designed your PCB? I've never seen an aluminum core used for an edge connector like that without a backside and having gold fingers. I'd like to ask if they used any kind of surface treatment on it to prevent oxidization on the aluminum.

Great news for everyone invested here. I'm generally down on mining bonds and mining companies in general, but L_R has done a great job at maintaining the value in the company.

[M31]

Nice big copper fills on the front!  Are those chips in series to drop 12V down to 0.8V?

[bobfranklin]

Nice work LR!

Have any tentatives been thrown around as to when we could see this TH addition? (Q1/Q2 etc would be ok).

I'm assuming we take a percentage of the CoinSeed mining outfit as well or are we colo with that in the hopes of building a larger mine in general?

[tar_meneldur]

Nice work LR!

So Say We All:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3EzRAgjo_s

[MaxwellsDemon]

Thanks LR for your hard work and many successes in this ultra-competitive field!


Nevertheless, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a minute and cool the optimism around this announcement.

First, LR has announced a coming BitFury deal for 100-200 TH/s well over a month ago, in mid-December, so this isn't really news.
There are only two aspects to this which are new: the new boards and the collaboration with CoinSeed.
As for the former, the new boards may be somewhat better but I wouldn't call this a game-changer.
As for the latter, I'm still not sure how much we have to gain from economies of scale by working with CoinSeed. What percentage of the planned CoinSeed mine will belong to LRM? If it's a large percentage, than we gain little from economies of scale by collaborating. If it's small, than it might be in our best interest to compete with CoinSeed, by using LR's existing relationship with Dave to try and obtain as much gear as possible before CoinSeed comes online (which would probably be a gradual process). Just hypothesizing...

So, the only question that really matters about this BitFury deal is when will the gear arrive and start hashing. This question has yet to be answered, even though the deal has been tentatively announced over a month ago. Since the difficulty is still rising at a double-exponential rate, and will probably continue doing so in the near future, we are not-too-many-months away from the point at which 156 TH/s will yield just about the same dividends that we're getting now.


By the way, is this what LR meant by "ASIC project"? Or is that a separate thing? Because putting the same 55nm BitFury chips on a new board doesn't fit my definition of an "ASIC project"... Are we going to be involved in making our own chips?

[Jolest]

As Maxwellsdemon asked...  When will this substantial increase start hashing for us?   

[||bit]

Thanks LR for your hard work and many successes in this ultra-competitive field!


Nevertheless, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a minute and cool the optimism around this announcement.

First, LR has announced a coming BitFury deal for 100-200 TH/s well over a month ago, in mid-December, so this isn't really news.
There are only two aspects to this which are new: the new boards and the collaboration with CoinSeed.
As for the former, the new boards may be somewhat better but I wouldn't call this a game-changer.
As for the latter, I'm still not sure how much we have to gain from economies of scale by working with CoinSeed. What percentage of the planned CoinSeed mine will belong to LRM? If it's a large percentage, than we gain little from economies of scale by collaborating. If it's small, than it might be in our best interest to compete with CoinSeed, by using LR's existing relationship with Dave to try and obtain as much gear as possible before CoinSeed comes online (which would probably be a gradual process). Just hypothesizing...

So, the only question that really matters about this BitFury deal is when will the gear arrive and start hashing. This question has yet to be answered, even though the deal has been tentatively announced over a month ago. Since the difficulty is still rising at a double-exponential rate, and will probably continue doing so in the near future, we are not-too-many-months away from the point at which 156 TH/s will yield just about the same dividends that we're getting now.


By the way, is this what LR meant by "ASIC project"? Or is that a separate thing? Because putting the same 55nm BitFury chips on a new board doesn't fit my definition of an "ASIC project"... Are we going to be involved in making our own chips?

+1

sounds good, but more info and clarification is needed

BTW: I do not think those are BitFury chips - at least not the original one. They have BioInfoBank stamped on them, and they are hashing at apparently 10GH/chip. However, they certainly look like BitFury chips. If they are BitFury, as the news article suggested, then does this really count as a new ASIC project with LRM partnering in it's development?

[karol]

Why there is picostocs 100th name on this board? You bought it from them? Picostcs is secuirity as well avaliable on the market and working for some time

[M31]

Thanks LR for your hard work and many successes in this ultra-competitive field!


Nevertheless, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a minute and cool the optimism around this announcement.

First, LR has announced a coming BitFury deal for 100-200 TH/s well over a month ago, in mid-December, so this isn't really news.
There are only two aspects to this which are new: the new boards and the collaboration with CoinSeed.
As for the former, the new boards may be somewhat better but I wouldn't call this a game-changer.
As for the latter, I'm still not sure how much we have to gain from economies of scale by working with CoinSeed. What percentage of the planned CoinSeed mine will belong to LRM? If it's a large percentage, than we gain little from economies of scale by collaborating. If it's small, than it might be in our best interest to compete with CoinSeed, by using LR's existing relationship with Dave to try and obtain as much gear as possible before CoinSeed comes online (which would probably be a gradual process). Just hypothesizing...

So, the only question that really matters about this BitFury deal is when will the gear arrive and start hashing. This question has yet to be answered, even though the deal has been tentatively announced over a month ago. Since the difficulty is still rising at a double-exponential rate, and will probably continue doing so in the near future, we are not-too-many-months away from the point at which 156 TH/s will yield just about the same dividends that we're getting now.


By the way, is this what LR meant by "ASIC project"? Or is that a separate thing? Because putting the same 55nm BitFury chips on a new board doesn't fit my definition of an "ASIC project"... Are we going to be involved in making our own chips?

+1

sounds good, but more info and clarification is needed

BTW: I do not think those are BitFury chips - at least not the original one. They have BioInfoBank stamped on them, and they are hashing at apparently 10GH/chip. However, they certainly look like BitFury chips. If they are BitFury, as the news article suggested, then does this really count as a new ASIC project with LRM partnering in it's development?

Maybe it's the original chip?  720 of them to an M-board.  That means just over 2GH/s/chip which is about what the BF chip does.  If they are the original chip, then I think I read somewhere that the chips do about 0.8W/GH/s, which would mean this rig can do around 1150W, call it 1200W, in minimal configuration at about 1440GH/s (yes, straight from my arse).

I've also read that these chips can do up to 2.7GH/s, but have no idea about efficiency at that level.  I'm not sure, but if the clock in the chip is voltage sensitive, an increase in voltage would increase the clock speed, but also increase the I²R losses (which would go up with both current and clock for a double whammy) and greatly increase the heat that needs to be dissipated - but since heat transfer rate is proportional to heat difference (why the r9 290x can run at furnace temp) there may be a sweet spot, even with a passive cooler.  It will certainly be interesting to see how fast the chips can be pushed -- my guess is LR will get them up to 1.7TH/s, maybe over 1.8TH/s with some active cooling.

Either way, exciting times... and this chip design could undoubtedly be ported to a smaller process node, which I wouldn't be surprised to find out will happen this year!  All speculation...

Now we just need BFL to deliver the 25TH/s and get our 156TH/s deal installed, and...  happy days.

[Mindsync Miner]

What a bunch of Debbie Downers!

Nice news Lab Rat and great wins for your peeps.

There are plenty of unanswered questions and concerns but this is the kind of announcement that indicates the continuing growth of LRM and the huge effort you've put into this project.

I for one am happy to wait and see how things play out.
If you can throw us a bone here and there that's bonus.

Many Wow.

[VinceSamios]

Estimated 2250mh/s per bond.... with the monarchs, and these bitfury little beasts - epic cheap power is also epic. bulllllllllish!

[||bit]

What a bunch of Debbie Downers!

Nice news Lab Rat and great wins for your peeps.

There are plenty of unanswered questions and concerns but this is the kind of announcement that indicates the continuing growth of LRM and the huge effort you've put into this project.

I for one am happy to wait and see how things play out.
If you can throw us a bone here and there that's bonus.

Many Wow.

I think you might have considered me as one of the Debbie Downers. Being notably negative is not my intention, but to ask serious questions as an interested party (in this case already w/ built-up expectations). But if I was or even seemed unappreciative, I apologize and was wrong. So, I deleted the post that might have come off that way. And to be clear on a related note, I appreciate all the hard work Zach (LabRat) does for LRM. And even if LRM were to ultimately fail, I would appreciate his work and think no less of him at all. He's human and will at least have tried - c'est la vie - and I've had my share of failures.

The news is good, yet I still have some questions. I'll defer some to later and hope LabRat gives more details in the next day or two. Especially looking for:

(1) Distinguishing whether this is the new ASIC chip project he was referring to or not.
(2) How the hardware price/performance will compared to Cointerra 28nm... if it's manufactured for private use, that will be a huge plus.
(3) Whether this hardware will be available exclusively to CoinSeed & LRM...or be sold retail to any miners.
(4) What kind of benefit LRM will have - e.g. will LRM be able to acquire hardware at near cost?
(5) And whether Kauffman of CoinSeed has any vested interest in LRM as a bond holder. Hopefully he does.

[VinceSamios]

JAN/FEB (50+TH estimated): The Monarchs should be coming in sometime in January or February in the range of 25TH which will double LRMs hashrate!!!

FEB/MAR (150-250TH estimated): Bitfury equipment should start shipping out by the end of February which will be a minimum of 100TH, but with the sale of more bonds it could very easily push past 200TH in addition to the 50TH in hand already. There are some coins laying around that I'm looking to put into this deal, so the bitcoin price rising would help us out a little bit as well.

[bobfranklin]

JAN/FEB (50+TH estimated): The Monarchs should be coming in sometime in January or February in the range of 25TH which will double LRMs hashrate!!!

FEB/MAR (150-250TH estimated): Bitfury equipment should start shipping out by the end of February which will be a minimum of 100TH, but with the sale of more bonds it could very easily push past 200TH in addition to the 50TH in hand already. There are some coins laying around that I'm looking to put into this deal, so the bitcoin price rising would help us out a little bit as well.

Isnt this also under the "2 week" premise now? (I hear march bandied about a bit for the shipping schedule)

As for the negative nancy/doubting debbie stuff I wasn't intending on being one of them either but agree with ||bit's queries. There's still some clarity/definition missing on certain points which it seems a few of us would like cleared up.

That said it's obvious we all applaud Zach's efforts, or else we would have sold out long ago.

- DiggeR

[hamburgerhelper]

I will be the first to admit that I'm one of the Debbie Downers. CoinTerra is days away from shipping 2TH boxes and I'm supposed to be excited about a delivery of 1.5TH rigs with no date attached?

And until LR makes it clear what stake LRM bondholders have in the CoinSeed deal, I'm not going to pat him on the back for that either. Just because I can personally imagine a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow doesn't make it real.

I'd more than happy to jump up and down and shout hooray when the situation warrants it, but not before then.

And none of this should be taken as a personal knock against Zach. He's obviously been working hard for LRM non-stop for months now. And I appreciate that a great deal.

Its just this matter of the remaining 87% of my investment which I am hoping to see again someday...

[sparky999]

Unfortunately until we get any more details it looks a lot like this is a great deal for zach and an ok deal for shareholders. At the moment all we know for sure is our CEO just got a job at a new company.

Please fill in the blanks lab-rat

[||bit]

I'd like to propose using a term to specifically identify & communicate how well LRM is performing: "PAR HASHRATE"
Simply put, it's the initial guaranteed hashrate times the difficulty change (as a multiple) since initial bond issuance. This can be done per bond, or for LRM as a whole.

Example using current figures:

Initial [expected] hashrate: 100MH per bond
Initial difficulty: 31,256,961
Current Difficulty: 2,193,847,870
Difficulty Change Mutiple: x 70.187

From this we calculate that the current par bond hashrate is: 100MH/bond x 70.187 = 7018.7 MH/bond  (or ~7GH/bond).

How does this compare to current actual performance?
Current actual hashrate: ~(25,000GH x 0.75)/60,000bonds; or about 312.5 MH per bond
That means LRM is operating at (312.5/7018.7) x 100% = 4.4% of par!

With approximately ~60,000 bonds, LRM's total hashrate should be approximately (60,000 bonds * 7GH/bond)/0.75 = 560 TH

So, as you can see, this is simple math, but it speaks volumes. The network has been absolutely crushing bond holders, and LRM as a whole. And it explains why bond price is not recovering. I'd like to see some commensurate numbers in the other direction. 156TH soon would be a nice start to a recovery.

NOTE: One caveat to keep in mind is that the par value would lag a bit due to lag in new hardware development & shipping delays. For example, it took two months to come to 100MH/bond from initial bond issue. And some initial hardware purchases are still not received (e.g. the BFL Monarchs). Among maybe a few bugs or so that have hopefully been ironed out. That said, 95.6% below par still seems pretty concerning.