HashFast announces specs for new ASIC: 400GH/s

[CanaryInTheMine]

Are you saying that you have a 400 GH/s chip?

[1714180480]

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[MWNinja]

I read through the Perseus whitepaper.  Uniquify is the real deal and if they say chips in October, they mean chips in October.
400GH is huge, but I bet they will probably need to be under clocked to be thermally stable.

[gateway]

Are you saying that you have a 400 GH/s chip?

If they do that would change the current paradigm of what's kicking ass and taking names in the mining industry 

[Nemo1024]

Looks like Moore's law kicks in I hope I'll just be able to ROI and then make a little bit of profit from my late-ordered KnC Saturn before it's time to move onto these guys.

A pro tip: don't take preorders, the community here is pretty much tired of the preorder game and wants back to the predictable time of over-the-counter purchase of hardware (like it was with GPUs). So, please, make a certain buffer of ready-to-hash devices before starting selling them, so that deliveries can be made next day after placing an order.

[shiunsai]

Looks like Moore's law kicks in I hope I'll just be able to ROI and them make a little bit of profit from my late-ordered KnC Saturn before it's time to move onto these guys.

A pro tip: don't take preorders, the community here is pretty much tired of the preorder game and wants back to the predictable time of over-the-counter purchase of hardware (like it was with GPUs). So, please, make a certain buffer of ready-to-hash devices before starting selling them, so that deliveries can be made next day after placing an order.

+1 on the tired of the preorder game.

[iANDROID]

Watching!

[superduh]

reserved

[solex]

At last! A company with a proven track record in this area getting involved. Interested...

[pgbit]

Looks like Moore's law kicks in I hope I'll just be able to ROI and them make a little bit of profit from my late-ordered KnC Saturn before it's time to move onto these guys.

A pro tip: don't take preorders, the community here is pretty much tired of the preorder game and wants back to the predictable time of over-the-counter purchase of hardware (like it was with GPUs). So, please, make a certain buffer of ready-to-hash devices before starting selling them, so that deliveries can be made next day after placing an order.

+1 on the tired of the preorder game.

no more preorders please

[Bitcoinorama]

Looks like Moore's law kicks in I hope I'll just be able to ROI and them make a little bit of profit from my late-ordered KnC Saturn before it's time to move onto these guys.

A pro tip: don't take preorders, the community here is pretty much tired of the preorder game and wants back to the predictable time of over-the-counter purchase of hardware (like it was with GPUs). So, please, make a certain buffer of ready-to-hash devices before starting selling them, so that deliveries can be made next day after placing an order.

+1 on the tired of the preorder game.

no more preorders please

Unfortunately pre-orders have been a necessary evil at this point in time. Non-recurring engineering costs are very large, especially at 28nm. The risks are compounded by the speed at which products can be created for the market that demands their use as soon as feasibly possible due to a finite window of opportunity by which they can realise a return on investment. It's one thing for you, and many other crowd sourced parties to risk your investment, as that risk is evenly distributed (within reason), but for one entity to bare the brunt of all the risk on a make or break endeavour is huge. Which is why venture capital is unlikely unless they get to use the technology for themselves, otherwise their return earned from a cut of the profit between covering NRE and manufacturing, Hashfast's own profit, and the retail price leaves their hands tied as to how effectively they can compete on price in the future. This is aside from whether such VC would be comfortable tolerating such risk, when there are far better and certain returns to be made on other endeavours when we talk of investment of several million dollars. It obviously requires less than that for 40nm+. In any case it's very unlikely Hashfast, or Uniquify will stomach such funding themselves. I don't know their personal circumstances, but such risk requires sharing, I'd imagine pre-orders are a prerequisite, then again they appear to have made some headway, and have afforded staffing already. In any case I don't believe this is a scam, Simon's clearly a smart guy and Uniquify are a legitimate ASIC design team, but everyone owes it to themselves and the companies they choose to support by accepting the role their investment makes in these circumstances, and acknowledge that they are sharing the risk in developing these products at this point in time...

[frankenmint]

Looks like Moore's law kicks in I hope I'll just be able to ROI and them make a little bit of profit from my late-ordered KnC Saturn before it's time to move onto these guys.

A pro tip: don't take preorders, the community here is pretty much tired of the preorder game and wants back to the predictable time of over-the-counter purchase of hardware (like it was with GPUs). So, please, make a certain buffer of ready-to-hash devices before starting selling them, so that deliveries can be made next day after placing an order.

+1 on the tired of the preorder game.

no more preorders please

Unfortunately pre-orders have been a necessary evil at this point in time. Non-recurring engineering costs are very large, especially at 28nm. The risks are compounded by the speed at which products can be created for the market that demands their use as soon as feasibly possible due to a finite window of opportunity by which they can realise a return on investment. It's one thing for you, and many other crowd sourced parties to risk your investment, as that risk is evenly distributed (within reason), but for one entity to bare the brunt of all the risk on a make or break endeavour is huge. Which is why venture capital is unlikely unless they get to use the technology for themselves, otherwise their return earned from a cut of the profit between covering NRE and manufacturing, Hashfast's own profit, and the retail price leaves their hands tied as to how effectively they can compete on price in the future. This is aside from whether such VC would be comfortable tolerating such risk, when there are far better and certain returns to be made on other endeavours when we talk of investment of several million dollars. It obviously requires less than that for 40nm+. In any case it's very unlikely Hashfast, or Uniquify will stomach such funding themselves. I don't know their personal circumstances, but such risk requires sharing, I'd imagine pre-orders are a prerequisite, then again they appear to have made some headway, and have afforded staffing already. In any case I don't believe this is a scam, Simon's clearly a smart guy and Uniquify are a legitimate ASIC design team, but everyone owes it to themselves and the companies they choose to support by accepting the role their investment makes in these circumstances, and acknowledge that they are sharing the risk in developing these products at this point in time...

You forgot to include why this NRE has not been absorbed by VC, crowdsourcing, or privateers - this type of business is still VERY new and has not shown proven consistent track records for the above mentioned mechanisms for securing capital.  The same question can be posed differently:  Why is it that no big box retailers or mfg such as Dell, Sony, Alienware, are doing their own first to market, heavily advertised, asics mining hardware?  I think it would help some of the above mentioned stagant companies - I'm sure some would agree with me, but the fact of the matter is that this industry is still in its infancy and there will likely be no "non preorder" machines until the market is oversaturated 

[DeaDTerra]

Hey guys!
I just wanted to pop in and say that I have been in contact with HashFast for the last couple of weeks and from what I can tell they are very professional and legit.
I vouch for them and their product!
I wish them all the best with launching the miner
Best Regards
//DeaDTerra

[Flashman]

Looks like Moore's law kicks in I hope I'll just be able to ROI and then make a little bit of profit from my late-ordered KnC Saturn before it's time to move onto these guys.

Yeah, really, a decent run of these would be 5 billion worth of difficulty by itself. (40PH or so)

Which would mean either they have to sell them for peanuts per gh to get any thinking person to buy them or the USD value of bitcoin has to be pumped by a factor of 10.

When you're staring 5+ billion difficulty in the face you'll have a hard time thinking even a couple of terahash is worth it, because a terahash will look like what a "Jalapeno" looked like last year.

[eve]

Looks like Moore's law kicks in I hope I'll just be able to ROI and them make a little bit of profit from my late-ordered KnC Saturn before it's time to move onto these guys.

A pro tip: don't take preorders, the community here is pretty much tired of the preorder game and wants back to the predictable time of over-the-counter purchase of hardware (like it was with GPUs). So, please, make a certain buffer of ready-to-hash devices before starting selling them, so that deliveries can be made next day after placing an order.

+1 on the tired of the preorder game.

no more preorders please

Yes we agreed No Pre Order and Don't Buy Pre Order !!

[sickpig]

Hey guys!
I just wanted to pop in and say that I have been in contact with HashFast for the last couple of weeks and from what I can tell they are very professional and legit.
I vouch for them and their product!
I wish them all the best with launching the miner
Best Regards
//DeaDTerra

I'm really glad to hear that! thanks for sharing!

pardon me if I'm too demanding, but which kind of contacts did you have with HashFast? 
(just don't respond to me if you think I should mind my own business )

[Flashman]

Pulling figures out of my arse, guessing that upfront costs might be in the neighbourhood of USD $2.5M, wafers cost 5000 each and you're lucky to get 50 huge chips out of a wafer....

If they make 50,000 and charge $500 per chip, with the 2.5M absorbed at $50 per chip, they make about 17.5M (~20PH)

If they make 100,000 and charge $300 per chip with the 2.5M absorbed at $25 per chip they make about 17.5M (~40PH)

If they make 25,000 and charge $1000 per chip it's 20M (~10PH)

I don't make any pretense of accuracy here, but think I'm spitballing in the right ballpark. Mainly this is for illustration.

The problem with making less chips is that nobody will quite believe that they are not going to make more in the future, so they will be nervous at spending 1000 per chip when they might end up competing with people who paid a third of that in a couple of short months... (AM schooled a lot of people with that methinks)

The problem with making more chips is total market saturation and the whole bitcoin world pissed off at you, because it's practically holding a gun to your head and saying "Buy our chip or give up mining" because it's gonna turn everything else into doorstops in short order.

[frankenmint]

Pulling figures out of my arse, guessing that upfront costs might be in the neighbourhood of USD $2.5M, wafers cost 5000 each and you're lucky to get 50 huge chips out of a wafer....

If they make 50,000 and charge $500 per chip, with the 2.5M absorbed at $50 per chip, they make about 17.5M (~20PH)

If they make 100,000 and charge $300 per chip with the 2.5M absorbed at $25 per chip they make about 17.5M (~40PH)

If they make 25,000 and charge $1000 per chip it's 20M (~10PH)

I don't make any pretense of accuracy here, but think I'm spitballing in the right ballpark. Mainly this is for illustration.

The problem with making less chips is that nobody will quite believe that they are not going to make more in the future, so they will be nervous at spending 1000 per chip when they might end up competing with people who paid a third of that in a couple of short months... (AM schooled a lot of people with that methinks)

The problem with making more chips is total market saturation and the whole bitcoin world pissed off at you, because it's practically holding a gun to your head and saying "Buy our chip or give up mining" because it's gonna turn everything else into doorstops in short order.

*seeing a world of 2500 dollar doorstops*  IDK that screams "viva revolution" to some.

[Flashman]

It's worse than the original ASIC shock though because in one long drawn out year, it's gone from 400MH GPUs to 4GH ASICs only a power of 10 away, to basically skip 40GH now and hit 400 in a couple of months is 2 orders of magnitude.... highly disruptive.

[jlsminingcorp]

Unfortunately pre-orders have been a necessary evil at this point in time. Non-recurring engineering costs are very large, especially at 28nm. The risks are compounded by the speed at which products can be created for the market that demands their use as soon as feasibly possible due to a finite window of opportunity by which they can realise a return on investment. It's one thing for you, and many other crowd sourced parties to risk your investment, as that risk is evenly distributed (within reason), but for one entity to bare the brunt of all the risk on a make or break endeavour is huge. Which is why venture capital is unlikely unless they get to use the technology for themselves, otherwise their return earned from a cut of the profit between covering NRE and manufacturing, Hashfast's own profit, and the retail price leaves their hands tied as to how effectively they can compete on price in the future. This is aside from whether such VC would be comfortable tolerating such risk, when there are far better and certain returns to be made on other endeavours when we talk of investment of several million dollars. It obviously requires less than that for 40nm+. In any case it's very unlikely Hashfast, or Uniquify will stomach such funding themselves. I don't know their personal circumstances, but such risk requires sharing, I'd imagine pre-orders are a prerequisite, then again they appear to have made some headway, and have afforded staffing already. In any case I don't believe this is a scam, Simon's clearly a smart guy and Uniquify are a legitimate ASIC design team, but everyone owes it to themselves and the companies they choose to support by accepting the role their investment makes in these circumstances, and acknowledge that they are sharing the risk in developing these products at this point in time...

Hi, I agree with what you're saying, but just playing devil's advocate for a minute, is a full pre-order (crowd-funded type) scheme really a "fair" share of risk in the BTC-ASIC world at the moment? If a company was to seek the majority (or all) of its NRE and manufacturing costs from investors in advance of having a product then the investors bear practically all of the risk. The company has the opportunity to realise a profit on their prodcut (which may not even exist) on the basis of its perceved worth at some point in the future. There is no particular incentive to make a product that is profitable for the consumer when it actually ships if the business model assumes that the majority of the profit for the manufacturer is made during the pre-order phase (depending on their refund policy of course). As we all know, it's hard to predict what will hapen in two weeks, let alone three months the way things are going at the moment. Is it worse for one VC individual/company that may be worth many millions to loose a couple of million on a high-risk high-return investment or for lots of average Joe's to loose $10000 (which may be a large chunk of their savings/credit card balance) if things don't work out as expected? I wouldn't have said that one was better than the other actually. In practice any loss is likely to affect your average Joe's life more than the VC, but that depends on the personal stakes of those behind the company etc.

Having said all of this, it seems as though some of the current wave of ASIC manufacturers are funding the chip design and initial fab themselves (e.g. bitfury, not sure about the others) and then taking pre-orders at the PCB manufacturing stage when they have demonstrated working hardware. This seems to fit in well with the notion of shared risk and "fairness". HashFast also seem to have invested in chip design and fab already (I think, based on what's been presented here) before taking orders (or pre-orders), which again would indicate a level of shared risk if they did decide to go down the pre-order route.

I guess that my point is that as a community we should be scrutinising each new offer carefully and if an offer involves a good balance of shared risk (as was your point) then this is a good thing and maybe a pre-order phase is fine/necessary. If an offer shifts all of the risk onto potential consumers then this is presumably a bad thing and should start alarm bells ringing imo. We all know of at least one example where a full pre-order (funding design, fab etc.) hasn't worked out well for consumers. Actually we have quite a lot of power to stop this happening again by not investing in schemes where the consumer bears all of the risk - regardless of how much gold is waved in front of our noses!

[jspielberg]

It's worse than the original ASIC shock though because in one long drawn out year, it's gone from 400MH GPUs to 4GH ASICs only a power of 10 away, to basically skip 40GH now and hit 400 in a couple of months is 2 orders of magnitude.... highly disruptive.

I guess Asic Miner has just been put on notice.  Their days of owning 1/3 of the network seem numbered.  1PH by the end of the year isn't going to seem like much unless they start buying 1/3 of all these new comers products (which doesn't seem like a viable business model).

Like the rest of us, waiting for details like pricing and availability.  Right now bit fury has October offerings for low power 400 GHs miners for 8000usd (80ish btc).  Hopefully these will be competitive on price and performance.