HashFast announces specs for new ASIC: 400GH/s

[donch]

There's nothing moot about electricity prices, you either mine enough BTC to pay them or you don't.

Electricity cost for a KnC jupiter is ~$70/month. Over the useful lifetime of the machine, thats probably <10% of the overall cost.  
OTOH, being one month earlier it will yield about ~100% more bitcoins for a given hashrate.

A machine that is 2x more efficient will be able to run for ~ 1 month longer, but that extra month will yield you less than 1 BTC

I agree, timing of delivery is everything as the rewards on ASIC-mining are completely front-loaded. The tail end, where electricity usage comes into play, is more about how long you, as an individual, can continue to contribute to the distribution and safety of the mining network.

[1714006266]

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[Puppet]

I agree, timing of delivery is everything as the rewards on ASIC-mining are completely front-loaded. The tail end, where electricity usage comes into play, is more about how long you, as an individual, can continue to contribute to the distribution and safety of the mining network.

That tail end is also very important for the vendors. HF/CT/etc  may still be able to sell current design asics when D is on the order of 10 billion if they can hit low enough prices. Less efficient machines would have no market beyond "free" electricity customers.

[pmorici]

So why are people still buying miners if hashfast alone is going to double the network. I received a KNC Saturn last week (one of the first shipped) and I don't see myself breaking eventhough its pushing out 65 Gh/s more than was promised

Because most of the BitCoin mining calculators don't take into account all the factors that affect ROI and those that do don't have reasonable defaults for current conditions.

Just as an example the top result for the Google search, "bitcoin profit calculator" is bitcoinx's profitability calculator, http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ It takes into account most things you should consider except that it has the "Profitability decline per year" variable set to 0.61 when it should probably be more like 0.000008 given that the difficulty increases have been consistently in the neighborhood of 30% in recent months.

http://srkz.net/msc/difficultyprofitslider.html

[DeathAndTaxes]

The unsurprising snarky response from DPoS aside, are you sure about this?  Seems to me as if a certain ambiguity is being maintained on this and some other issues.

100% sure.  HF has said multiple times the MPP will be chips only.   Period.  It isn't ambiguous at all.

On the other hand, my post was actually about the upgrade kit, not the MPP. This thingamajig: http://hashfast.com/shop/baby-jet-upgrade-kit/

Sorry about that.  I read to quickly.  I would assume it will be pretty simple no more complex than installing a second GPU in a computer.  Upthread HF indicated it only requires a screwdriver.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There's nothing moot about electricity prices, you either mine enough BTC to pay them or you don't.

Electricity cost for a KnC jupiter is ~$70/month. Over the useful lifetime of the machine, thats probably <10% of the overall cost. 
OTOH, being one month earlier it will yield about ~100% more bitcoins for a given hashrate.

A machine that is 2x more efficient will be able to run for ~ 1 month longer, but that extra month will yield you less than 1 BTC

Or a thousand months longer. 

The network won't keep doubling forever.   At some point we will reach an equilibrium between energy consumption and mining reward.   For a machine which is twice as efficient to only remain profitable for 1 month longer would assume that difficulty doubles yet again.  However how would it double if their is no chance of a positive ROI% from day 1.

That being said no miner who currently has gear needs to be worried about energy cost.  Profit or loss will be sealed long before that becomes a factor. However hardware costs will continue to decline.   Imagine a future 6 board Sierra at $1 per GH/s.  2.4 TH/s at 1920W.   Hardware cost is ~$2,400.  Electrical consumption annually at $0.10 per kWh is $1681.  High efficiency (and low per kWh prices) can be the difference between a moderate profit and a crushing loss.

[Threader]

I am watching this one carefully as they will be assembled in my home town. I'm hoping for Fast factory delivery, no customs or customs delays and warranty & service is a short drive. As long as I can get a unit directly from the assembler and not have to first get it from the Hashfast USA headquarters this one is going to the top of my wishlist.

I

[donch]

That being said no miner who currently has gear needs to be worried about energy cost.  Profit or loss will be sealed long before that becomes a factor. However hardware costs will continue to decline.   Imagine a future 6 board Sierra at $1 per GH/s.  2.4 TH/s at 1920W.   Hardware cost is ~$2,400.  Electrical consumption annually at $0.10 per kWh is $1681.  High efficiency (and low per kWh prices) can be the difference between a moderate profit and a crushing loss.

The scenario you are describing here is when a commodotisation of ASIC-grade hardware has occurred, and the premium we are all paying for non-recurring engineering costs and first to market timing has evaporated. In other words, mass manufacture with low profit margin for the producers. When this point is reached, the potential of any miner having an advantage of any other miner will be tiny. The race to the bottom will have finished :-)

The more interesting long term issue worth solving is trying to enforce a worthwhile transaction fee. I'm surprised that so far no pool operator has decided to start filtering the memory transaction pool and only include transactions with fees above a certain threshold in their solved blocks. If I, as a miner in a pool, had a choice of mining blocks which only contained transaction fees then I would be happy because, in the long term, this would hopefully persuade Bitcoin users to start paying higher fees.

Miners are taking all of the risks and gambles, but aren't being rewarded greatly by the Bitcoin community for this work. Paypal et al take a fee to cover both their profit and also the risk of fraud. Isn't about time that we started to do the same!

Either that or sit and hope for Bitcoin exchange rates to go through the roof and reward our hoarding instinct :-)

[Paladin69]

There's nothing moot about electricity prices, you either mine enough BTC to pay them or you don't.

Electricity cost for a KnC jupiter is ~$70/month. Over the useful lifetime of the machine, thats probably <10% of the overall cost.  
OTOH, being one month earlier it will yield about ~100% more bitcoins for a given hashrate.

A machine that is 2x more efficient will be able to run for ~ 1 month longer, but that extra month will yield you less than 1 BTC

The network won't keep doubling forever.

You will be in trouble if you keep telling yourself that.  Hardware manufacturers won't stop producing equipment.  If there are no buyers, they will mine with it themselves.  CoinTerra has confirmed this much as their intention if you e-mail them.  Whatever they don't sell of the first run of 2PH they have said they will mine with it.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There's nothing moot about electricity prices, you either mine enough BTC to pay them or you don't.

Electricity cost for a KnC jupiter is ~$70/month. Over the useful lifetime of the machine, thats probably <10% of the overall cost.  
OTOH, being one month earlier it will yield about ~100% more bitcoins for a given hashrate.

A machine that is 2x more efficient will be able to run for ~ 1 month longer, but that extra month will yield you less than 1 BTC

The network won't keep doubling forever.

You will be in trouble if you keep telling yourself that.  There is no reason to believe they won't keep producing equipment.  If there are no buyers, they will mine with it themselves.  CoinTerra has confirmed this much as their intention if you e-mail them.  Whatever they don't sell of the first run of 2PH they will mine with it for themself.

They won't be mining at a loss.  I never said network won't keep growing or that hardware vendors won't produce more hardware pleae don't put words into my mouth.

However say difficulty is now 20 billion and even a miner with a KNC device an $0.10 per kWh is break even.  Anyone with higher electrical cost of less efficient device would be mining at a loss.

With constant price it is highly unlikely difficulty will double again in a month.  Doubling difficulty in a month would mean deploying 147 PH/s of new hardware.  Actually it would mean deploying even more than that because some older tech will go offline due to economic.   

Who would be deploying more hardware enough to double difficulty even with older less efficient tech going offline?   Someone who wants to mine at a loss from day 1?  This is different than someone buying a rig today understimating future difficulty growth.  We are talking about a scenario where for most miners buying on day 1 with anything worse than 1 J/GH means instantly suffering a loss.  Even if the hardware is free you would suffer a loss.  Who is going to convert $1 in electricity into $0.50 in BTC?

So I stand by the claim that the network won't keep doubling forever.  Please don't read into that statement.  It doesn't mean difficulty won't go much much higher, it doesn't mean those with high power costs should mine, it doesn't mean miners can't suffer a loss.  It simply means that difficulty won't keep doubling every month forever and thus saying a rig 2x as efficient as KNC will only be profitable for a month longer is incorrect.

Ultimately for a miners to be profitable LONG TERM in the ASIC world isn't much different than being profitable in the GPU world.  A miner needs:
a) a competitive price on hardware ($/GH or BTC/GH)
b) an efficient design (J/GH)
c) below average electrical costs ($ per kWh or BTC per kWh)

[Jutarul]

Even if the hardware is free you would suffer a loss.  Who is going to convert $1 in electricity into $0.50 in BTC?

It remains to be seen whether bitcoin mining will be captured by interest groups in order to govern bitcoin. Should such a scenario develop, mining at a loss should become the norm. This doesn't mean that the companies or the people who maintain the equipment make a loss - it means that there is a customer who is willing to pay more bitcoin for hashpower than what can be mined with it.

So I stand by the claim that the network won't keep doubling forever.  Please don't read into that statement.  It doesn't mean difficulty won't go much much higher, it doesn't mean those with high power costs should mine, it doesn't mean miners cant suffer a loss.  It simply means that difficulty won't keep doubling every month forever.

Ultimately for a miners to be profitable LONG TERM in the ASIC world isn't much different than being profitable in the GPU world.  A miner needs:
a) a competitive price on hardware
b) an efficient design
c) below average electrical costs

Agreed. Profits stay with people who are able to offer the lowest price for online hashpower.

[itod]

It simply means that difficulty won't keep doubling every month forever and thus saying a rig 2x as efficient as KNC will only be profitable for a month longer is incorrect.

Exactly. KnC people keep refusing to accept this simple fact, they would have to turn off their machines in one point in time during next year (my guess is April), and the other owners of efficient ASICs will continue to mine in equilibrium achieved between BTC price and electricity price. It is quite possible that electricity price would not be western world electricity price, also the BTC price may go up since all sources of cheap mined BTC will dry up. On thing is certain - equilibrium will be reached, at least until 11nm technology come to town destroying that balance and imposing the new one.

[DeathAndTaxes]

It simply means that difficulty won't keep doubling every month forever and thus saying a rig 2x as efficient as KNC will only be profitable for a month longer is incorrect.

Exactly. KnC people keep refusing to accept this simple fact, they would have to turn off their machines in one point in time during next year (my guess is April), and the other owners of efficient ASICs will continue to mine in equilibrium achieved between BTC price and electricity price. It is quite possible that electricity price would not be western world electricity price, also the BTC price may go up since all sources of cheap mined BTC will dry up. On thing is certain - equilibrium will be reached, at least until 11nm technology come to town destroying that balance and imposing the new one.

Well it may be longer than April before that happens and it may turn out that someone who already owns a KNC miner will make more before the "break even electrical" point than someone else will even with a more efficient rig. 

For example an Avalon batch 1 rig has downright horrible efficiency (nearly 6x worse than KNC) but it hardly mattered as it has been a license to print money for the past six months.  I am just trying to point out that difficulty will have some relationship to economics and unless ASICs get significantly more efficient (i.e. 0.2 J/GH or better) dificulty growth will slow down at some point.

Of course this is coming from my point of view as a long term GPU miner.  I studied and built highly efficient GPU rigs (MH/$ and MH/J) and operated then with below average electrical cost.   I never once had to "mine at a loss" or idle my farm.   Sometimes margins were fat, sometimes they were thin but it was the marginal miner (high electrial rate and/or low efficiency) who got forced out first.

[ecliptic]

What the hell?

The MPP means they just send you an ASIC?

Uh??? Documentation for it?  Reference designs maybe?

That's basically the entire ordeal and clusterfuck that the avalon chips were, maybe worse.  You'd have to design/acquire a PCB, pick & place assemble it, and integrate it into the system, horribly expensive and inefficient to do in small numbers.  god help you if you have to go through a group buy sort of thing.

Please tell me I’m missing something here because this has red flags all over it.

[ecliptic]

So it's a free up to 400% free hashing power, not a single cent extra you have to spend?  Seriously?

Why are people saying It's "JUST CHIPS" then?  Or do you mean you have to get a power supply?

basically the entire value of HF hinges on this MPP

[HashFast_CL]

IMPORTANT UPDATE


HashFast customers opting for the Miner Protection Program will receive their additional ASICs already assembled onto mini-boards.

We are not shipping raw chips. 

There is no need for MMP customers to worry about the time/trouble/expense of PCB integration.

MPP mini-boards will arrive ready to go, and are easily installed into a Baby Jet's extra space.  The process is a lot like upgrading a normal PC and does not require any soldering or special tools beyond a screwdriver.

If our customers wish to install them in something different from the two models of rig that HashFast makes (the Baby Jet & the Sierra) that's absolutely OK.  All that's needed is some kind of ATX case, a standard PC power supply, a cooling system of their choice,  and a controller.   The choice of what controller to use is also completely up to the customer; just about any device that will run CGminer is fine (a raspberry pi, a tablet, a small server, or whatever works best).

Also, if someone you trust has come up with a design you like, feel free to ask them for a hand or buy one from them.  We believe that hardware should be open, and available for anyone to take in whatever direction they think is best. 

As far as we are concerned, this is an extension of the same approach we are taking with our software; HashFast drivers will be completely open-source so you may software of your choice, and CGminer will have native support right away. 

We've been running CGMiner in our FPGA emulation since June.   It works great, and we think people will be happy with the quality of our drivers.   Other folks who have seen them were

[pmorici]

Quick question though. If the MPP chips/boards come ready to rock.. how will they be powered? Will the PSU already in my Baby Jets/Sierras have enough juice to support the added chips or will we need to purchase a PSU? or will that be included within the MPP? Thanks

The "BabyJet Upgrade" product description says it comes with an upgraded power supply so my assumption is that you will have to get a second/upgraded power supply for any MPP mini boards you want to plug in and have a free USB port on your control server.

[MrTeal]

IMPORTANT UPDATE


HashFast customers opting for the Miner Protection Program will receive their additional ASICs already assembled onto mini-boards.

We are not shipping raw chips. 

There is no need for MMP customers to worry about the time/trouble/expense of PCB integration.

MPP mini-boards will arrive ready to go, and are easily installed into a Baby Jet's extra space.  The process is a lot like upgrading a normal PC and does not require any soldering or special tools beyond a screwdriver.

If our customers wish to install them in something different from the two models of rig that HashFast makes (the Baby Jet & the Sierra) that's absolutely OK.  All that's needed is some kind of ATX case, a standard PC power supply, a cooling system of their choice,  and a controller.   The choice of what controller to use is also completely up to the customer; just about any device that will run CGminer is fine (a raspberry pi, a tablet, a small server, or whatever works best).

Also, if someone you trust has come up with a design you like, feel free to ask them for a hand or buy one from them.  We believe that hardware should be open, and available for anyone to take in whatever direction they think is best. 

As far as we are concerned, this is an extension of the same approach we are taking with our software; HashFast drivers will be completely open-source so you may software of your choice, and CGminer will have native support right away. 

We've been running CGMiner in our FPGA emulation since June.   It works great, and we think people will be happy with the quality of our drivers.   Other folks who have seen them were

What is the interface between the mini-boards and the controller, USB?

[cypherdoc]

IMPORTANT UPDATE


HashFast customers opting for the Miner Protection Program will receive their additional ASICs already assembled onto mini-boards.

We are not shipping raw chips. 

There is no need for MMP customers to worry about the time/trouble/expense of PCB integration.

MPP mini-boards will arrive ready to go, and are easily installed into a Baby Jet's extra space.  The process is a lot like upgrading a normal PC and does not require any soldering or special tools beyond a screwdriver.

If our customers wish to install them in something different from the two models of rig that HashFast makes (the Baby Jet & the Sierra) that's absolutely OK.  All that's needed is some kind of ATX case, a standard PC power supply, a cooling system of their choice,  and a controller.   The choice of what controller to use is also completely up to the customer; just about any device that will run CGminer is fine (a raspberry pi, a tablet, a small server, or whatever works best).

Also, if someone you trust has come up with a design you like, feel free to ask them for a hand or buy one from them.  We believe that hardware should be open, and available for anyone to take in whatever direction they think is best. 

As far as we are concerned, this is an extension of the same approach we are taking with our software; HashFast drivers will be completely open-source so you may software of your choice, and CGminer will have native support right away. 

We've been running CGMiner in our FPGA emulation since June.   It works great, and we think people will be happy with the quality of our drivers.   Other folks who have seen them were

What is the interface between the mini-boards and the controller, USB?

yes.

the other cool thing not mentioned anywhere yet is that the modules are "daisy-chained" together, both in the BJ and the Sierra.  so in essence, you're just looking at a single USB device to which you connect to the controller of your choice.

[HashFast]

Hey Guys,

This statement needs to be clarified and was released prematurely. We are currently in the final stages of an internal discussion about how to further protect miners moving forward for customers that opt into purchasing it.

We have preliminarily decided to further protect our miners that opt in for the miner protection at a higher price point, and provide full modules for orders placed in Batch 2 and 3.

We’re sorry this went a bit early - we’ll be back with full details as soon as we finalize and get the documentation together.

Cheers,

Team HashFast

[gmaxwell]

Hashfast first batch customers paid 2.5x the current sale prices— part of that was that the MPP made the risk of paying so much on a pre-order somewhat reduced (at least the risk of massive hashrate growth on a product months out was reduced, and that risk is increasingly looking like a reality).

But if later MPP customers get ready-to-plug PCBs it means that raw chips issued to initial batch customers may be worthless, as there might not even be a secondary market to get those chips lit up with. So if you're suggesting that you'd give first batch MPP customers a weaker deal than later ones, I hope you do consider this carefully.  If MPP fires off it may already mean that customers aren't getting their investment back, giving people useless chips and no solid path to make use of them would add insult to injury and might turn a reputation boosting program into a reputation hurting one.