[LABCOIN] IPO [BTCT.CO] - Details/FAQ and Discussion (ASIC dev/sales/mining)

[lysr]

These updates at dips are SUPER suspicious. Does anyone even know who labcoin is and how? Is it the swede under a new name? Is it a troll?

CNN and Bloomberg want interviews? 200-300 TH/s now? Is this real life?

Also about the comment about saying if they were fraudsters they'd be announcing delays. They would be doing the exact opposite so they can unload shares. They would announce the best possible scenario, which is essentially what they did.

Just as how the penny stocks in RL operate.

I'll spell it out step by step.

If they were fraudsters, they're now at the point where they have to start moving deadlines.  They're scheduled to be hashing next week.  If they aren't, then the price is going to plummet.  A fraudster, who would of course know they weren't going to ever hit any deadline ever, would push the deadline out in small increments, keeping people's faith as long as possible, while they kept selling off.

Sticking to a deadline a fraud can't hit gives the scam a hard ending deadline.  Stretching the deadline allows the scam to go on longer.

It's really quite simple if you take two seconds to think instead of reflexively type.

The fact that we aren't seeing any attempt at all to stretch a deadline is a strong indication they plan to actually hit it.  It's the wrong move for a fraud to keep it solid.  

The end.

Or maybe they intend to use other ways of "simulating" hashing.

pirateat40 gave dividends too before he finally disappeared.

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[Ytterbium]

What shareholders should be waiting for is not dividends from hashes, but proof of hashes.

It's very easy to make your hash rate public.

https://ghash.io/, Bitfury's private pool uses a specific wallet for all it's income.  Perhaps Labcoin could do the same thing.

[drawingthesun]

What shareholders should be waiting for is not dividends from hashes, but proof of hashes.

It's very easy to make your hash rate public.

https://ghash.io/, Bitfury's private pool uses a specific wallet for all it's income.  Perhaps Labcoin could do the same thing.

Whoa Bitfury's miners are hashing 2x more than the whole of ASICMINER?

Am I understanding that correctly?

[Pale Phoenix]

Or maybe they intend to use other ways of "simulating" hashing.

Oh, there's TAT with his latest violation of the Securities Act, floating rumors to manipulate a stock. When do you plan to properly register your securities with U.S. authorities again?

[Pale Phoenix]

What shareholders should be waiting for is not dividends from hashes, but proof of hashes.

It's very easy to make your hash rate public.

https://ghash.io/, Bitfury's private pool uses a specific wallet for all it's income.  Perhaps Labcoin could do the same thing.

Whoa Bitfury's miners are hashing 2x more than the whole of ASICMINER?

Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, that's correct. They've been building hashpower at a very rapid rate.

[AM4Bitcoin]

What shareholders should be waiting for is not dividends from hashes, but proof of hashes.

It's very easy to make your hash rate public.

https://ghash.io/, Bitfury's private pool uses a specific wallet for all it's income.  Perhaps Labcoin could do the same thing.

Whoa Bitfury's miners are hashing 2x more than the whole of ASICMINER?

Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes

[drawingthesun]

What shareholders should be waiting for is not dividends from hashes, but proof of hashes.

It's very easy to make your hash rate public.

https://ghash.io/, Bitfury's private pool uses a specific wallet for all it's income.  Perhaps Labcoin could do the same thing.

Whoa Bitfury's miners are hashing 2x more than the whole of ASICMINER?

Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, that's correct. They've been building hashpower at a very rapid rate.

I couldn't understand before why ASICMINER share prices was dropping, I had no idea they were being destroyed like this. I thought up until a few minutes ago that they still led the way.

Bitfury is a monster, this is amazing. Do they have public shares or anything like that?

[klee]

What shareholders should be waiting for is not dividends from hashes, but proof of hashes.

It's very easy to make your hash rate public.

https://ghash.io/, Bitfury's private pool uses a specific wallet for all it's income.  Perhaps Labcoin could do the same thing.

Whoa Bitfury's miners are hashing 2x more than the whole of ASICMINER?

Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, that's correct. They've been building hashpower at a very rapid rate.

I couldn't understand before why ASICMINER share prices was dropping, I had no idea they were being destroyed like this. I thought up until a few minutes ago that they still led the way.

Bitfury is a monster, this is amazing. Do they have public shares or anything like that?

100THs @ Picostocks

[Vigil]

Work screwed me out of about 4-5 BTC again. Let me just say that trading is more profitable than work. Missed the "news" and the opportunity to sell at .0038+ and buy back in to increase my shares by about 20%.

This idea that Labcoin could be manipulating stock price in order to generate dividend payments is pretty interesting - anything is possible, I guess.

[dexX7]

Hey all,

I looked up the specifications of other ASIC hardware to get a feeling about power consumption, heat, etc. to check what might be possible for the upcoming sample batch.


What Labcoin said:

Latest chip specifications:

Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W

For the test run we opted for QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad, (...)

Amount of chips:

Right now we're looking to get 1000/1500 chips from the first run at 130nm.

- The first run of chips are expected to arrive within a week. This is a 2500 chip run and Labcoin expects at least 2000 chips to be of "production quality".

The post from Sam is a bit older, though.

Expected hashrate:

TLDR; Things are going as planned with no delays as of yet. Labcoin expects to hash at approx 6TH within 3-4 weeks and 50TH+ by mid to late October

(...) mining will start no later than 10 September with about 3-4 TH, and to reach the full speed within October.

The following illustrates the amount of chips needed and hashrate / chip to fullfil the goal of 3-6 TH/s with 1000-2500 chips.

For example Labcoin would need 2000 chips with a hashrate of at least 1,7 GH/s per chip to deploy 3,4 TH/s. This would translate to 4,59 W power consumption per chip or 9,180 kW altogether.

Looks fine till now, even if they underperform hard, they would accomplish their goal, but ...


Some said 12.8 W/chip will melt the chip etc., so I looked up already available chips. Note: this is not about efficiency, but only about the limits of power consumption.

• BitFury chips are hashing at 2,7 GH/s with 0,8 W/GH/s which results in 2,16 W/chip (reference), 55 nm, QFN 48 packaging, 7,0 mm x 7,00 mm.
   
• Avalon chips are packed in a QFN 48 package with a chip size of 7,0 mm x 7,00 mm and a transistor size of 110 nm. burnin's overclocked Avalon chips are running stable till somewhere near 430 MH/s with 1.3 V and a power consumption between 3,85-4,35 W/chip (reference #1, reference #2) with a air cooled block cooler or water cooler.
   
• The crasiest thing I've seen done till now is an overclocked Block Eruptor USB to 672 MH/s by mjgraham (reference), but it's not really a BE anymore, but a giant cooling block with additional hardware attached. Anyway, this thing would run at 10,49 W/chip and AM chips have a transistor size of 130 nm.

So green in this picture means the chip hashes stable and red equals unstable or meltdown.

I think it's not wise to say "because BitFury can't do it, Labcoin can do it neither", but it's intended to get a broader picture.


Pictures of the custom cooling solutions to achive this performance (BitFury, Avalon, AsicMiner #1, , AsicMiner #2):

Again the relevant quotes:

Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W

For the test run we opted for QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad, (...)

QFP 44 is a bit smaller than the packaging used by competitors (= more W/mm²) and no exposed heat pad basically means the heat is kinda trapped in the packaging.

TL;TR: I think the sample chips will underperform greatly in comparison to the original announcement and might only hash at 1,5-1,7 GH/s/chip. This relates to a power consumption of 4-4,5 W which would approximately match a deployment of 3 TH/s+ with 2000 chips.

Disclaimer: I'm not really familiar with this topic at all, but I tried to connect the given dots.

[physalis]

This idea that Labcoin could be manipulating stock price in order to generate dividend payments is pretty interesting - anything is possible, I guess.

If they get hashing, they'll have to prove that they are hashing, not just pay dividends.

[physalis]

dexX7, I really appreciate your posts, contrary to most here, they're always really informative

I too expect the chips to underperform. Actually, everything above 70% would really surprise me.
But I don't think it matters much. The share price is still way too low if they have working chips, even if they just perform at 40%.
In every scenario where they actually start hashing, we're good.

The heat issue though, that's where I'm worried.

[Ytterbium]

QFP 44 is a bit smaller than the packaging used by competitors (= more W/mm²) and no exposed heat pad basically means the heat is kinda trapped in the packaging.

Not exactly.  The W/mm² issue has to do with the size of the physical chip, not the size of the packaging.  There's only so much heat that can be removed from silicon for a given temperature gradient. For the packaging, you can use materials like copper or aluminum that have higher thermal conductivity then Silicon.

TL;TR: I think the sample chips will underperform greatly in comparison to the original announcement and might only hash at 1,5-1,7 GH/s/chip. This relates to a power consumption of 4-4,5 W which would approximately match a deployment of 3 TH/s+ with 2000 chips.

Disclaimer: I'm not really familiar with this topic at all, but I tried to connect the given dots.

Yes, I think this is correct. They expect 2,000 chips and 3-4H/s.  That comes out to just 1.5-2gh/s/chip, not 4.8.  So they are already expecting about half the theoretical max output of their chips. And, at 2.7W/gh/s, that comes out to just  4-5.4W, not 12.8.

4.8Gh/s and 12.8W may be the design capacity of their chips.

Their recent announcement of 2,000 chips, 3- 4TH/s, and 2.7W/Gh/s comes out to just 1.5 to 2Gh/s and 4.05-5.4W per chip

It's likely that cooling system you'd need to use to get 4.8Gh/s is just more expensive then simply using two chips at half the power.

[AngelSky]

Hey all,

I looked up the specifications of other ASIC hardware to get a feeling about power consumption, heat, etc. to check what might be possible for the upcoming sample batch.


What Labcoin said:

Latest chip specifications:

Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W

For the test run we opted for QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad, (...)

Amount of chips:

Right now we're looking to get 1000/1500 chips from the first run at 130nm.

- The first run of chips are expected to arrive within a week. This is a 2500 chip run and Labcoin expects at least 2000 chips to be of "production quality".

The post from Sam is a bit older, though.

Expected hashrate:

TLDR; Things are going as planned with no delays as of yet. Labcoin expects to hash at approx 6TH within 3-4 weeks and 50TH+ by mid to late October

(...) mining will start no later than 10 September with about 3-4 TH, and to reach the full speed within October.

The following illustrates the amount of chips needed and hashrate / chip to fullfil the goal of 3-6 TH/s with 1000-2500 chips.

For example Labcoin would need 2000 chips with a hashrate of at least 1,7 GH/s per chip to deploy 3,4 TH/s. This would translate to 4,59 W power consumption per chip or 9,180 kW altogether.

Looks fine till now, even if they underperform hard, they would accomplish their goal, but ...


Some said 12.8 W/chip will melt the chip etc., so I looked up already available chips. Note: this is not about efficiency, but only about the limits of power consumption.

• BitFury chips are hashing at 2,7 GH/s with 0,8 W/GH/s which results in 2,16 W/chip (reference), 55 nm, QFN 48 packaging, 7,0 mm x 7,00 mm.
   
• Avalon chips are packed in a QFN 48 package with a chip size of 7,0 mm x 7,00 mm and a transistor size of 110 nm. burnin's overclocked Avalon chips are running stable till somewhere near 430 MH/s with 1.3 V and a power consumption between 3,85-4,35 W/chip (reference #1, reference #2) with a air cooled block cooler or water cooler.
   
• The crasiest thing I've seen done till now an overclocked Block Eruptor USB to 672 MH/s by mjgraham (reference), but it's not really a BE anymore, but a giant cooling block with additional hardware attached. Anyway, this thing would run at 10,49 W/chip and AM chips have a transistor size of 130 nm.

So green in this picture means the chip hashes stable and red equals unstable or meltdown.

I think it's not wise to say "because BitFury can't do it, Labcoin can do it neither", but it's intended to get a broader picture.


Pictures of the custom cooling solutions to achive this performance (BitFury, Avalon, AsicMiner #1, , AsicMiner #2):

Again the relevant quotes:

Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W

For the test run we opted for QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad, (...)

QFP 44 is a bit smaller than the packaging used by competitors (= more W/mm²) and no exposed heat pad basically means the heat is kinda trapped in the packaging.

TL;TR: I think the sample chips will underperform greatly in comparison to the original announcement and might only hash at 1,5-1,7 GH/s/chip. This relates to a power consumption of 4-4,5 W which would approximately match a deployment of 3 TH/s+ with 2000 chips.

Disclaimer: I'm not really familiar with this topic at all, but I tried to connect the given dots.

Thanks for your post.

[dexX7]

dexX7, I really appreciate your posts, contrary to most here, they're always really informative

I too expect the chips to underperform. Actually, everything above 70% would really surprise me.
But I don't think it matters much. The share price is still way too low if they have working chips, even if they just perform at 40%.
In every scenario where they actually start hashing, we're good.

Thanks!

I agree. And even if they only achive half of what BitFury did, it's still fine with an estimated cost of $ 9-10 chip.

The W/mm² issue has to do with the size of the physical chip, not the size of the packaging.  There's only so much heat that can be removed from silicon for a given temperature gradient.

Secondly, they expect 2,000 chips and 3-4H/s.  That comes out to just 1.5-2gh/s/chip, not 4.8.  So they are already expecting about half the theoretical max output of their chips. And, at 2.7W/gh/s, that comes out to just  4-5.4W, not 12.8.

I'm aware of that. Labcoin 1st gen has a die size of 6,5 mm x 6,5 mm and Avalon 7 mm x 7 mm. Also: "... underperform ... in comparison to the original announcement ... would approximately match a deployment of 3 TH/s+ [as lately announced]". Please don't get me wrong, my only intention was to provide a reasonable context, nothing more.


The following might have been a hint from TheSwede75:

As we hope is clear Labcoins 1st gen chips are not 'state of the art' chips that will push the limits on power consumption and effective but rather Labcoin focuses on pushing the envelope in terms of chip cost and time to market. As it looks now, we should be able to compete in price/hash-rate with December competition, and deliver chips as early as 2 months ahead of them, something that should be ROI+ no matter power cost for the mining public.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Not exactly.  The W/mm² issue has to do with the size of the physical chip, not the size of the packaging.  There's only so much heat that can be removed from silicon for a given temperature gradient. For the packaging, you can use materials like copper or aluminum that have higher thermal conductivity then Silicon.

While the die size determines the heat transfer at the silicon junction, the size and more importantly type of package is also important as the thermal energy must pass through the package as well and the lower the thermal conductivity the higher the core die temp is going to reach.  The bizarre thing is that they reported using "QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad" for the size of the die that makes absolutely no sense @ >12W and is still hard to believe even at 5W.  They do make packages with exposed metal heat pad to improve heat transfer.  For example this is the Avalon chip.



Inside the package the die is pressed against the large square metal pad in the center of the package.  The center pad is only used for heat transfer, the other pins are used for electrical power, ground, and signal.  The pad will be surface mounted to a non-electrical pad (copper plate) on the PCB to conduct heat away from this chip.  Using a multi-layer board the connection can extend from the top layer through the PCB to the bottom layer which is used as a heat dump.  As a side note this is why the heatsink is on the "back" of an Avalon board.  The heat is conducted through the heatpad, through the PCB, to the heatsink on the other side.  With a QFP and no heat pad essentially the entire chip is encapsulated in insulating plastic and that greatly limits the amount of power that can be dispersed.  

[creativex]

...and that ^^^ makes me nervous.

[lame.duck]

Inside the package the die is pressed against the large square metal pad in the center of the package.  The center pad is only used for heat transfer, the other pins are used for electrical power, ground, and signal.

Normally the  heat pad is also for ground connection. I would wonder if Avalon did not use it this way too since good power and ground connections are quite important as half of  the transistors is toggeling at high speed.

[Bitcycle]

I WANT 2 BELIEVE!!!!!!

Well, I laughed.

[Ytterbium]

Not exactly.  The W/mm² issue has to do with the size of the physical chip, not the size of the packaging.  There's only so much heat that can be removed from silicon for a given temperature gradient. For the packaging, you can use materials like copper or aluminum that have higher thermal conductivity then Silicon.

While the die size determines the heat transfer at the silicon junction, the size and more importantly type of package is also important as the thermal energy must pass through the package as well and the lower the thermal conductivity the higher the core die temp is going to reach.

Yeah, I was just pointing out the size of the packages is not the major determining factor.  A "chip scale" flip chip BGA package would probably be tiny but still be able to remove a lot of heat (from what I understand)

The bizarre thing is that they reported using "QFP packaging, 44 pin, no exposed heat pad" for the size of the die that makes absolutely no sense @ >12W and is still hard to believe even at 5W.  They do make packages with exposed metal heat pad to improve heat transfer.  For example this is the Avalon chip.

It is strange. It would be helpful to have more information from them on why they decided to forgo the heat pad. Maybe they think the plastic will be able to dissipate the heat.  

The thermal conductivity of plastic is about 0.2-0.5 W/mK, compared to 200 for aluminum.

But, remember the 'm' stands for the thickness of the material, not the surface area.  If the package material is very thin, it can still conduct a decent amount of heat.

If you have a surface area of 1cm (0.0001m²), thermal conductivity of 0.5 W/mK, 50C temperature difference, and 0.25mm thick layer of plastic, you should be able to move

-(0.5W/mK) * 0.0001m² * (50K / 0.0025m)
=-0.5W/K*0.0001m*(20000K/m)
=-0.5W/K*0.0001*20000K
=-0.5W*0.0001*20000
=-1W.

So, just one watt of cooling using those parameters. Maybe 2 watts if you count both sides.

It's also possible that they could be using a type of plastic with a higher thermal conductivity as well.

And, it's also possible my math could be completely off.  The units did cancel properly, but I could be doing that totally wrong

EDIT: A 12-inch wafer is 0.775mm thick, and a lqfp44 package is 1.2mm thick (not counting the pins).  So the thickness of the packaging should be 0.21mm on either side. But there could be other materials in there as well. If so, that should increase the amount of heat able to be emitted package a great deal.

Anyway, we'll find out in a few days what's actually possible.