Cointerra Mining ASIC coming soon

[cointerra]

Cointerra, a well-funded startup of highly experienced ASIC designers, is pleased to announce that we are developing a high performance, low power and low cost 28nm ASIC which is expected to arrive in Q4 2013.

To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

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[-Redacted-]

Great!   As soon as you have some of them stuck to something that is hashing, put some pictures up and a price list, and you might get some interest.

[bbxx]

Your website is great.
Missing phone/address is not a good sign though.

I hope you will succed, USA based customers would be very happy if you do most effective asics chips and lead the race.

[ecliptic]

That team, wow.

The technical prowess of these ASIC designers is going up faster than the hash rate.

[BBQKorv]

Cointerra, a well-funded startup of highly experienced ASIC designers, is pleased to announce that we are developing a high performance, low power and low cost 28nm ASIC which is expected to arrive in Q4 2013.

To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

Wow. Lets hope for the best.

[cointerra]

Your website is great.
Missing phone/address is not a good sign though.

Send an email to info@cointerra.com. We will provide you the contact details.

[goxed]

wow another ASIC. that too 28nm. What's the NRE for 28nm? I think it must be upwards of USD 10M, though I may be wrong.

[peonminer]

@cointerra Are there any local jobs or near-site jobs available? I am approximately 1.5 hours from your location. I may also be able to do an on site interview of cointerra for the forums, once cointerra has a facility in Austin available for tour(if they plan on having this option.)

[cointerra]

@cointerra Are there any local jobs or near-site jobs available? I am approximately 1.5 hours from your location. I may also be able to do an on site interview of cointerra for the forums, once cointerra has a facility in Austin available for tour(if they plan on having this option.)

What are your skills? Send an email to info@cointerra.com.

[Bitcoinorama]

I know they are looking for part time graphics as they crowdsourced their logo using 99designs.co.uk a couple of months back.

Impressive team btw. Looks good so far, was looking at your site yesterday...

[superduh]

logo is soso- but, noone should care about it

[PeZ]

Nice scam. 

[eve]

Nice scam. 

Very much an Indian Project??

[nightengale]

Looking forward to technical details and pricing. Might even be worth the drive if Cointerra is planning to host some sort of open-day or is willing to entertain visitors...?

[Bitcoinorama]

Ok, so by 'well funded' they mean a $1.2m 'Angel investment' which for all intensive purposes will be spanked on the journey to tape-out. Also I doubt their own wages come cheap. So they are almost certainly a few mil shy of 28nm fab, therefore we can almost certainly assume another pre-order which will undoubtedly elicit a familiar response, but again is par for the course as they have no significant funding to manufacture otherwise.

Timewise it appears to be they will be head to head with Hashfast. Seed funding wise both Hashfast and Cointerra have tape out covered. Hashfast have 'partnered' with Uniquify that almost certainly means they have given away equity for use of time, staff and deskspace and split costs associated with tape out...

[Loredo]

Your website is great.
Missing phone/address is not a good sign though.

I hope you will succed, USA based customers would be very happy if you do most effective asics chips and lead the race.

What the hell are you talking about?  Is this some kind of nationalistic bullshit?  This ain't the Olympics; customers worldwide would be very happy with an effective hash solution that didn't entail pre-order nonsense and was sold at a reasonable price. 

logo is soso- but, noone should care about it

No, but I for one find it not only impressive, but somehow comforting, that within two hours of initially announcing their firm here, somebody has identified the origin and development strategy for the logo.  Since BFL (and Avalon) potential vendors are not given very much slack around here.

[cointerra]

Looking forward to technical details and pricing. Might even be worth the drive if Cointerra is planning to host some sort of open-day or is willing to entertain visitors...?

Where are you based? We are in Austin. Shoot an email to info@cointerra.com. We can schedule a meeting.

[Loredo]

we can almost certainly assume another pre-order which will undoubtedly elicit a familiar response, but again is par for the course as they have no significant funding to manufacture otherwise.

Maybe, and i hope you're wrong on that.  Here's the risk in pre-orders at this point, and why I'm more puzzled with each new one.  

Nobody is going to buy into a pre-order scheme without some way (escrow, PayPal, credit card) to refund the order any more. And all it's going to take is one announcement by someone who has the chip on the board and the board in the box with the mailing label stuck on the day the credit card authorizes.  Every one of the pre-orders would be a ghost town at that point.

You can say "yeah, but nobody has that kind of money."  Would you be willing to bet a couple million dollars on that?  Because that's what these pre-orders are doing.

[Loredo]

We are in Austin.

Even though I'm not there all the time (like when the heat index is 100+), I have a farm in Caldwell County. 

That makes you my home team.  Go, cointerra!

[cointerra]

We are in Austin.

Even though I'm not there all the time (like when the heat index is 100+), I have a farm in Caldwell County. 
That makes you my home team.  Go, cointerra!

Thanks for rooting for Cointerra! We will make all Texans proud

[Loredo]

Thanks for rooting for Cointerra! We will make all Texans proud

Most real Texans aren't proud of anything that goes on in Austin, with the possible exception of football.  And then, only some years.   

In any case, I wish you the best of luck and greatest of fortune!

[Bitcoinorama]

we can almost certainly assume another pre-order which will undoubtedly elicit a familiar response, but again is par for the course as they have no significant funding to manufacture otherwise.

Maybe, and i hope you're wrong on that.  Here's the risk in pre-orders at this point, and why I'm more puzzled with each new one.  

Nobody is going to buy into a pre-order scheme without some way (escrow, PayPal, credit card) to refund the order any more. And all it's going to take is one announcement by someone who has the chip on the board and the board in the box with the mailing label stuck on the day the credit card authorizes.  Every one of the pre-orders would be a ghost town at that point.

You can say "yeah, but nobody has that kind of money."  Would you be willing to bet a couple million dollars on that?  Because that's what these pre-orders are doing.

Obv. I don't know, it a guess based on what details we have available. They claim in this thread to be well funded, that gives the impression they won't need pre-orders, yet on their site they mention seed capital of $1.2 million which barely covers the cumulative annual wages their current team is accustomed to. It could cover the path to taping out. It's no where near enough to cover 28nm dev. through fab, that's 100% certain. Let's just wait and see. Interesting times, if even solely as an observer...

[solex]

Wow. What an impressive team! It is going to be interesting seeing what happens when Cointerra is shipping...

[ecliptic]

Also I doubt their own wages come cheap.

Who needs wages when you're making machines that print money?  Their work is quite literally its own reward.  I'd rather be paid in top end 22nm chips than USD for a project like this.

[Loredo]

They claim in this thread to be well funded, that gives the impression they won't need pre-orders, yet on their site they mention seed capital of $1.2 million

Do you happen to know:  how much did ASICminer raise, adjusting the BTC exchange rate back to what it was at the time of their offerings? 

If you don't piss it away, and have a sizable endowment of human capital, a million dollars can be a lot of money. 

[minternj]

Yet another preorder asic miner.

[NiteShdw]

Yet another preorder asic miner.

Given the costs involved in manufacturing these devices, it seems pretty reasonable that there would be a pre-order system.  The other alternative would be to ask for investors, which would pretty much still be like a pre-order in that you would invest money into the company without a guaranteed return.  It's risk either way you do it.

[Bitcoinorama]

Also I doubt their own wages come cheap.

Who needs wages when you're making machines that print money?  Their work is quite literally its own reward.  I'd rather be paid in top end 22nm chips than USD for a project like this.

Will have to see, I tend to agree esp. if I would get the luxury of purchasing devices at cost...

[minternj]

Yet another preorder asic miner.

Given the costs involved in manufacturing these devices, it seems pretty reasonable that there would be a pre-order system.  The other alternative would be to ask for investors, which would pretty much still be like a pre-order in that you would invest money into the company without a guaranteed return.  It's risk either way you do it.

Except the first post said they were well funded. Guess their investors need to pass on risk to greater fools ASAP.

[Bitcoinorama]

They claim in this thread to be well funded, that gives the impression they won't need pre-orders, yet on their site they mention seed capital of $1.2 million

Do you happen to know:  how much did ASICminer raise, adjusting the BTC exchange rate back to what it was at the time of their offerings? 

If you don't piss it away, and have a sizable endowment of human capital, a million dollars can be a lot of money. 

I appreciate that, and people with that kind of money have plenty of opportunity, both good, and bad, which is why most VC is not keen on assuming the lions share of risk within these ventures, but let's be realistic, ASICminer weren't designing 28nm chip based devices from the get go, that takes around 4x what Cointerra currently claim to have in place...

[Ytterbium]

Interesting.  Here we get the resume's of the actual IC designers, compared to HashFast who's IC designers are "anonymous"

Ok, so by 'well funded' they mean a $1.2m 'Angel investment' which for all intensive purposes will be spanked on the journey to tape-out. Also I doubt their own wages come cheap. So they are almost certainly a few mil shy of 28nm fab, therefore we can almost certainly assume another pre-order which will undoubtedly elicit a familiar response, but again is par for the course as they have no significant funding to manufacture otherwise.

Timewise it appears to be they will be head to head with Hashfast. Seed funding wise both Hashfast and Cointerra have tape out covered.

I'm not really sure if they would need too. They could probably raise money from VCs if they needed too. Essentially doing what Labcoin did, but with USD instead of bitcoin and actual legal shares instead of "for entertainment purposes only" shares on BTCT. They had $1.8 million worth of BTC locked up in buy orders before their IPO, and they actually turned away 60% of it (which they didn't even need to do according to the way the site normally works, the operator had to write new code on the fly to turn down the money and distribute shares evenly)

There are all kinds of legal issues that would make raising money that way difficult in the U.S.  But you can still issue shares to 'qualified investors' who have a certain net worth, as well as from venture capital funds.

Anyway, that said they do plan on offering pre-orders, according to their FAQ:

We’re expecting our price to be much lower than the current mining products for a given Gigahash performance.  And we will offer substantial discounts for pre orders or large orders to help us with our production costs.

___

Hashfast have 'partnered' with Uniquify that almost certainly means they have given away equity for use of time, staff and deskspace and split costs associated with tape out...

We don't really know what the deal is between Uniquify and HashFast. It's not uncommon for companies in silicon valley to have "incubators" for startups, it doesn't mean all that much.  HashFast may simply have raised a ton of money and simply paid Uniquify for their services.

It'll be interesting to see how Labcoin's designs turn out.  Their claim is that they'll be able to get way better performance with a 130nm core then BFL, with their 65nm core by doing a hand-routed design.  If these guys actually have a lot of experience laying out 28nm chips, then they may be able to get a similar performance boost over KnC.

They also seem to be focusing on low power use as well, which could be useful down the road as the market is flooded with ASICs and energy efficiency becomes the longer-term goal, as it started to become with GPUs.

Anyway, it's certainly an interesting new entrant.

In the short run, though I'm a little worried that we're just going to see a massive over-investment in ICs, with each company out there wanting to be the next ASICMiner - at the point where their mining revenue can fund more chip production. So we may see way more money thrown at the problem then can be extracted in any reasonable timeframe. At that point you'll see a shakeout in the industry, with only the most efficient companies able to make a profit while ever increasing their hashpower.

On the other hand, I think a big part of the spike from $10 to $100 in price was due to people who were GPU mining worried they'd never see profitability again.  If the same thing happens to ASIC miners, who'd been selling coins we could see another price crunch - not in anticipation of a new generation of technology, but rather the extinction of the get-rich quick phase of bitcoin entirely.

Interesting days ahead. Anyway you get the point.

[Ytterbium]

They claim in this thread to be well funded, that gives the impression they won't need pre-orders, yet on their site they mention seed capital of $1.2 million

Do you happen to know:  how much did ASICminer raise, adjusting the BTC exchange rate back to what it was at the time of their offerings? 

If you don't piss it away, and have a sizable endowment of human capital, a million dollars can be a lot of money. 

I appreciate that, and people with that kind of money have plenty of opportunity, both good, and bad, which is why most VC is not keen on assuming the lions share of risk within these ventures, but let's be realistic, ASICminer weren't designing 28nm chip based devices from the get go, that takes around 4x what Cointerra currently claim to have in place...

Dude what are you talking about?  Assuming risk is what VC's do.  At least in the U.S.  That is their entire reason for existing.

They invest in lots of high-risk high reward ventures, assuming most will fail but that the ones that succeed will cover everything.

[turtle83]

we can almost certainly assume another pre-order which will undoubtedly elicit a familiar response, but again is par for the course as they have no significant funding to manufacture otherwise.

Maybe, and i hope you're wrong on that.  Here's the risk in pre-orders at this point, and why I'm more puzzled with each new one.  

Nobody is going to buy into a pre-order scheme without some way (escrow, PayPal, credit card) to refund the order any more. And all it's going to take is one announcement by someone who has the chip on the board and the board in the box with the mailing label stuck on the day the credit card authorizes.  Every one of the pre-orders would be a ghost town at that point.

You can say "yeah, but nobody has that kind of money."  Would you be willing to bet a couple million dollars on that?  Because that's what these pre-orders are doing.

Obv. I don't know, it a guess based on what details we have available. They claim in this thread to be well funded, that gives the impression they won't need pre-orders, yet on their site they mention seed capital of $1.2 million which barely covers the cumulative annual wages their current team is accustomed to. It could cover the path to taping out. It's no where near enough to cover 28nm dev. through fab, that's 100% certain. Let's just wait and see. Interesting times, if even solely as an observer...

I don't know about the tape out costs.. but on the topic of wages, most early startup founders(and early employees) work for a significant amount of time for "sweat equity" ... in exchange for potential huge payouts when company makes profit, or exits.

[Aajo]

I hope you (cointerra) realize that it will not be easy to aquire money from pre-orders at this point in time. It would be much easier to sell shares of your company, which could still work although you went with private investors so far.

Also I hope you realize that there is a not so unlikely scenario where energy efficiency from ASICs < 1W/GH will never matter. In order to make it matter the network would have to grow > 50 PHash/s while the usd/btc price would stay at 100$. The more the price rises..

[ampu]

http://www.cointerra.com/faq/

What about Pricing?
We’re expecting our price to be much lower than the current mining products for a given Gigahash performance.  And we will offer substantial discounts for pre orders or large orders to help us with our production

About the company?

Over the last couple of months, Cointerra has raised $1.5m in angel investment from a range of successful Bitcoin and technology investors.  We have more than enough cash to fund 100% of the design of this ASIC and it is nearing completion.    Like other ASIC companies before us, we will offer preorders at special pricing and priority delivery in order to bring in the cashflow for our pilot production, and it will be well worth your while to consider this option.

Can you please kindly ask you angel to pre order all you future production and then come here with product in hand?

So, what's your company USP (Unique Selling Point) compared with others?!

[goxed]

BTC mining is a drag race, the one who has the most hashing power the earliest wins. I think there's no need for shiny hardware. Unless 28nm cointerra is 10x or more efficient than 55nm Bitfury this hardware is already late in the game. Good luck though, underdogs have certainly changed the rules of the game in the past .

[yottahash]

Exciting, looks like amateur hour is almost over.

Might miss this on their website, but CoinTerra has partnered with Open-Silicon for their ASIC design:
http://www.cointerra.com/cointerra-selects-open-silicon-for-next-generation-bitcoin-asics/

-----------------------
CoinTerra selects Open-Silicon for next generation BitCoin ASICs

July 24, 2013 Austin, TX. – CoinTerra, a company leading the next wave of silicon-based BitCoin mining, today announced that it has selected Open-Silicon as their ASIC design and development partner. Selecting Open-Silicon paves the way forward to building the highest-performing hashing ASICs available in the market, which consume only a fraction of the power consumed by other mining ASICs.

CoinTerra’s world-class expertise in ASIC architecture combined with Open-Silicon’s track record in ASIC solutions – including design and manufacturing – is a dynamic blend, which will soon result in bringing the most advanced bitcoin mining products to market.

“We selected Open-Silicon because they bring years of experience in getting working silicon to market” said Ravi Iyengar, CEO of CoinTerra Inc. “When you are designing ASICs at the 2Xnm node and below, you need a partner like Open-Silicon who has completed over 300 ASIC solutions, shipped more than 75 million ASICs, and has an outstanding track record of meeting their committed schedules on time.”

“Our expertise and years of experience are well aligned with CoinTerra’s technical needs,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, President & CEO of Open-Silicon, Inc. “It is great to work with a company that understands its market and thinks far ahead about their needs and requirements in order to achieve their short-term and long-term goals, ” said Dr. Sherwani.

[Noogsy]

Exciting, looks like amateur hour is almost over.

Might miss this on their website, but CoinTerra has partnered with Open-Silicon for their ASIC design:
http://www.cointerra.com/cointerra-selects-open-silicon-for-next-generation-bitcoin-asics/

-----------------------
CoinTerra selects Open-Silicon for next generation BitCoin ASICs

July 24, 2013 Austin, TX. – CoinTerra, a company leading the next wave of silicon-based BitCoin mining, today announced that it has selected Open-Silicon as their ASIC design and development partner. Selecting Open-Silicon paves the way forward to building the highest-performing hashing ASICs available in the market, which consume only a fraction of the power consumed by other mining ASICs.

CoinTerra’s world-class expertise in ASIC architecture combined with Open-Silicon’s track record in ASIC solutions – including design and manufacturing – is a dynamic blend, which will soon result in bringing the most advanced bitcoin mining products to market.

“We selected Open-Silicon because they bring years of experience in getting working silicon to market” said Ravi Iyengar, CEO of CoinTerra Inc. “When you are designing ASICs at the 2Xnm node and below, you need a partner like Open-Silicon who has completed over 300 ASIC solutions, shipped more than 75 million ASICs, and has an outstanding track record of meeting their committed schedules on time.”

“Our expertise and years of experience are well aligned with CoinTerra’s technical needs,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, President & CEO of Open-Silicon, Inc. “It is great to work with a company that understands its market and thinks far ahead about their needs and requirements in order to achieve their short-term and long-term goals, ” said Dr. Sherwani.

/Sarcasm on: Oh they chose Open -Silicon! YAY ! /Sarcasm off

Who the Hell is open-silicon? I mean, it's just another company name.
Does not help at all to make this look a bit more legit.

[fiktionist]

Exciting, looks like amateur hour is almost over.

Might miss this on their website, but CoinTerra has partnered with Open-Silicon for their ASIC design:
http://www.cointerra.com/cointerra-selects-open-silicon-for-next-generation-bitcoin-asics/

-----------------------
CoinTerra selects Open-Silicon for next generation BitCoin ASICs

July 24, 2013 Austin, TX. – CoinTerra, a company leading the next wave of silicon-based BitCoin mining, today announced that it has selected Open-Silicon as their ASIC design and development partner. Selecting Open-Silicon paves the way forward to building the highest-performing hashing ASICs available in the market, which consume only a fraction of the power consumed by other mining ASICs.

CoinTerra’s world-class expertise in ASIC architecture combined with Open-Silicon’s track record in ASIC solutions – including design and manufacturing – is a dynamic blend, which will soon result in bringing the most advanced bitcoin mining products to market.

“We selected Open-Silicon because they bring years of experience in getting working silicon to market” said Ravi Iyengar, CEO of CoinTerra Inc. “When you are designing ASICs at the 2Xnm node and below, you need a partner like Open-Silicon who has completed over 300 ASIC solutions, shipped more than 75 million ASICs, and has an outstanding track record of meeting their committed schedules on time.”

“Our expertise and years of experience are well aligned with CoinTerra’s technical needs,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, President & CEO of Open-Silicon, Inc. “It is great to work with a company that understands its market and thinks far ahead about their needs and requirements in order to achieve their short-term and long-term goals, ” said Dr. Sherwani.

/Sarcasm on: Oh they chose Open -Silicon! YAY ! /Sarcasm off

Who the Hell is open-silicon? I mean, it's just another company name.
Does not help at all to make this look a bit more legit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Silicon

just read. Open Silicon is not a "small fly".

[yottahash]

/Sarcasm on: Oh they chose Open -Silicon! YAY ! /Sarcasm off

Who the Hell is open-silicon? I mean, it's just another company name.
Does not help at all to make this look a bit more legit.

Open-Silicon was founded in 2003. Founder Dr. Naveed Sherwani's idea was to select best-in-class technology from the open market and apply it through an engineering process focused on three goals: low cost, high schedule predictability, and high reliability. Initial funding was provided by Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and InterWest Partners.

Additional funding from those partners, and new partners Artis Capital and Bridgescale Partners, brought the total venture funding in four rounds of financing to almost $46M. In December 2007 Unicorn Investment Bank acquired 75% of Open-Silicon for $190M, with the rest of the company employee-owned.

In May 2007, Open-Silicon acquired Zenasis Technologies, a maker of processor optimization EDA software. This technology has become the core of Open-Silicon's MAX Technologies. This technology has also been expanded by Open-Silicon to focus on low power design and process variability management.

In 2008 and 2009, Open-Silicon received the "Most Respected Private Semiconductor Company" Award from the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA).

In 2009 Open-Silicon acquired design services firm Silicon Logic Engineering (SLE). This acquisition has enhanced the company's derivative IC design capabilities. In 2010 the company opened new facilities in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and Pune, India, to provide additional support for derivative IC design.

In 2012, Open-Silicon acquired and grew substantial design operations in Pakistan and Taiwan.

[Bitcoinorama]

we can almost certainly assume another pre-order which will undoubtedly elicit a familiar response, but again is par for the course as they have no significant funding to manufacture otherwise.

Maybe, and i hope you're wrong on that.  Here's the risk in pre-orders at this point, and why I'm more puzzled with each new one.  

Nobody is going to buy into a pre-order scheme without some way (escrow, PayPal, credit card) to refund the order any more. And all it's going to take is one announcement by someone who has the chip on the board and the board in the box with the mailing label stuck on the day the credit card authorizes.  Every one of the pre-orders would be a ghost town at that point.

You can say "yeah, but nobody has that kind of money."  Would you be willing to bet a couple million dollars on that?  Because that's what these pre-orders are doing.

Obv. I don't know, it a guess based on what details we have available. They claim in this thread to be well funded, that gives the impression they won't need pre-orders, yet on their site they mention seed capital of $1.2 million which barely covers the cumulative annual wages their current team is accustomed to. It could cover the path to taping out. It's no where near enough to cover 28nm dev. through fab, that's 100% certain. Let's just wait and see. Interesting times, if even solely as an observer...

I don't know about the tape out costs.. but on the topic of wages, most early startup founders(and early employees) work for a significant amount of time for "sweat equity" ... in exchange for potential huge payouts when company makes profit, or exits.

Hi, I do know this and it's my bad if what I wrote gave the impression they would dip from that pot. Clearly they won't. That's seed capital to get the project started. I have worked on a start-up before, I was just highlighting what their angel investment would buy them in terms of their teams annual takehome. And the fact they are only funded to the point at which they can provide evidence to request more funding through pre-orders.

[Flying Hellfish]

Ok, so by 'well funded' they mean a $1.2m 'Angel investment' which for all intensive purposes will be spanked on the journey to tape-out. Also I doubt their own wages come cheap. So they are almost certainly a few mil shy of 28nm fab, therefore we can almost certainly assume another pre-order which will undoubtedly elicit a familiar response, but again is par for the course as they have no significant funding to manufacture otherwise.

Timewise it appears to be they will be head to head with Hashfast. Seed funding wise both Hashfast and Cointerra have tape out covered. Hashfast have 'partnered' with Uniquify that almost certainly means they have given away equity for use of time, staff and deskspace and split costs associated with tape out...

We’re expecting our price to be much lower than the current mining products for a given Gigahash performance.  And we will offer substantial discounts for pre orders or large orders to help us with our production costs.

http://www.cointerra.com/faq/

It's right on their website, they will be taking pre-orders.

I'm personally looking to be a customer not an investor that's called a customer so I will be passing (on their initial offering at least)

[cointerra]

BTC mining is a drag race, the one who has the most hashing power the earliest wins. I think there's no need for shiny hardware. Unless 28nm cointerra is 10x or more efficient than 55nm Bitfury this hardware is already late in the game. Good luck though, underdogs have certainly changed the rules of the game in the past .

It will be WAY more than 10x efficient than Bitfury

[Flying Hellfish]

Perhaps I missed it on the site (or more likely it's not on the site yet as sales don't appear to be open yet) but what is (or will be) corporate policy on pre-order refunds?

[jlsminingcorp]

BTC mining is a drag race, the one who has the most hashing power the earliest wins. I think there's no need for shiny hardware. Unless 28nm cointerra is 10x or more efficient than 55nm Bitfury this hardware is already late in the game. Good luck though, underdogs have certainly changed the rules of the game in the past .

It will be WAY more than 10x efficient than Bitfury

Wow! WAY less than 0.08 W/GH/s. Can we hold you to that? If so you should be advertising it in the OP, as that's a pretty unique USP.

[-ck]

Here we go again...

[cointerra]

BTC mining is a drag race, the one who has the most hashing power the earliest wins. I think there's no need for shiny hardware. Unless 28nm cointerra is 10x or more efficient than 55nm Bitfury this hardware is already late in the game. Good luck though, underdogs have certainly changed the rules of the game in the past .

It will be WAY more than 10x efficient than Bitfury

Wow! WAY less than 0.08 W/GH/s. Can we hold you to that? If so you should be advertising it in the OP, as that's a pretty unique USP.

Perf/mm2 and Perf/W are two different metrics. When someone was asking about 10x more than bitfury, I am assuming they were referring to Perf/mm2. Regardless, we are better than BitFury in Perf/W and WAY better in Perf/mm2.

[Bicknellski]

BTC mining is a drag race, the one who has the most hashing power the earliest wins. I think there's no need for shiny hardware. Unless 28nm cointerra is 10x or more efficient than 55nm Bitfury this hardware is already late in the game. Good luck though, underdogs have certainly changed the rules of the game in the past .

It will be WAY more than 10x efficient than Bitfury

Wow! WAY less than 0.08 W/GH/s. Can we hold you to that? If so you should be advertising it in the OP, as that's a pretty unique USP.

What is the $ per Gh/s price for the miner it is put in? That would be the real measure right?

[Loredo]

I'm personally looking to be a customer not an investor that's called a customer so I will be passing (on their initial offering at least)

Exactly so! The difference between a pre-order and an equity investor goes all the way back in concept to Merton and Black's concepts which underpin modern option pricing theory.  

Here's the difference:

A pre-order is like a "bond;"  if the company succeeds, you get a defined payout: your machine.  If the company fails, you lose your entire investment.

A venture equity investment is like a "call option:"  if the company succeeds, you have a call on a share of the profit from all machines, as well as on the whole future of the company.  If the company fails, your lose your entire investment.

Note the "if the company fails" sentence is identical in both.

Note the "if the company succeeds" sentence is, well, kind of like ASICminer shares v a BFL minirig purchase.

[eve]

So far None, Yes None of this guys have delivered on time. Butterfly, Avalon, will knc and bitfury delivers on time?

[Flashman]

When I last looked deeply into 28nm early in the spring, it did have costs that seemed inconceivable for BTCers to support...... however it appears now that 28nm fab capacity has been significantly overbuilt, so the costs have been falling like a rock.

Some of course could be scammers, and some of course could be incompetent from either a business or engineering standpoint, but seems recent flurry of 28nm activity is not in and of itself suspicious for aforementioned reason.

[crumbs]

... Founder Dr. Naveed Sherwani's idea was to select best-in-class technology from the open market and apply it through an engineering process focused on three goals: low cost, high schedule predictability, and high reliability. ...

This is a bit OT, and probably obvious to most, but short & worth saying:

To sort the wheat from the chaff, use the Tilde Test.

The Tilde Test is simplicity itself:  If negating a statement (sticking a "~" in front of it) makes it unenlightening, the original statement is also unenlightening.
In other words, if ~A tells you nothing, then A *also* tells you nothing.

As applied to the standard PR copy above:
"Founder Dr. Naveed Sherwani's idea was to select best-in-class worst-in-class technology from the open market and apply it through an engineering process focused on three goals: low high cost, high low schedule predictability, and high low reliability."

The Tilde Test, AKA the Duh Test.  

Edit:  Just sick of reading through all the boilerplate PR, just realized above sounds patronizing.  Just a vent.

[Loredo]

When I last looked deeply into 28nm early in the spring, it did have costs that seemed inconceivable for BTCers to support...... however it appears now that 28nm fab capacity has been significantly overbuilt, so the costs have been falling like a rock.

Some of course could be scammers, and some of course could be incompetent from either a business or engineering standpoint, but seems recent flurry of 28nm activity is not in and of itself suspicious for aforementioned reason.

Yep, even six weeks ago, you can find incontrovertible, no-uncertain-terms claims in posts (see the KnC thread) that anyone who believed in 28nm - based devices was believing in Unicorns.

Now, beyond the incredibly impressive bitfury "garage build," there are three groups of professional designers at 28nm.  Moves fast, this biness.

[joeventura]

Unwatching this thread because it is clearly going downhill.

You have a talented team, with reputation and a million in seed money and you yutzes want to know the price already.

[hchc]

Just saying hi from Austin. It's about time. Let me know if you need any help.

[2112]

Perf/mm2 and Perf/W are two different metrics. When someone was asking about 10x more than bitfury, I am assuming they were referring to Perf/mm2. Regardless, we are better than BitFury in Perf/W and WAY better in Perf/mm2.

This is the first paragraph that actually contained technical information.

Seems like they are a front-end house with crew of front-end designers. To make a big gain in hashing performance they will need back-end expertise in analog design, not anything related to CPU architecture, cryptography or design for testability.

From the content-free press release that says "today our CEO put the pants on starting with his left leg, the same way as he did it the past" one can clearly infer that they are scared shitless and witless. The usual ass-kising PR doesn't work well when the ass-to-kiss is distributed, like in Bitcoin.

I wouldn't expect any breakthroughs from them. CAD-monkeys they aren't, but they also are sailing for a territory that is new for them. I expect another safe static CMOS logic design like from every one else thus far. Don't expect them to explore the frontier of Bitcoin hashing. They gave themselves no time for it.

Obviously, there is a small possibility that the insipid PR is just a cover-up for the ace-in-a-sleeve of a designer who already did several iterations of the hasher design on a side while working at the previous job.

[cypherdoc]

Perf/mm2 and Perf/W are two different metrics. When someone was asking about 10x more than bitfury, I am assuming they were referring to Perf/mm2. Regardless, we are better than BitFury in Perf/W and WAY better in Perf/mm2.

This is the first paragraph that actually contained technical information.

Seems like they are a front-end house with crew of front-end designers. To make a big gain in hashing performance they will need back-end expertise in analog design, not anything related to CPU architecture, cryptography or design for testability.

From the content-free press release that says "today our CEO put the pants on starting with his left leg, the same way as he did it the past" one can clearly infer that they are scared shitless and witless. The usual ass-kising PR doesn't work well when the ass-to-kiss is distributed, like in Bitcoin.

I wouldn't expect any breakthroughs from them. CAD-monkeys they aren't, but they also are sailing for a territory that is new for them. I expect another safe static CMOS logic design like from every one else thus far. Don't expect them to explore the frontier of Bitcoin hashing. They gave themselves no time for it.

Obviously, there is a small possibility that the insipid PR is just a cover-up for the ace-in-a-sleeve of a designer who already did several iterations of the hasher design on a side while working at the previous job.

2112, how do you perceive Simon Barber and his technical crew?

[aerobatic]

Are you saying there's no more gains to be had by optimising datapaths, efficient implementation and/or scaling up the number of hasher units?

and presumably you're saying that every time NVidia or ATI bring out a faster GPU that pushes faster math or higher polygon counts, that they have resorted to analogue optimisation to make it happen?  i really doubt that many people resort to analogue asic design.. it just takes too long and the result isn't always predictable nor accurately simulateable.  bitfury is a very notable exception (and not the rule).. but even bitfury expected a faster chip than they ended up with... (the labels on the chip say 5GH, which is at least double what they ended up with).   Im not knocking the bitfury chip nor its designer, who I think is awesome!  im just saying that expecting every asic designer to go into the analogue domain is unlikely and impractical.  theres plenty that can be done in the digital domain.

Perf/mm2 and Perf/W are two different metrics. When someone was asking about 10x more than bitfury, I am assuming they were referring to Perf/mm2. Regardless, we are better than BitFury in Perf/W and WAY better in Perf/mm2.

This is the first paragraph that actually contained technical information.

Seems like they are a front-end house with crew of front-end designers. To make a big gain in hashing performance they will need back-end expertise in analog design, not anything related to CPU architecture, cryptography or design for testability.

From the content-free press release that says "today our CEO put the pants on starting with his left leg, the same way as he did it the past" one can clearly infer that they are scared shitless and witless. The usual ass-kising PR doesn't work well when the ass-to-kiss is distributed, like in Bitcoin.

I wouldn't expect any breakthroughs from them. CAD-monkeys they aren't, but they also are sailing for a territory that is new for them. I expect another safe static CMOS logic design like from every one else thus far. Don't expect them to explore the frontier of Bitcoin hashing. They gave themselves no time for it.

Obviously, there is a small possibility that the insipid PR is just a cover-up for the ace-in-a-sleeve of a designer who already did several iterations of the hasher design on a side while working at the previous job.

[crumbs]

Are you saying there's no more gains to be had by optimising datapaths, efficient implementation and/or scaling up the number of hasher units?

and presumably you're saying that every time NVidia or ATI bring out a faster GPU that pushes faster math or higher polygon counts, that they have resorted to analogue optimisation to make it happen?  ...

Sorry to break in, a quick question:  Is optimising layout to reduce noise & timing errors considered digital or analog domain? 

[2112]

Are you saying there's no more gains to be had by optimising datapaths, efficient implementation and/or scaling up the number of hasher units?

and presumably you're saying that every time NVidia or ATI bring out a faster GPU that pushes faster math or higher polygon counts, that they have resorted to analogue optimisation to make it happen?  i really doubt that many people resort to analogue asic design.. it just takes too long and the result isn't always predictable nor accurately simulateable.  bitfury is a very notable exception (and not the rule).. but even bitfury expected a faster chip than they ended up with... (the labels on the chip say 5GH, which is at least double what they ended up with).   Im not knocking the bitfury chip nor its designer, who I think is awesome!  im just saying that expecting every asic designer to go into the analogue domain is unlikely and impractical.  theres plenty that can be done in the digital domain.

I'm not going to fight with your strawmen about Nvidia/ATI. Just quoting for the future reference.

There's no need to bullshit here about "optimising datapaths". SHA-256 is basically just a pair of 32-bit-wide shift registers with some cobinatorial logic thrown in the feedback loops. The cryptographers at NIST/NSA/etc. worked really hard to make sure that this logic is not minimisable in any meaningfull way because that would make it susceptible to cryptoanalysis. The "architectural" tricks would've already been exploited by the cryptoanalysts. There isn't any way to optimize power by e.g. not clocking parts of the circuit when not in productive use, which is where the most of modern CPUs and GPUs save power. So please no further low-power bullshit unless you can tell us how your low-power strategy applies to a circuit with 50% signal toggle probability. Nobody's going to run a pocket bitmine on a battery power.

There are some implementation tricks possible that minimize the critical timing paths, but they are all already published in an open literature or at most behind the ACM/IEEE paywalls. Other designers already took advantage of them, bitfury even sort-of republished the information behind the paywall.

Anyone who implemented SHA-256, even in software, knows that it is a self-testing logic, so please no further bullshit about design for testability.

The last remaining avenue for the significant gains is by somehow exploiting the high toggle rate in the circuit. The gates and flip/flops change state at the rate very close to the maximum possible, which normally happens only in a test structure called ring oscillator. My personal bet is that the progress will come from designers that take advantage of that and instead of using the bang-bang static logic use something out-of-ordinary: maybe some relatively obscure dynamic logic or some low-noise logic current-mode logic (a.k.a. source-coupled logic). Or the combination of the above: DyCML. Or something which I haven't even heard of.

Anyway, if anyone of you is going to visit Cointerra: ask them about their BSIM4 models, which of the 5 process corners they've simulated thus far, pay close attention if they have anyone working in analog simulators to optimize metal thickness and optimize the transistor/gate geometry to facilitate the best power noise bypass.

Bitfury's 5GH chip currently hashes slower primarily because nobody had spend any time on the problem of heath-sinking the QFN package. Also QFN is wire-bonded, which basically is a collection of half-turn induction coils. Those require very careful analog resonant pin/pad connection design, which again nobody had spend time on.

The way I see it, the progress will come from another company, which has designers experienced in analog/mixed signal ICs and who did high-power designs like cellular tower radios or synthetic aperture radars.

Edits: spelling and underlining.

[Xian01]

I don't like these "coming soon" announcements with no technical details of products coming out.

Having said that, if these guys are in Austin, I have a few trips planned there before the New Year, driving back and forth from Dallas, and would be happy to report on any demos or product these guys are developing if they are entertaining visitors.

[Flashman]

The way I see it, the progress will come from another company, which has designers experienced in analog/mixed signal ICs and who did high-power designs like cellular tower radios or synthetic aperture radars.

Hmmm, do you think that implies some advantage towards KNC, considering ORSoC is supposed to have cellular experience?

[cointerra]

So, what's your company USP (Unique Selling Point) compared with others?!
[/quote]

Our USP is highest performance for lowest cost and lowest power; $/GH and GH/W.

[cardcomm]

Thanks for rooting for Cointerra! We will make all Texans proud

Most real Texans aren't proud of anything that goes on in Austin, with the possible exception of football.  And then, only some years.   

In any case, I wish you the best of luck and greatest of fortune!

Uhm... I'm as REAL a Texan as it gets. With the possible exception of the politics, I'm pretty darn proud of Austin. No, I don't live there (I'm a little further south), but's it's a helluva fun place to visit! I'm always puzzled when people badmouth Austin...

BTW, it's sure been a mild summer so far...

[2112]

Hmmm, do you think that implies some advantage towards KNC, considering ORSoC is supposed to have cellular experience?

Which side of the cellular? In the pocket or on the tower?

If you can answer the above question you can deduct my answer based on my previous post.

[Loredo]

Uhm... I'm as REAL a Texan as it gets. With the possible exception of the politics, I'm pretty darn proud of Austin. No, I don't live there (I'm a little further south), but's it's a helluva fun place to visit! I'm always puzzled when people badmouth Austin...

BTW, it's sure been a mild summer so far...

Well, I just checked Lockhart on wunderground dot com, and it's showing 96F / 108 heat index.  See ya in September.

And, you know I was joshin' about real Texans v Austin, right?  But every state has a town which many citizens are fond of prefacing with "The People's Republic of..."  Even many who, to their Father Confessor, will admit to being secretly proud of the town and its accomplishments.

[Ytterbium]

I hope you (cointerra) realize that it will not be easy to aquire money from pre-orders at this point in time. It would be much easier to sell shares of your company, which could still work although you went with private investors so far.

Also I hope you realize that there is a not so unlikely scenario where energy efficiency from ASICs < 1W/GH will never matter. In order to make it matter the network would have to grow > 50 PHash/s while the usd/btc price would stay at 100$. The more the price rises..

First of all, there's no way a "legit" American company is going to sell shares on a virtual stock exchange at this point in time.  There are tons of laws about selling securities in the U.S. It's not going to happen.

Secondly, whether or not they can take pre-orders depends on how much they charge. If they're chips are cheap enough they could potentially still sell chips. It all depends on the $/Ghash. 

If they're $1/Gh/s, for example I'm sure they'll have plenty of people willing to buy from them. That would be like selling an Avalon for $80. Do you think you'd have trouble selling an Avalon for that price in November or December?

Not saying they'll hit that price, though. But the way things are shaping up people are probably going to be terrified to pre-order at anything but the lowest prices in Oct/Nov.

Which in turn means the network hashrate will likely start to top out.

At this point, though trying to make any kind of prediction impossible.

[Ytterbium]

So far None, Yes None of this guys have delivered on time. Butterfly, Avalon, will knc and bitfury delivers on time?

Bitfury was supposed to ship their chips in July.  So far I haven't heard anyone complain about not getting their chips.

[tacoman71]

Awesome. All I need now is some videos.

[Flashman]

But the way things are shaping up people are probably going to be terrified to pre-order at anything but the lowest prices in Oct/Nov.

Yup, unless something amazing happens to the price of BTC by then I'm gonna be looking to buy at under $5 a gigahash. Even that might sound equivalent to original "AM blade pricing" if everyone ships on time by then.

[PeZ]

Guys...give your head a shake.

All we see here is someone created a website with a bunch of names from LinkedIn and put one of the names on the domain purchase.

The nicely formatted "news release" was created by the website designer and has not been published by any reputable source.

I have not seen any third party confirmation. Ravi's twitter is protected so we can't see tweets from him.

No one uses Bitcointalk to disseminate this kind of business information if they are capable of reaching a wider audience through respected media outlets.

[ampu]

So, what's your company USP (Unique Selling Point) compared with others?!

Our USP is highest performance for lowest cost and lowest power; $/GH and GH/W.

Very good!
 
Now, since it looks like you choose the pre-order business model, you are asking everybody here to be an investor in your company: so please treat us exactly as you did with your "angel" to convince him to put millions in your project.
Go on with details now..

[minternj]

So, what's your company USP (Unique Selling Point) compared with others?!

Our USP is highest performance for lowest cost and lowest power; $/GH and GH/W.

Very good!
 
Now, since it looks like you choose the pre-order business model, you are asking everybody here to be an investor in your company: so please treat us exactly as you did with your "angel" to convince him to put millions in your project.
Go on with details now..

The pitch to the angel goes like this... " We will get your money back as soon as we get the preorder money." You already saw the pitch to you in the OP.

[crumbs]

Guys...give your head a shake.

All we see here is someone created a website with a bunch of names from LinkedIn and put one of the names on the domain purchase.

The nicely formatted "news release" was created by the website designer and has not been published by any reputable source.

I have not seen any third party confirmation. Ravi's twitter is protected so we can't see tweets from him.

No one uses Bitcointalk to disseminate this kind of business information if they are capable of reaching a wider audience through respected media outlets.

Don't be hatin' on Pantera, brah!   Ohshi...  Panthera.  no.  TerraCoin?  Cool site, anyhow.

[Ytterbium]

No one uses Bitcointalk to disseminate this kind of business information if they are capable of reaching a wider audience through respected media outlets.

Why not?  No one else is going to care. KnC sold out their first two production days posting here, People tried to poor in over $1.8 million dollars into the Labcoin IPO, and it looks like even BTCGarden's IPO was successful as well, with the major source of news about the products being here and the chinese bitcoin forums.

You can definitely get your hands on millions of dollars just from posting on these forums.  Problem is I wonder if investors are tapped out at this point.

[goxed]

Meanwhile
http://bitcoinexaminer.org/avalon-might-be-getting-a-200-million-investment-and-20nm-technology-to-become-the-leader-of-the-mining-market/

[Loredo]

Meanwhile
http://bitcoinexaminer.org/avalon-might-be-getting-a-200-million-investment-and-20nm-technology-to-become-the-leader-of-the-mining-market/

"Boss, we're getting BFL'ed out there something awful.  Do you think we should hire some people and work on order fulfillment?"

"No, fuck that.  Payroll is such a pain in the ass.  Let's just make up some story of how we're going to be King of the Hill again, and get some shill mouthpiece to publish it.  The sheep will eat it up, and nobody will want to say anything to piss off the King, right?"

[Bitcoinorama]

Meanwhile
http://bitcoinexaminer.org/avalon-might-be-getting-a-200-million-investment-and-20nm-technology-to-become-the-leader-of-the-mining-market/

If you're listing that link it's worth posting the following link as well to remind people why Bitcoin was created a year later and why an ex-senior government bond advisor who worked for Lehman Brothers and has a love for making money may be the last person you want involved in Bitcoin...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers

Edit: This has to be BS. Just google: Avalon 200 million

[cointerra]

So, what's your company USP (Unique Selling Point) compared with others?!

Our USP is highest performance for lowest cost and lowest power; $/GH and GH/W.

Very good!
 
Now, since it looks like you choose the pre-order business model, you are asking everybody here to be an investor in your company: so please treat us exactly as you did with your "angel" to convince him to put millions in your project.
Go on with details now..

The details will be released soon to the public, in a few weeks. If you want details right away, please send an email to info@cointerra.com, and we can setup a call to reveal more under an NDA just like our angels did.

[mik3]

If you sign up to their email list, the reply-to email is joeri.cornelissens@gmail.com googling that looks like someone in Belgium... what's all that about?

[minternj]

If you sign up to their email list, the reply-to email is joeri.cornelissens@gmail.com googling that looks like someone in Belgium... what's all that about?

Interesting, same guy that registered http://www.asic-chips.com selling avalon chips

[cointerra]

If you sign up to their email list, the reply-to email is joeri.cornelissens@gmail.com googling that looks like someone in Belgium... what's all that about?

Joeri is an angel in our team, also managing the web development.

[cointerra]

If you sign up to their email list, the reply-to email is joeri.cornelissens@gmail.com googling that looks like someone in Belgium... what's all that about?

Interesting, same guy that registered http://www.asic-chips.com selling avalon chips

Joeri is our web developer and angel. Cointerra has nothing to do with avalon chips.

[ampu]

So, what's your company USP (Unique Selling Point) compared with others?!

Our USP is highest performance for lowest cost and lowest power; $/GH and GH/W.

Very good!
 
Now, since it looks like you choose the pre-order business model, you are asking everybody here to be an investor in your company: so please treat us exactly as you did with your "angel" to convince him to put millions in your project.
Go on with details now..

The details will be released soon to the public, in a few weeks. If you want details right away, please send an email to info@cointerra.com, and we can setup a call to reveal more under an NDA just like our angels did.

I'll send you an email tomorrow, in the meanwhile please send a PM with an NDA draft.
Since this could be interesting for many here you can maybe setup a single conference call with all people interested

[Loredo]

Since this could be interesting for many here you can maybe setup a single conference call with all people interested

I think it goes without saying, but, with due respect to all, and without any accusations, that would leak like a sieve, NDA's or no NDA's.

IMO, barring a specific, vetted, defined opportunity, one either has to announce, or keep quiet.

[erk]

Here we go again...

lol

ASIC startup's seem to be a crowded market. Hasn't really made any impact on supply though.

[americandesi]

@cointerra when can we expect some details about the products? Atleast the technical details of the chips.?

[ampu]

Since this could be interesting for many here you can maybe setup a single conference call with all people interested

I think it goes without saying, but, with due respect to all, and without any accusations, that would leak like a sieve, NDA's or no NDA's.

IMO, barring a specific, vetted, defined opportunity, one either has to announce, or keep quiet.

Sorry, I meant this: if, for example, you and me signed NDA then they could make a conference call with you and me all together

[cointerra]

@cointerra when can we expect some details about the products? Atleast the technical details of the chips.?

The details of the products and technical specs will be announced this month.

[erk]

@cointerra when can we expect some details about the products? Atleast the technical details of the chips.?

That's a good question, why start a forum thread to discuss a product that has no public information other than it's an efficient, 28nm ASIC chip.  When you start a forum thread it usually means you have something to tell the public, otherwise why bother?

[jspielberg]

That's a good question, why start a forum thread to discuss a product that has no public information other than it's an efficient, 28nm ASIC chip.  When you start a forum thread it usually means you have something to tell the public, otherwise why bother?

Seems like we have been seeing several empty 28nm projects get announced recently with:
1) No Hash/BTC metrics
2) No Hash/Watt metric
3) No availability (except very vague "end of the year" type stuff.

Maybe to keep up with the Jones'.  It must seem like the gen2 asic train is leaving the station and they want people to know that the have a car as well (if not yet on the tracks).

[Loredo]

Sorry, I meant this: if, for example, you and me signed NDA then they could make a conference call with you and me all together

Yes, I understand.  My point, though, was this:  if you and I are simply potential customers, there is no reason to provide us with any information that could not be announced generally.  

On the other hand, if either you, or I, or both, expressed potential involvement in the business, then they, and we, would have no interest or advantage in a joint discussion.

[Flying Hellfish]

@cointerra when can we expect some details about the products? Atleast the technical details of the chips.?

That's a good question, why start a forum thread to discuss a product that has no public information other than it's an efficient, 28nm ASIC chip.  When you start a forum thread it usually means you have something to tell the public, otherwise why bother?

They are looking to round up investors customers, get the PR train rolling ASAP!


And we will offer substantial discounts for pre orders

http://www.cointerra.com/faq/

[2112]

2112, how do you perceive Simon Barber and his technical crew?

You know, I tried to understand your question in the context of the currently publicly available information and came up the following answer.

It seems like you are looking for the advice about investing in the hands of the poker players who keep their cards very close to their vests. My engineering advice is a referral to a professional poker player. On this board that would be Brian Micon.

It may look like a blow-off, but it really isn't. I feel ethically obliged to urge people to learn how to distinguish between gambling and investing.

On this occasion I'd like to post a good advice that reeses had given about a year ago:

I'd recommend reading "The Big Con" for some of the history, and watching Confidence and The Sting as examples of the "classic" con games.

I read that book, and although it was written between the world wars, it is very pertaining to Bitcoin. Here's a short excerpt:

• Locating and investigating a well-to-do victim. (Putting the mark up.)
• Gaining the victim’s confidence. (Playing the con for him.)
• Steering him to meet the insideman. (Roping the mark.)
• Permitting the insideman to show him how he can make a large amount of money dishonestly. (Telling him the tale.)
• Allowing the victim to make a substantial profit. (Giving him the convincer.)
• Determining exactly how much he will invest. (Giving him the breakdown.)
• Sending him home for his amount of money. (Putting him on the send.)
• Playing him against a big store and fleecing him. (Taking off the touch.)
• Getting him out of the way as quietly as possible. (Blowing him off.)
• Forestalling action by the law. (Putting in the fix.)

[FCTaiChi]

Maybe to keep up with the Jones'.  It must seem like the gen2 asic train is leaving the station and they want people to know that the have a car as well (if not yet on the tracks).

I think everyone doing 28nm and lower are in the design phase.  Though they have announced only recently, their webpage states that they are getting close to finishing the initial design.

[jlsminingcorp]

BTC mining is a drag race, the one who has the most hashing power the earliest wins. I think there's no need for shiny hardware. Unless 28nm cointerra is 10x or more efficient than 55nm Bitfury this hardware is already late in the game. Good luck though, underdogs have certainly changed the rules of the game in the past .

It will be WAY more than 10x efficient than Bitfury

Wow! WAY less than 0.08 W/GH/s. Can we hold you to that? If so you should be advertising it in the OP, as that's a pretty unique USP.

Perf/mm2 and Perf/W are two different metrics. When someone was asking about 10x more than bitfury, I am assuming they were referring to Perf/mm2. Regardless, we are better than BitFury in Perf/W and WAY better in Perf/mm2.

Ah, I thought it sounded a bit too good to be true. It would have been great to have a 1TH/s miner that used about the same amount of power as a lightbulb . I don't want to put words in other people's mouths, but I suspect quite a few people here would read "efficiency" as power efficiency. Silicon efficiency is good too .

[Loredo]

Maybe to keep up with the Jones'.  It must seem like the gen2 asic train is leaving the station and they want people to know that the have a car as well (if not yet on the tracks).

Yeah, except, as I said earlier:  all of the pre-orders stand the risk of being blown to dust by one real provider, and the probability of one appearing is increasing by the day.  So time is of the essence from that standpoint.  But at an increasing rate, fewer and fewer care how many cars are hitched up to the Twenty-Unicorn driven wagon train. 

The half-life of the honeymoon following the announcement of Manna Mañana is dropping faster than the network hash rate is rising.  Actually, that half-life may be inversely correlated with the latter.

I have to go to dinner. 

[erk]

BTC mining is a drag race, the one who has the most hashing power the earliest wins. I think there's no need for shiny hardware. Unless 28nm cointerra is 10x or more efficient than 55nm Bitfury this hardware is already late in the game. Good luck though, underdogs have certainly changed the rules of the game in the past .

It will be WAY more than 10x efficient than Bitfury

Wow! WAY less than 0.08 W/GH/s. Can we hold you to that? If so you should be advertising it in the OP, as that's a pretty unique USP.

Perf/mm2 and Perf/W are two different metrics. When someone was asking about 10x more than bitfury, I am assuming they were referring to Perf/mm2. Regardless, we are better than BitFury in Perf/W and WAY better in Perf/mm2.

Ah, I thought it sounded a bit too good to be true. It would have been great to have a 1TH/s miner that used about the same amount of power as a lightbulb . I don't want to put words in other people's mouths, but I suspect quite a few people here would read "efficiency" as power efficiency. Silicon efficiency is good too .

Silicon efficiency effects price, ultimately your ROI, it's probably more important than power efficiency as most ASiCs are not close to worrying about that yet.

[Ytterbium]

Silicon efficiency effects price, ultimately your ROI, it's probably more important than power efficiency as most ASiCs are not close to worrying about that yet.

Yup, smaller die = more dies per wafer = lower cost per chip.

[cointerra]

That's a good question, why start a forum thread to discuss a product that has no public information other than it's an efficient, 28nm ASIC chip.  When you start a forum thread it usually means you have something to tell the public, otherwise why bother?

Seems like we have been seeing several empty 28nm projects get announced recently with:
1) No Hash/BTC metrics
2) No Hash/Watt metric
3) No availability (except very vague "end of the year" type stuff.

Maybe to keep up with the Jones'.  It must seem like the gen2 asic train is leaving the station and they want people to know that the have a car as well (if not yet on the tracks).

We have all the information you are looking for. However, as you know there are other 28nm ASICs in the design phase, and we don't want to reveal too much of our deck before their specs are locked down.

We made a public posting so people know about us and can contact us and we can provide a lot more information under an NDA.

[crumbs]

...
We have all the information you are looking for. However, as you know there are other 28nm ASICs in the design phase, and we don't want to reveal too much of our deck before their specs are locked down.

We made a public posting so people know about us and can contact us and we can provide a lot more information under an NDA.

@cointerra -
Your competitor, FastHash HashFast, has provided us with spectacular specs & a word of honor that they'll protect the bitcoin network from unscrupulous miners.
They have also promised to protect us, their customers, with assurance they will not flood the market with dirt-cheap hashpower.
Are you willing to offer the same promise?  Do you love us as much as they do?

[papamoi]

hi guys

i m little doubtful about the time delivery and the costs of their chips:

i ve contacted open silicon for an asic in april and they told me they wouldn t be able to deliver anything before 8/10 months so when cointerra is anouncing something for the end of this year i m very surprised.

i was told that the nre would be at least 3 m ,so i don t know how they are planning to succeed with 1/2 of this amount

anyway i m following as others

let s watch

[2112]

Sorry to break in, a quick question:  Is optimising layout to reduce noise & timing errors considered digital or analog domain? 

I thought a bit about how to answer this question without jumping into jargon and nitpicking. It will not be a direct answer, but an open ending line of thought.

Go into the miner software threads that have the longest history: cgminer and bfgminer. Note what was the allowable and optimum value for the hardware error rate reported as the technologies changed: CPU, GPU, FPGA & ASIC. Do you notice the trend? Which way is moving? What is the allowable error margin for some of the digital and analog devices that you know? You can make up your own mind after answering those questions.

Based on the past experience this subforum will soon be flooded by the posts from the professional bologna slicers. Would you like some NDA with your bologna?

[cointerra]

...
We have all the information you are looking for. However, as you know there are other 28nm ASICs in the design phase, and we don't want to reveal too much of our deck before their specs are locked down.

We made a public posting so people know about us and can contact us and we can provide a lot more information under an NDA.

@cointerra -
Your competitor, FastHash HashFast, has provided us with spectacular specs & a word of honor that they'll protect the bitcoin network from unscrupulous miners.
They have also promised to protect us, their customers, with assurance they will not flood the market with dirt-cheap hashpower.
Are you willing to offer the same promise?  Do you love us as much as they do?

We love you more. So we will provide you more perf/$ and perf/W. We will not flood the market with dirt-cheap hashpower, but it will be cheaper than others.

[ProfMac]

Thanks for rooting for Cointerra! We will make all Texans proud

Most real Texans aren't proud of anything that goes on in Austin, with the possible exception of football.  And then, only some years.   

In any case, I wish you the best of luck and greatest of fortune!

Ahem.  Many of the best and brightest go to Austin.

[crumbs]

...
We have all the information you are looking for. However, as you know there are other 28nm ASICs in the design phase, and we don't want to reveal too much of our deck before their specs are locked down.

We made a public posting so people know about us and can contact us and we can provide a lot more information under an NDA.

@cointerra -
Your competitor, FastHash HashFast, has provided us with spectacular specs & a word of honor that they'll protect the bitcoin network from unscrupulous miners.
They have also promised to protect us, their customers, with assurance they will not flood the market with dirt-cheap hashpower.
Are you willing to offer the same promise?  Do you love us as much as they do?

We love you more. So we will provide you more perf/$ and perf/W. We will not flood the market with dirt-cheap hashpower, but it will be cheaper than others.

OK then, as long as i get a kiss first & cab fare home.

[cointerra]

hi guys

i m little doubtful about the time delivery and the costs of their chips:

i ve contacted open silicon for an asic in april and they told me they wouldn t be able to deliver anything before 8/10 months so when cointerra is anouncing something for the end of this year i m very surprised.

i was told that the nre would be at least 3 m ,so i don t know how they are planning to succeed with 1/2 of this amount

anyway i m following as others

let s watch

Don't be doubtful. You don't know when we started to think we won't deliver. Our costs are lower because we are able to pack more GH/mm2, and we are able to do that because our W/GH is low.

[erk]

We love you more. So we will provide you more perf/$ and perf/W. We will not flood the market with dirt-cheap hashpower, but it will be cheaper than others.

The market is unconventional compared to most other IT components. At the moment there are more ASICs producers than there are GPU  chip producers for crypto mining.

You have ASICminer, Avalon, BFL, Bitfury, KNCminer, and you guys, yet If I want to purchase an ASIC device today, the best I can hope for is a negative ROI Block Erupter, or wait for months upon months in a seemingly never ending queue with cash tied up in pre-orders. I have never seen a market like that before, something has to give.

I think the winner will be the company that doesn't rely on pre-orders to fund development/production, and has stock on hand for new product launches. When an item runs out of stock, they stop taking money for it, and send you an email when it's back in stock so you can then place an order. That's how most other online electronics orders seem to work.

[FCTaiChi]

I agree erk, that the scenario you lay out would be ideal.  I think, though, that it is likely the winning companies will be the ones to deliver the most current in chip technology.
Until now ASICs have not used the most cutting edge designs.  Catching up to the most current tech should slow this growth rate a little bit.  Rather than being locked to what is achievable by the bitcoin community, it will be limited by the main technology curve.

[Ytterbium]

I think the winner will be the company that doesn't rely on pre-orders to fund development/production, and has stock on hand for new product launches. When an item runs out of stock, they stop taking money for it, and send you an email when it's back in stock so you can then place an order. That's how most other online electronics orders seem to work.

Possibly - but the problem is that they will also be able to charge a lot more money

The "We hate pre-orders" crowd isn't thinking clearly. They want massive profits with zero risk.  But chip makers have no reason to sell chips at anything less then what they think the chips would produce over the next 6, 12, months or whatever timeframe they have.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!

At some point the market will be flooded and you'll be able to buy chips at close to their production cost.  But the difficulty will be so high it'll be hard to make more then your electrical costs.
___

Maybe in the future people will sell solar panels that will switch between bitcoin mining and selling electricity on the grid based on the current profitability...

[erk]

I agree erk, that the scenario you lay out would be ideal.  I think, though, that it is likely the winning companies will be the ones to deliver the most current in chip technology.
Until now ASICs have not used the most cutting edge designs.  Catching up to the most current tech should slow this growth rate a little bit.  Rather than being locked to what is achievable by the bitcoin community, it will be limited by the main technology curve.

How many people make mining rigs from HD 7990 cards? They would be the most cutting edge design atm. Most mining rigs are HD7950 based for ROI reasons, as the cutting edge generally costs more. There is a sweet spot.

There is not much electronics in an ASIC miner when you pull them apart and have a look, compared to say a GPU card, so the margins on the components are really high atm. That will fall with 5 or more manufacturers fighting for market share over the next 6mths. the price wars are on, you already have this crazy phenomenon where people are cancelling their spot in one pre-order queue, just to get into yet another pre-order queue from a slightly cheaper vendor!

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

I don't believe that for a moment, as the sale revenue for a device that takes you most likely less than an hour to build, is way more than the weeks it would take to get the same money from it by using it to mine.

[Ytterbium]

How many people make mining rigs from HD 7990 cards? They would be the most cutting edge design atm. Most mining rigs are HD7950 based for ROI reasons, as the cutting edge generally costs more. There is a sweet spot.

The 7990 isn't more "cutting edge", it's just two 7970s on the same circuit board. The market is gamers, not miners who obviously don't care about ROI.  The high price is likely due to low production volume, and the fact it's basically a totally necessary luxury item people buy for bragging rights.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

I don't believe that for a moment, as the sale revenue for a device that takes you most likely less than an hour to build, is way more than the weeks it would take to get the same money from it by using it to mine.

That's insane. No one would sell something for the amount of money they think they'd be able to make in a couple weeks. 

Unless they felt the only way they could stay in business was to immediately flip the money and buy an even larger quantity of chips in order to stay competitive. And in that case it would mean the difficulty was going up so quickly that after a couple weeks the units would barely make anything anyway.

This idea that chip companies are just going to mass produce mining chips, take on all the risk associated with chip failure and rising difficulty and then just sell their chips to other people to make a guaranteed profit is not going to happen.  It's a fantasy.

People are not going to assume all the risk and then give away most of the profits.

[solex]

This idea that chip companies are just going to mass produce mining chips, take on all the risk associated with chip failure and rising difficulty and then just sell their chips to other people to make a guaranteed profit is not going to happen.  It's a fantasy.

People are not going to assume all the risk and then give away most of the profits.

No surprise that many of the ASICminer customers will struggle to earn back the price they paid for their hardware.  AM does the maths with projected difficulty, and takes the lions share of any conceivable returns of what they sell.

[goxed]

Meanwhile
http://bitcoinexaminer.org/avalon-might-be-getting-a-200-million-investment-and-20nm-technology-to-become-the-leader-of-the-mining-market/

If you're listing that link it's worth posting the following link as well to remind people why Bitcoin was created a year later and why an ex-senior government bond advisor who worked for Lehman Brothers and has a love for making money may be the last person you want involved in Bitcoin...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers

Edit: This has to be BS. Just google: Avalon 200 million

 
http://openruby.com/bitcoin/pages/16096426-famed-trader-joe-lewis-backs-bitcoin

[dexX7]

Hi cointerra,

to build trust, I request a very simple thing to begin with: provide a proof of identify. This could simply be done by taking a picture of yourself with a note and greeting to this forum.

The people listed on the website are more or less well known, but till now, I can't be sure, if you are, who you claim to be.

[cointerra]

Hi cointerra,

to build trust, I request a very simple thing to begin with: provide a proof of identify. This could simply be done by taking a picture of yourself with a note and greeting to this forum.

The people listed on the website are more or less well known, but till now, I can't be sure, if you are, who you claim to be.

Even if I did that you could claim that I stole the picture from the web somewhere and posted here. We understand that until we start shipping hardware it will be hard to build complete trust. For those who have real interest in Cointerra either as retail customers, or bulk order customers or investors I request that they send an email to info@cointerra.com with their interest and we can discuss more.

[Ytterbium]

I wonder if this announcement, as well as HashFast's are more about getting the attention of major investors, like the guy who just invested $200m into Avalon as opposed to us 'lil pre-order guys.

[dexX7]

Even if I did that you could claim that I stole the picture from the web somewhere and posted here. We understand that until we start shipping hardware it will be hard to build complete trust. For those who have real interest in Cointerra either as retail customers, or bulk order customers or investors I request that they send an email to info@cointerra.com with their interest and we can discuss more.

I explain how I see this: You came here with a trust balance of 0 and I offered you a way to gain +1. Even if this is a small step on a larger trust scale, it is a start. Denying my request just moved your trust balance to -2. Digital pictures aren't tamper proofed, but I didn't ask for a random picture of one of the listed persons, but a personalized photo which would be harder to tamper. Like I said, step by step. Don't get me wrong, I had a neutral, non-biased position.

[eve]

Hi cointerra,

to build trust, I request a very simple thing to begin with: provide a proof of identify. This could simply be done by taking a picture of yourself with a note and greeting to this forum.

The people listed on the website are more or less well known, but till now, I can't be sure, if you are, who you claim to be.

Even if I did that you could claim that I stole the picture from the web somewhere and posted here. We understand that until we start shipping hardware it will be hard to build complete trust. For those who have real interest in Cointerra either as retail customers, or bulk order customers or investors I request that they send an email to info@cointerra.com with their interest and we can discuss more.

They must have tons of their own money, so why would they tell you all the facts of their asic chip.

[deadgiveaway]

Hi cointerra,

to build trust, I request a very simple thing to begin with: provide a proof of identify. This could simply be done by taking a picture of yourself with a note and greeting to this forum.

The people listed on the website are more or less well known, but till now, I can't be sure, if you are, who you claim to be.

Even if I did that you could claim that I stole the picture from the web somewhere and posted here. We understand that until we start shipping hardware it will be hard to build complete trust. For those who have real interest in Cointerra either as retail customers, or bulk order customers or investors I request that they send an email to info@cointerra.com with their interest and we can discuss more.

What do you need investors for if you have all the money you need? Will these investors be in position to destroy Bitcoin mining for the small guy if they have the money to buy potentially unlimited mining power? This is worrisome, and could sabotage Bitcoin entirely. I hope you opt to distribute power responsibly, if you truly have the means to create the fastest hardware. Responsibility is very important in this community, and those who violate it are never forgiven.

[Ytterbium]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

[jlsminingcorp]

Silicon efficiency effects price, ultimately your ROI, it's probably more important than power efficiency as most ASiCs are not close to worrying about that yet.

Yup, smaller die = more dies per wafer = lower cost per chip.

[sarcasm] Guys we really need to think about our environmental impact too. I want to see a full life cycle assessment from all new ASIC manufacturers from now on. [/sarcasm]

Seriously though, power efficiency probably isn't a big deal in terms of cost, but it does have a big impact on how you deal with heat. It's a lot easier to get rid of 80W than it is to get rid of 800W and so on.

[cointerra]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

[ElusiveMiner]

Will you guys be selling off any stocks, or are you completely self-funded?

[nightengale]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

Thank you for addressing this. Hopefully this will get you back into the positives on dexX7's magical trust scale.   

[Bitcoinorama]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

Thank you for addressing this. Hopefully this will get you back into the positives on dexX7's magical trust scale.   

Admittedly anything that verifies helps, but they are who they say they are.

[crumbs]

...
The "We hate pre-orders" crowd isn't thinking clearly. They want massive profits with zero risk.  But chip makers have no reason to sell chips at anything less then what they think the chips would produce over the next 6, 12, months or whatever timeframe they have.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

A pre-order purchase are not wagers on whether a company will deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether the company intends to deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether a company exists.  
It is a purchase -- like any other.  
It is also not an investment in a company -- those are called "investment," or, when little info is available, "gamble" or "foolishness."

Further, referring to Cointerra "mining company" is wholly unfounded.  By its own admission, Cointerra is presently doing no mining, owns no mining hardware, mining components or has any other tangible links to mining.  
If we chose to be loose & liberal with our terminology, we could call Cointerra "virtually a virtual mining company but not quite" or "possibly a fabless ASIC company with no ASICs to its name, but prob'ly just trolling."

Further still, claiming that a fully-funded ASIC manufacturer would simply mine with its own chips only exposes *another layer of absurdity,* a different topic i'd be happy to chat about later.  For now, suffice it to say it's one of the oddest justifications for giving money to strangers that i've ever heard.  Yes, buying mining gear may be a fool's errand, but buying it with no assurance the gear will ever materialize, or that you'll ever receive it?  Sillier still.

[dexX7]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

Thanks. Already up here:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/ravidiyengar

[aerobatic]

This is the way that the 28nm asic companies have chosen to operate their businesses, starting with KnCMiner and now Hashfast and soon after, Cointerra.

The simple fact is that to enter production of a 28nm asic has high up front cost that must be financed somehow (investors or pre-orders).  Taking pre-orders is effectively crowd funding, and its very effective as everyone could potentially win (provided the company can be trusted to ship when they say they will).  Its a very similar risk to backing a Kickstarter campaign.   We (the miners) get to place our bets on which horse(s) to back. and the mining asic companies get to raise the production costs that they need to enter full scale production and deliver to their customers.  Im fine with this model and have previously ordered from KnC (and I intend to order from the other new guys too when they let me)

The older generation asic companies doing 55, 65, 110 or 130nm didn't have the same problem because the up front production costs were much lower... (NRE's in the thousands instead of millions!) and even then, some of those still pursued the pre-order strategy (and failed to deliver - yes, I am one of those still waiting for my BFL boxes, which I assume will not be delivered to me in a commercially useful time)

and as someone else said, if these companies raised their production costs some other way, and didn't need to take pre-orders to finance their production... then either their price of hardware would be much more expensive (to cover the investor's return) or, as was mentioned, they wouldn't need to sell any and would be mining themselves like asicminer and no doubt some others out there.

there are other models that might work too, for instance, building out a mine and selling terahashes on it (like what cloudhash and coinlab are doing).  but theyre still taking prepaid orders to fund their purchases of stock from all the usual suspects.

of course, you could always find someone wealthy to back you (like the insane rumour of joe lewis backing a bitcoin asic).. but the sums involved don't seem to make sense to the investors.. and if it were true, there is no chance that this asic would be offered for sale to miners like us.

I wouldn't be surprised if the mining asic companies that can raise their production costs without doing presales, probably wont sell their mining gear until after they've used it to mine some coins themselves and will sell it when it gets a bit longer in the tooth, while they move onto the next asic.

You say its insane to make preorders without any assurance.. but how do you get assurance other than the word of the company and presumably knowing who the principals of the company are, and whether they have backgrounds you believe in.  any order of anything in the bitcoin space has a level of risk attached to it that isn't present in the real world when you order a book from amazon.  Youre betting on the execution risk of a startup, and betting on bitcoin at the same time.  The only way you can decide whether its a good bet is to look closely at the people behind the company and decide if you think theyre up to the challenge.  Its exactly the same way that VCs make investment decisions in the real world.  Bet on the people behind the company.

...
The "We hate pre-orders" crowd isn't thinking clearly. They want massive profits with zero risk.  But chip makers have no reason to sell chips at anything less then what they think the chips would produce over the next 6, 12, months or whatever timeframe they have.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

A pre-order purchase are not wagers on whether a company will deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether the company intends to deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether a company exists.  
It is a purchase -- like any other.  
It is also not an investment in a company -- those are called "investment," or, when little info is available, "gamble" or "foolishness."

Further, referring to Cointerra "mining company" is wholly unfounded.  By its own admission, Cointerra is presently doing no mining, owns no mining hardware, mining components or has any other tangible links to mining.  
If we chose to be loose & liberal with our terminology, we could call Cointerra "virtually a virtual mining company but not quite" or "possibly a fabless ASIC company with no ASICs to its name, but prob'ly just trolling."

Further still, claiming that a fully-funded ASIC manufacturer would simply mine with its own chips only exposes *another layer of absurdity,* a different topic i'd be happy to chat about later.  For now, suffice it to say it's one of the oddest justifications for giving money to strangers that i've ever heard.  Yes, buying mining gear may be a fool's errand, but buying it with no assurance the gear will ever materialize, or that you'll ever receive it?  Sillier still.

[Bitcoinorama]

This is the way that the 28nm asic companies have chosen to operate their businesses, starting with KnCMiner and now Hashfast and soon after, Cointerra.

The simple fact is that to enter production of a 28nm asic has high up front cost that must be financed somehow (investors or pre-orders).  Taking pre-orders is effectively crowd funding, and its very effective as everyone could potentially win (provided the company can be trusted to ship when they say they will).  Its a very similar risk to backing a Kickstarter campaign.   We (the miners) get to place our bets on which horse(s) to back. and the mining asic companies get to raise the production costs that they need to enter full scale production and deliver to their customers.  Im fine with this model and have previously ordered from KnC (and I intend to order from the other new guys too when they let me)

The older generation asic companies doing 55, 65, 110 or 130nm didn't have the same problem because the up front production costs were much lower... (NRE's in the thousands instead of millions!) and even then, some of those still pursued the pre-order strategy (and failed to deliver - yes, I am one of those still waiting for my BFL boxes, which I assume will not be delivered to me in a commercially useful time)

and as someone else said, if these companies raised their production costs some other way, and didn't need to take pre-orders to finance their production... then either their price of hardware would be much more expensive (to cover the investor's return) or, as was mentioned, they wouldn't need to sell any and would be mining themselves like asicminer and no doubt some others out there.

there are other models that might work too, for instance, building out a mine and selling terahashes on it (like what cloudhash and coinlab are doing).  but theyre still taking prepaid orders to fund their purchases of stock from all the usual suspects.

of course, you could always find someone wealthy to back you (like the insane rumour of joe lewis backing a bitcoin asic).. but the sums involved don't seem to make sense to the investors.. and if it were true, there is no chance that this asic would be offered for sale to miners like us.

I wouldn't be surprised if the mining asic companies that can raise their production costs without doing presales, probably wont sell their mining gear until after they've used it to mine some coins themselves and will sell it when it gets a bit longer in the tooth, while they move onto the next asic.

You say its insane to make preorders without any assurance.. but how do you get assurance other than the word of the company and presumably knowing who the principals of the company are, and whether they have backgrounds you believe in.  any order of anything in the bitcoin space has a level of risk attached to it that isn't present in the real world when you order a book from amazon.  Youre betting on the execution risk of a startup, and betting on bitcoin at the same time.  The only way you can decide whether its a good bet is to look closely at the people behind the company and decide if you think theyre up to the challenge.  Its exactly the same way that VCs make investment decisions in the real world.  Bet on the people behind the company.

...
The "We hate pre-orders" crowd isn't thinking clearly. They want massive profits with zero risk.  But chip makers have no reason to sell chips at anything less then what they think the chips would produce over the next 6, 12, months or whatever timeframe they have.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

A pre-order purchase are not wagers on whether a company will deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether the company intends to deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether a company exists.  
It is a purchase -- like any other.  
It is also not an investment in a company -- those are called "investment," or, when little info is available, "gamble" or "foolishness."

Further, referring to Cointerra "mining company" is wholly unfounded.  By its own admission, Cointerra is presently doing no mining, owns no mining hardware, mining components or has any other tangible links to mining.  
If we chose to be loose & liberal with our terminology, we could call Cointerra "virtually a virtual mining company but not quite" or "possibly a fabless ASIC company with no ASICs to its name, but prob'ly just trolling."

Further still, claiming that a fully-funded ASIC manufacturer would simply mine with its own chips only exposes *another layer of absurdity,* a different topic i'd be happy to chat about later.  For now, suffice it to say it's one of the oddest justifications for giving money to strangers that i've ever heard.  Yes, buying mining gear may be a fool's errand, but buying it with no assurance the gear will ever materialize, or that you'll ever receive it?  Sillier still.

These are all good points, but most importantly for all concerned with 'future product' that are paid for now, pay with protected payment means, i.e. credit cards (after calling your card issuer and confirming their consumer protection stance, varies country to country, card to card).

Paypal will only protect you for 45 days, credit cards can protect you for significantly longer, but not debit cards, although debit cards and bank transfer payments can be protected for upto 45 days if paid for through Paypal.

Ironically KnC claim to be ready by the end of September, and now is around 45 days before the end of September, so now it's a completely risk free bet with KnC that you can pay by Paypal and cancel in 44 days if they have no evidence of producing a fully working product!!

Hopefully misinformation and claims of a scam can soon be put to bed.

[aerobatic]

Its also not fair to compare IRL with anything bitcoin related.  theyre so different as to make comparison impossible.

there is no 'money printing' machine that can be bought IRL.   that's a bitcoin eccentricity.. the fact that you can buy a box that will 'mine coins' for you and generates an ROI measured in days or weeks and not years... is a very bitcoin related thing.  And to get such a thing, requires you to take risks not normally associated with IRL !

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

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You say its insane to make preorders without any assurance.. but how do you get assurance other than the word of the company and presumably knowing who the principals of the company are, and whether they have backgrounds you believe in.  any order of anything in the bitcoin space has a level of risk attached to it that isn't present in the real world when you order a book from amazon.  Youre betting on the execution risk of a startup, and betting on bitcoin at the same time.  The only way you can decide whether its a good bet is to look closely at the people behind the company and decide if you think theyre up to the challenge.  Its exactly the same way that VCs make investment decisions in the real world.  Bet on the people behind the company.

I never addressed the sanity of making speculative pre-orders.  I simply pointed out that "pre-order" is not the correct term for wagering on a product that may or may not materialise.  
In cases where the buyer bases his decision on sufficient data, the correct term is "investment."  
In cases where the decision is based on little or no data, it's called a "gamble."
In cases where the data is false, sensationalized or misleading, it is called "being scammed."

This is not pedantry or semantics -- it points to the very core of the bawing regarding BFL and now Avalon.
If the distinction between pre-orders and investments is truly rhetorical, why the temper tantrums?  People invested their nickels, took their chances, and when the investment proves to be subpar, they cry to PayPal?  
Why do you think PayPal doesn't let you buy IRL stock & chargeback?  Or gamble in Vegas & chargeback if you lost?  Why do i even need to point this out to adults?

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These are all good points, but most importantly for all concerned with 'future product' that are paid for now, pay with protected payment means, i.e. credit cards (after calling your card issuer and confirming their consumer protection stance, varies country to country, card to card).

Paypal will only protect you for 45 days, credit cards can protect you for significantly longer, but not debit cards, although debit cards and bank transfer payments can be protected for upto 45 days if paid for through Paypal.

Ironically KnC claim to be ready by the end of September, and now is around 45 days before the end of September, so now it's a completely risk free bet with KnC that you can pay by Paypal and cancel in 44 days if they have no evidence of producing a fully working product!!

Hopefully misinformation and claims of a scam can soon be put to bed.

If you are gambling, or investing, while pretending that you are purchasing a pre-order, *you are scamming the credit card companies or PayPal.*  Please understand that what you are doing is functionally identical to gambling on credit & charging back when you lose.  I'm not saying it's not an interesting scam, but it's just us chickens here, you're amongst friends, let's call a spade a spade.

[aerobatic]

Now we're getting quite a bit off topic... but, as someone who comes from the gambling sector... (my day job is online poker in europe)... I can tell you that people regularly buy poker chips with their credit cards and paypal... and play, and then sometimes they lose.. and occasionally, just occasionally, they try to pretend that it wasn't them and they claim to have their credit charged back.

the gambling industry calls this 'friendly fraud'... ie: its not stolen credit cards but simply people having 'buyer remorse' the day after they had a big loss and trying to pretend it wasn't them.

the annoying thing about this is that the credit card companies and paypal will always side with the customer, even if we can prove without a shadow of a doubt that it was them, and the player used the correct pin, and the same ip address, and had the same play habits and poker strategies as every other time they played for the last x months.... but still, the cc companies take from our account and pay back the player.  that's just 'our cost' of doing business and we have to live with it.

This is not pedantry or semantics -- it points to the very core of the bawing regarding BFL and now Avalon.
If the distinction between pre-orders and investments is truly rhetorical, why the temper tantrums?  People invested their nickels, took their chances, and when the investment proves to be subpar, they cry to PayPal?  
Why do you think PayPal doesn't let you buy IRL stock & chargeback?  Or gamble in Vegas & chargeback if you lost?  Why do i even need to point this out to adults?

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Its also not fair to compare IRL with anything bitcoin related.  theyre so different as to make comparison impossible.

  Thanks, at least someone has a sense of humor.

there is no 'money printing' machine that can be bought IRL.   that's a bitcoin eccentricity..

Oh, where to begin...  I have about a hundred arguments in the alternative for this.  I'd like to at least point out that *any investment* is your "money-printing machine."

the fact that you can buy a box that will 'mine coins' for you and generates an ROI measured in days or weeks and not years... is a very bitcoin related thing.  And to get such a thing, requires you to take risks not normally associated with IRL !

Pointing out that bitcoin investing, no matter how many "virtual" prefixes are added to obfuscate the fact, is still IRL.  I wish i could bypass sympathy and bask in schadenfreude...

[Bitcoinorama]

...
These are all good points, but most importantly for all concerned with 'future product' that are paid for now, pay with protected payment means, i.e. credit cards (after calling your card issuer and confirming their consumer protection stance, varies country to country, card to card).

Paypal will only protect you for 45 days, credit cards can protect you for significantly longer, but not debit cards, although debit cards and bank transfer payments can be protected for upto 45 days if paid for through Paypal.

Ironically KnC claim to be ready by the end of September, and now is around 45 days before the end of September, so now it's a completely risk free bet with KnC that you can pay by Paypal and cancel in 44 days if they have no evidence of producing a fully working product!!

Hopefully misinformation and claims of a scam can soon be put to bed.

If you are gambling, or investing, while pretending that you are purchasing a pre-order, *you are scamming the credit card companies or PayPal.*  Please understand that what you are doing is functionally identical to gambling on credit & charging back when you lose.  I'm not saying it's not an interesting scam, but it's just us chickens here, you're amongst friends, let's call a spade a spade.

Look if the companies are claiming they can meet these deadlines, and have gone to lengths to provide proof as to who they are, their experience etc. and are asking you to hand over payment and are making it possible to do so by payment methods that charge fees specifically to insure against fraud then where is anything underhand happening from the point of view of the buyer?

You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

I rang and spoke to my credit cards issuing bank, I did not try to defraud them, I explained explicitly in no uncertain terms what it was for and there may be a risk of fraudulent activity and they told me that is what their consumer protection was for and I was protected. I confirmed that they are giving me the ok to proceed, and they said yes. So no one's trying to defraud the payment processor, or the card issuing banks unless it's the vendor.

Believe it or not Paypal do pre-screen sellers using them as a payment processor especially when there are unexplained sudden spikes in sales. KnC had a massive issue winning them over and had to provide a huge amount of evidence due to the miss selling of pre-orders on eBay and delayed delivery. KnC felt the Paypal brand was an important association to have.

There were issues in the beginning where their Paypal account was locked until they sat down and ironed things out with Paypal, also Paypal is not active in most of Asia, and doesn't recognise Asian address format. So they had to work around that...

Determining how to pay with a means that has purchase protection when you have any reason to be uncertain is just performing due diligence and acting on it.

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You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

No. Either grant my point that there is a qualitative difference between "pre-order" and "invest," or concede that you are investing on credit and charging back when things go wrong.  I hope this explains why  i take pains to differentiate the two.

I rang and spoke to my credit cards issuing bank, I did not try to defraud them, I explained explicitly in no uncertain terms what it was for and there may be a risk of fraudulent activity and they told me that is what their consumer protection was for and I was protected. I confirmed that they are giving me the ok to proceed, and they said yes. So no one's trying to defraud the payment processor unless it's the vendor...

Please understand that phone call means nothing, much less sets a legal precedent.  You are, in fact, defrauding the credit card company unless you believe you will get your miner with the same certainty as you believe you'll get a book from Amazon.  You, as you have admitted, are nowhere as certain.

[Bitcoinorama]

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You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

No. Either grant my point that there is a qualitative difference between "pre-order" and "invest," or concede that you are investing on credit and charging back when things go wrong.  I hope this explains why  i take pains to differentiate the two.

Technically we are buying an electronic box we plug in a wall that connects to the net. Whether it's wizardry makes a profit is yet to be seen. No company can guarantee anything but their best effort we will realise ROI as too many factors are outside of their control, like the Bitcoin economy.

I rang and spoke to my credit cards issuing bank, I did not try to defraud them, I explained explicitly in no uncertain terms what it was for and there may be a risk of fraudulent activity and they told me that is what their consumer protection was for and I was protected. I confirmed that they are giving me the ok to proceed, and they said yes. So no one's trying to defraud the payment processor unless it's the vendor...

Please understand that phone call means nothing, much less sets a legal precedent.  You are, in fact, defrauding the credit card company unless you believe you will get your miner with the same certainty as you believe you'll get a book from Amazon.  You, as you have admitted, are nowhere as certain.

I am pretty damn certain. I've proven to myself they are a real company with experience of meeting deadlines. I have not defrauded myself or my card issuer at all, even they have confirmed that, furthermore I went to the length of recording the conversation, so on their head be it legally. I've gone to greater lengths proving they are legitimate than I've ever done with an amazon seller.

There is far more chance of my card issuing bank standing by my purchase which is protected under UK law by section 75 of the consumer credit act, especially after speaking to their own fraud department and having a fraud protection representative of my card issuing company stating on record saying I can proceed, twice.

With Amazon the resolution of the dispute is between you, the seller and Amazon's goodwill unless, you similarly pay by credit card and then you are protected by section 75 as well.

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...your edit:
Believe it or not Paypal do pre-screen sellers using them as a payment processor especially when there are unexplained sudden spikes in sales. KnC had a massive issue winning them over and had to provide a huge amount of evidence due to the miss selling of pre-orders on eBay and delayed delivery. KnC felt the Paypal brand was an important association to have.

There were issues in the beginning where their Paypal account was locked until they sat down and ironed things out with Paypal, also Paypal is not active in most of Asia, and doesn't recognise Asian address format. So they had to work around that...

Determining how to pay with a means that has purchase protection when you have any reason to be uncertain is just performing due diligence and acting on it.

I was merely pointing out you're now likely to be safer in purchasing from KnCminer with Paypal now if they are to make good on their claims of having proof of a working product by September though that might not cover you past 45 days and the product is in your hands, again ring your issuing bank, check what protection exists on your credit card, and make an informed choice as opposed to acting on heresay and impulse. In any case you'll likely be protected to such point you see real evidence of an actual mining product from them...

Why is this relevant?  Do you or do you not agree that a pre-order is different from investment or speculation?  Shall we backtrack?  would you like to change your position?
I limit the scope of my replies to concise, defendable points, and now the conversation is steered to which of the various investment schemes makes the best pre-order.  

The other question still remains:  Why all the bawing over the BFL & Avalon?  Why are the informed investors being hauled away in whaambulances?

[Bitcoinorama]

...your edit:
Believe it or not Paypal do pre-screen sellers using them as a payment processor especially when there are unexplained sudden spikes in sales. KnC had a massive issue winning them over and had to provide a huge amount of evidence due to the miss selling of pre-orders on eBay and delayed delivery. KnC felt the Paypal brand was an important association to have.

There were issues in the beginning where their Paypal account was locked until they sat down and ironed things out with Paypal, also Paypal is not active in most of Asia, and doesn't recognise Asian address format. So they had to work around that...

Determining how to pay with a means that has purchase protection when you have any reason to be uncertain is just performing due diligence and acting on it.

I was merely pointing out you're now likely to be safer in purchasing from KnCminer with Paypal now if they are to make good on their claims of having proof of a working product by September though that might not cover you past 45 days and the product is in your hands, again ring your issuing bank, check what protection exists on your credit card, and make an informed choice as opposed to acting on heresay and impulse. In any case you'll likely be protected to such point you see real evidence of an actual mining product from them...

Why is this relevant?  Do you or do you not agree that a pre-order is different from investment or speculation?  Shall we backtrack?  would you like to change your position?
I limit the scope of my replies to concise, defendable points, and now the conversation is steered to which of the various investment schemes makes the best pre-order.  

The other question still remains:  Why all the bawing over the BFL & Avalon?  Why are the informed investors being hauled away in whaambulances?

Only in so much as above I have stated your investment buys you an electronic box that connects to the Internet and doesn't make any guaranteed promises of ROI.

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The other question still remains:  Why all the bawing over the BFL & Avalon?  Why are the informed investors being hauled away in whaambulances?

Only as above I have stated your investment buys you an electronic box that connects to the Internet and doesn't make any guaranteed promises of ROI.

Let's get this out of the way -- boldface above.  BFL is shipping boxen.  Avalon is shipping boxen & chips.

[Bitcoinorama]

...
The other question still remains:  Why all the bawing over the BFL & Avalon?  Why are the informed investors being hauled away in whaambulances?

Only as above I have stated your investment buys you an electronic box that connects to the Internet and doesn't make any guaranteed promises of ROI.

Let's get this out of the way -- boldface above.  BFL is shipping boxen.  Avalon is shipping boxen & chips.

The bawling of BFL and Avalon is due to inept project management and idiots that perform no due diligence on payment methods.

BFL buyers can claim refunds if they paid by credit card and bothered to ring their credit card issuing bank.

Out of the thousands complaining they have their funds held hostage, how many have picked up the phone, even once? None.

If that's how responsible they are with cash, and how much their money means to them, BFL are entitled to the funds. You know some of these muppets actually used debt to purchase, as opposed to money they can afford to risk??

I gave this analogy the other day, and it compares to having been taken hostage and being tied to a chair, only the no knots were tied, the door was left wide open and the kidnappers left the building. Would you stay?

Apparently most Butterfly Labs buyers would...

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You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

No. Either grant my point that there is a qualitative difference between "pre-order" and "invest," or concede that you are investing on credit and charging back when things go wrong.  I hope this explains why  i take pains to differentiate the two.

Technically we are buying an electronic box we plug in a wall that connects to the net. Whether it's wizardry makes a profit is yet to be seen. No company can guarantee anything but their best effort we will realise ROI as too many factors are outside of their control, like the Bitcoin economy.

Technically, i would love to hear your recorded phone convo, or read a transcript -- if i told my credit card company i was gambling on the card & planing to charge back, i'm not certain if they'd laugh at me, call the cops or call the nuthouse.

I am pretty damn certain. I've proven to myself they are a real company with experience of meeting deadlines. I have not defrauded myself or my card issuer at all, even they have confirmed that, furthermore I went to the length of recording the conversation, so on their head be it legally. I've gone to greater lengths proving they are legitimate than I've ever done with an amazon seller.

There is far more chance of my card issuing bank standing by my purchase which is protected under UK law by section 75 of the consumer credit act, especially after speaking to their own fraud department and having a fraud protection representative of my card issuing company stating on record saying I can proceed, twice.

With Amazon the resolution of the dispute is between you, the seller and Amazon's goodwill unless, you similarly pay by credit card and then you are protected by section 75 as well.

You are telling me that you are more certain that these companies will deliver than you are with Amazon purchases.  No offence, but this speakes volumes about your judgement.

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The other question still remains:  Why all the bawing over the BFL & Avalon?  Why are the informed investors being hauled away in whaambulances?

Only as above I have stated your investment buys you an electronic box that connects to the Internet and doesn't make any guaranteed promises of ROI.

Let's get this out of the way -- boldface above.  BFL is shipping boxen.  Avalon is shipping boxen & chips.

The bawling of BFL and Avalon is due to inept project management and idiots that perform no due diligence on payment methods.
BFL buyers can claim refunds if they paid by credit card and bothered to ring their credit card issuing bank.

Out of the thousands complaining they have their funds held hostage, how many have picked up the phone, even once? None.

If that's how responsible they are with cash, and how much their money means to them, BFL are entitled to the funds. You know some of these muppets actually used debt to purchase, as opposed to money they can afford to risk??

I gave this analogy the other day, and it compares to having been taken hostage and being tied to a chair, only the no knots were tied, the door was left wide open and the kidnappers left the building. Would you stay?

Apparently most Butterfly Labs buyers would...

I'm glad we at least cleared BFL of any wrongdoing.  I admire your consistency. 

[Flashman]

There's no need to bullshit here about "optimising datapaths". SHA-256 is basically just a pair of 32-bit-wide shift registers with some cobinatorial logic thrown in the feedback loops. The cryptographers at NIST/NSA/etc. worked really hard to make sure that this logic is not minimisable in any meaningfull way because that would make it susceptible to cryptoanalysis. The "architectural" tricks would've already been exploited by the cryptoanalysts. There isn't any way to optimize power by e.g. not clocking parts of the circuit when not in productive use, which is where the most of modern CPUs and GPUs save power. So please no further low-power bullshit unless you can tell us how your low-power strategy applies to a circuit with 50% signal toggle probability. Nobody's going to run a pocket bitmine on a battery power.

Thinking this is worth highlighting again, compared to a CPU, every operation is "worst case instruction mix", if anyone is telling you that TDP should be much less than worst case power on a SHA-256(256) ASIC then they are full of crap.

Intel in order to implement their "cloud on a chip" projects (Experimental/prototype) 80+ core CPUs, had to come up with aggressive load balancing and core de-activation strategies. These appear to be shelved, although the management strategies may be applied in future mainstream CPUs, it was probably found that it was no more effective than running multiple virtual machines on say a 6 core hyperthreaded chip, due to having to idle so many cores at once.

A sort of visualisation of the difference this makes for the less technical might be imagining a simple implementation of a "pong" game on the side of a building with 60W lightbulbs being the pixels. Imagining a 48x32 playfield with the bats being 12 bulbs (2x6) the ball being 1 bulb, for 25 bulbs total. Implementing it as white on black means you only have to have 25 bulbs lit at a time, 1500W, could jusssst about do it off a household circuit. However, if you want to do black on white, you have to have (48*32)-25 bulbs lit, which would be 90,660W. The difference here is extreme to make the point, but the CPU is more like the white on black, and SHA core more like the black on white. Though to get closer to real percentages, we could say a 16x16 array where the CPU can light between 2 and 5 bulbs at once, and the SHA core randomly lights between 7 and 9 bulbs at once. So instantaneous power on CPUlike array may be between 120 and 300W whereas the SHAlike array would be between 420 and 540W.... but the CPU designer would split the difference and call TDP about 220W, so you might be left with the idea that you could SHA on a 16x16 array of lightbulbs for only 220W power usage... where the 16x16 lightbulbs are our proxy for a 100+ Million transistor array.

Not only that but also, imagine we are building a pneumatic/steam computer in about 1830, and we have large piston clearances and pipes made out of stitched leather. There's a physical limit to how many switches/pistons can be activated at once, because although they should not consume steam to remain in position, there are leaks everywhere and the boiler can maintain only so many PSI, get a bigger boiler, the leaks just blow harder and you're not much further ahead. This is sort of what is happening on small process nodes now, everything bleeds electrons, worse than that, unlike the steam computer, it's a more closed environment so your leakage doesn't just go into open air, it makes "pressure" in a pipe that should be empty at the moment, leading to spurious operation. Try and raise the activation threshold of your valves and you need more PSI, which in turn leaks harder... meanwhile the resistance to flow makes more heat, consumes power and your holes get bigger.

Anyway, when you see the little demo engine going chuff, chuff, chuff, don't be too impressed, thinking if they can do it once, they can copy and paste it 20, 50, 200 times, it's not whether the pistons and valves do the right thing, it's whether they do it with close enough tolerance, and stitch the leather pipes together well enough that they can make 20 or 50 of them run without losing steam everywhere.

[Bitcoinorama]

...
You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

No. Either grant my point that there is a qualitative difference between "pre-order" and "invest," or concede that you are investing on credit and charging back when things go wrong.  I hope this explains why  i take pains to differentiate the two.

Technically we are buying an electronic box we plug in a wall that connects to the net. Whether it's wizardry makes a profit is yet to be seen. No company can guarantee anything but their best effort we will realise ROI as too many factors are outside of their control, like the Bitcoin economy.

Technically, i would love to hear your recorded phone convo, or read a transcript -- if i told my credit card company i was gambling on the card & planing to charge back, i'm not certain if they'd laugh at me, call the cops or call the nuthouse.

I am pretty damn certain. I've proven to myself they are a real company with experience of meeting deadlines. I have not defrauded myself or my card issuer at all, even they have confirmed that, furthermore I went to the length of recording the conversation, so on their head be it legally. I've gone to greater lengths proving they are legitimate than I've ever done with an amazon seller.

There is far more chance of my card issuing bank standing by my purchase which is protected under UK law by section 75 of the consumer credit act, especially after speaking to their own fraud department and having a fraud protection representative of my card issuing company stating on record saying I can proceed, twice.

With Amazon the resolution of the dispute is between you, the seller and Amazon's goodwill unless, you similarly pay by credit card and then you are protected by section 75 as well.

You are telling me that you are more certain that these companies will deliver than you are with Amazon purchases.  No offence, but this speakes volumes about your judgement.

Paahahahahaa! No i'm not, what a flawed assumption to make, my judgement is indicative of just making sure I have a protected purchase in case they don't deliver as promised. This is the same reason you'd want to ensure any consumer protection exists when dealing with any new businesses. For the record I certainly think there is more chance of delivery than a lot of Amazon Sellers though, assuming you appreciate how Amazon works...

That said what is fraudulent is people riding on credit cards and/or Paypal and bailing if hashrate increases too quickly for their comfort. That's not the fault of the banks or the companies manufacturing these devices. That's up to those wishing to purchase to perform further research.

In any case as much as this does bare relevance, this is Cointerra's thread, so back on track, but before we do I just want to leave you with one example of where consumer protection exists specifically for pre-orders:

Holidays, and any kind of pre-booked travel. There are often stories of third party intermediaries going bust and not delivering on promises. Book on ccard and you're covered. Not sure what Paypal's stance on package holidays is, but they are resold on eBay...

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I am pretty damn certain. I've proven to myself they are a real company with experience of meeting deadlines. I have not defrauded myself or my card issuer at all, even they have confirmed that, furthermore I went to the length of recording the conversation, so on their head be it legally. I've gone to greater lengths proving they are legitimate than I've ever done with an amazon seller.
...

You are telling me that you are more certain that these companies will deliver than you are with Amazon purchases.

Paahahahahaa! No i'm not, what a flawed assumption to make, I'm just making sure I have a protected purchase in case they don't the same reason you'd ensure any consumer protection exists when dealing with new businesses. For the record I certainly think there is more chance of delivery than a lot of Amazon Sellers though, assuming you appreciate how Amazon works...

That said what is fraudulent is people riding on cards and bailing if hashrate increases too quickly for their comfort. That's not the fault of the banks or the companies manufacturing these devices.

In other words, you have done thorough research, concluded that comparing the risk of your pre-order to amazon purchase is so absurd that you must laugh, and yet:
1.  You're "pretty damn certain" nonetheless?
2.  You're perfectly willing to pass these lol-worthy risks to your credit card company?  You honestly don't feel just a teency bit in the wrong?

Edit:  Thank goodness for the evil bankers & usurious CC companies!  Without them, bitcoin business itself would be impossible

[Bitcoinorama]

...
I am pretty damn certain. I've proven to myself they are a real company with experience of meeting deadlines. I have not defrauded myself or my card issuer at all, even they have confirmed that, furthermore I went to the length of recording the conversation, so on their head be it legally. I've gone to greater lengths proving they are legitimate than I've ever done with an amazon seller.
...

You are telling me that you are more certain that these companies will deliver than you are with Amazon purchases.

Paahahahahaa! No i'm not, what a flawed assumption to make, I'm just making sure I have a protected purchase in case they don't the same reason you'd ensure any consumer protection exists when dealing with new businesses. For the record I certainly think there is more chance of delivery than a lot of Amazon Sellers though, assuming you appreciate how Amazon works...

That said what is fraudulent is people riding on cards and bailing if hashrate increases too quickly for their comfort. That's not the fault of the banks or the companies manufacturing these devices.

In other words, you have done thorough research, concluded that comparing the risk of your pre-order is so absurd that you must laugh, and yet:
1.  You're "pretty damn certain" nonetheless?
2.  You're perfectly willing to pass these lol-worthy risks to your credit card company?  You honestly don't feel just a teency bit in the wrong?  

Nope, no more than booking a hotel room through a travel agent, less so as I've personally visited the metaphoric hotel KnC for myself to see it exists. Admittedly I haven't had a chance to check my room yet, but for intents and purposes they're an existing hotel and their builders, ORSoC, have built many before over the past decade and they've promised to have it ready for my stay based on their experience. Perhaps they won't, but my credit card company wants my repeat and continued business, some even offer airmiles!

[Loredo]

Edit:  Thank goodness for the evil bankers & usurious CC companies!  Without them, bitcoin business itself would be impossible

Oh, the bitter irony!    

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In other words, you have done thorough research, concluded that comparing the risk of your pre-order is so absurd that you must laugh, and yet:
1.  You're "pretty damn certain" nonetheless?
2.  You're perfectly willing to pass these lol-worthy risks to your credit card company?  You honestly don't feel just a teency bit in the wrong?  

Nope, no more than booking a hotel room through a travel agent, less so as I've personally visited the metaphoric hotel KnC for myself to see it exists. Admittedly I haven't had a chance to check my room yet, but for intents and purposes they're an existing hotel and their builders, ORSoC, have built many before over the past decade and they've promised to have it ready for my stay based on their experience. Perhaps they won't, but my credit card want my repeat and continued business, some even offer airmiles!

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:

You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

[Bitcoinorama]

In other words, you have done thorough research, concluded that comparing the risk of your pre-order is so absurd that you must laugh, and yet:
1.  You're "pretty damn certain" nonetheless?
2.  You're perfectly willing to pass these lol-worthy risks to your credit card company?  You honestly don't feel just a teency bit in the wrong?  

Nope, no more than booking a hotel room through a travel agent, less so as I've personally visited the metaphoric hotel KnC for myself to see it exists. Admittedly I haven't had a chance to check my room yet, but for intents and purposes they're an existing hotel and their builders, ORSoC, have built many before over the past decade and they've promised to have it ready for my stay based on their experience. Perhaps they won't, but my credit card want my repeat and continued business, some even offer airmiles!

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:
You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

Considering my two main banks are;

HSBC; Largest money laundering operation in the world for Mexican drug cartels, overseeing their banking needs for in excess of a decade.

Barclay's; Responsible for the largest ever exposed case of fraud in history. Frontrunning the price fixing of interbank lending rates with full compliance from the UK government.

Both in the billions, both laughable 'record' fines which amount to a paltry percentage of the profits they acquired throughout these activities.

Neither with any criminal prosecution to speak of, no jail terms. A couple of guys resigned with phat bonuses in a national newspaper sideline.

With that in mind the activities surrounding the sale of a few pre-order Bitcoin mining devices I doubt phases these banks. Any fraud an ASIC manufacturer attempts pails in comparison. They guys protecting such purchases are too big to fail after all...

Ironically, when you think about it, it's bittersweet no matter how risky, these guys are willing to absorb the risk associated with our escape from their fraudulent manipulation and grasp on our day to day perceived value of wealth!

[ninjaboon]

arrive in Q4 2013.
To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

Yippee, just in time for Christmas.
Santa's gonna ship ASICs.
nice.

[Flashman]

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:

You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

Heh, that's actually been known to happen on the Spanish Costas.

[crumbs]

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:
You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

Considering my two main banks are;
[...why your banks are dirtbags...]

Finally we get down to it:  You feel justified in scamming your banks because they deserve it -- they're scammers themselves.  
You're colluding with likely scammers to defraud the scammy banks.  Best of luck, but keep in mind that most confidence tricks rely on the mark believing he's not the mark, but a shrewd & cunning member of the crew  

[KS]

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:
You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

Considering my two main banks are;
[...why your banks are dirtbags...]

Finally we get down to it:  You feel justified in scamming your banks because they deserve it -- they're scammers themselves.  
You're colluding with likely scammers to defraud the scammy banks.  Best of luck, but keep in mind that most confidence tricks rely on the mark believing he's not the mark, but a shrewd & cunning member of the crew  

Now that's just low!

[Ytterbium]

Anyway, when you see the little demo engine going chuff, chuff, chuff, don't be too impressed, thinking if they can do it once, they can copy and paste it 20, 50, 200 times, it's not whether the pistons and valves do the right thing, it's whether they do it with close enough tolerance, and stitch the leather pipes together well enough that they can make 20 or 50 of them run without losing steam everywhere.

Simple solution would be to make a very small die.  You get the same hashpower/wafer, but you just spread them out on a large circuit board. That's basically how Avalon works.  240 small chips a couple watts each.

Also, click the ignore button on crumbs people, is is an idiotic troll.

[Bitcoinorama]

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:
You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

Considering my two main banks are;
[...why your banks are dirtbags...]

Finally we get down to it:  You feel justified in scamming your banks because they deserve it -- they're scammers themselves.  
You're colluding with likely scammers to defraud the scammy banks.  Best of luck, but keep in mind that most confidence tricks rely on the mark believing he's not the mark, but a shrewd & cunning member of the crew  

Ok I know you troll, sometimes as in this thread actually providing substance at points.

But what don't you get about consumer protection and the usarious fees charged upon credit card purchases they encourage you to make?

I do have a huge amount of faith in KnC which is more than superficial as I've met everyone involved, and seen what they are capable of. Is there still inherent risk, of course. There could be a delay, but they will make and produce a chip capable of hashing.

Likewise, as this is the Cointerra thread, on paper these guys are credible, hopefully someone will visit. If I was to consider them I might take a jolly to Austin, sign an NDA (which for all intents and purposes is entirely worthless), and see what they are capable of.

To claim I'm undertaking fraud as I acknowledge there could be a delay is ridiculous, think of all the things you buy ahead of time. Credit cards are specifically marketed at protecting you for such purposes. That's not fraudulent use at all.

Now stop this, it's utterly pointless as I'm paying a real company to produce a real product they are more than capable of doing with a protected means of payment which I performed the due diligence in ensuring they were happy with me proceeding and protecting me for.

Perhaps instead of continuing this here you spend an hour talking to the fraud department of Amex and see what they say. What about all the tradespeople who may not deliver as promised? Sure they all like cash in hand, but you know full well you have recourse if you find a legitimate company that accepts card.

[aerobatic]

While your idea is good the example you cited doesnt help...  Avalon is a pretty rusty old chip now and no matter how many of them you put on a board, it doesnt get you a lot of performance and worse, it draws a huge amount of power (per GH).   A couple of watts each, for only a few hundred MH makes it a poor performer compared to these new generation of chips from Bitfury, KnC, hashfast and cointerra...

Avalon maybe was the early 2013 chip of choice... but as we head towards the back end of 2013, its going to be outgunned and outdated pretty fast.  Bitfury is a much better example of putting lots of cheap chips on a board to total some good hashing power, and thats the best example to date of the ant colony approach.  And its power consumption is excellent (especially so when you consider its 55 nm!)

But as you say, Hashpower/wafer and watts/GH are going to be the best ways for us to compare and contrast all of our mining asic options...  does anyone happen to have them all collated into one table?

Simple solution would be to make a very small die.  You get the same hashpower/wafer, but you just spread them out on a large circuit board. That's basically how Avalon works.  240 small chips a couple watts each.

Also, click the ignore button on crumbs people, is is an idiotic troll.

[KS]

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:
You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

Considering my two main banks are;
[...why your banks are dirtbags...]

Finally we get down to it:  You feel justified in scamming your banks because they deserve it -- they're scammers themselves.  
You're colluding with likely scammers to defraud the scammy banks.  Best of luck, but keep in mind that most confidence tricks rely on the mark believing he's not the mark, but a shrewd & cunning member of the crew  

Ok I know you troll, sometimes as in this thread actually providing substance at points.

But what don't you get about consumer protection and the usarious fees charged upon credit card purchases they encourage you to make?

I do have a huge amount of faith in KnC which is more than superficial as I've met everyone involved, and seen what they are capable of. Is there still inherent risk, of course. There could be a delay, but they will make and produce a chip capable of hashing.

Likewise, as this is the Cointerra thread, on paper these guys are credible, hopefully someone will visit. If I was to consider them I might take a jolly to Austin, sign an NDA (which for all intents and purposes is entirely worthless), and see what they are capable of.

To claim I'm undertaking fraud as I acknowledge there could be a delay is ridiculous, think of all the things you buy ahead of time. Credit cards are specifically marketed at protecting you for such purposes. That's not fraudulent use at all.

Now stop this, it's utterly pointless as I'm paying a real company to produce a real product they are more than capable of doing with a protected means of payment which I performed the due diligence in ensuring they were happy with me proceeding and protecting me for.

Perhaps instead of continuing this here you spend an hour talking to the fraud department of Amex and see what they say. What about all the tradespeople who may not deliver as promised? Sure they all like cash in hand, but you know full well you have recourse if you find a legitimate company that accepts card.

I'm still wondering about the actual level of protection under section 75, given the Terms you accepted when you ordered stipulated it was a business sale and you admitted to be a business.

So, one of the two or both is/are acting in bad faith. You're acting in bad faith because you claim to do the trade as an individual (i.e. not a business) to be covered by S75 or a business (which you are not) to be able to buy from them (circumventing the Terms) and they're acting in bad faith because they don't want to offer the necessary security for private customers (and no warranty) - but this is more debatable.

Did you have a lawyer look it over? (apologies if it was mentioned already, TL;DR)

I'm going to look at the same question over here (different laws, different judges).

[Ytterbium]

While your idea is good the example you cited doesnt help...  Avalon is a pretty rusty old chip now and no matter how many of them you put on a board, it doesnt get you a lot of performance and worse, it draws a huge amount of power (per GH).   A couple of watts each, for only a few hundred MH makes it a poor performer compared to these new generation of chips from Bitfury, KnC, hashfast and cointerra...

Sure, but remember - at the time their only competition was BFL and they clearly defeated them.

I think the strategy could still work well.  The KnC chip, for example has four modules with 48 "engine IPs" each, and they are expecting to to use 250W or less.  The heatsink they're planning on using is supposed to be able to dissipate 320W of heat.

But lets say they're wrong and their chip actually ends up putting out 500w.

If each of the 4 engines was on a separate die, and putting out 125W each they'd have a much easier time figuring out a way to keep them cool.

If they split the chip up even more, putting, say 12 "engine IPs" on a chip, if they were twice their expected power output they'd only need to remove 30W of heat per physical package.

On the other hand, at a certain point you're going to drive costs up by requiring more transistors for communication, more complicated circuit boards and more money spent just on IC packaging.

[crumbs]

The hotel room analogy is lolzy, but for slightly different reasons; i'll ftfy:
You call to book a hotel room to find out that there's no hotel yet -- there's only the contractor's kid, who's real clever with tools & swears up & down he'll build the hotel by the time you arrive.  His dad, who has built stuff before (cars, not hotels) promised to help him.
You go ahead and place the reservation -- if the place isn't there when you show up, the CC will cover it.  Death to bankers!

Considering my two main banks are;
[...why your banks are dirtbags...]

Finally we get down to it:  You feel justified in scamming your banks because they deserve it -- they're scammers themselves.  
You're colluding with likely scammers to defraud the scammy banks.  Best of luck, but keep in mind that most confidence tricks rely on the mark believing he's not the mark, but a shrewd & cunning member of the crew  

Ok I know you troll, sometimes as in this thread actually providing substance at points.

But what don't you get about consumer protection and the usarious fees charged upon credit card purchases they encourage you to make?

Let's clear up a few more things:

The usurious fees charged by CC companies are *saintly* compared to percentages charged for bitcoin loans on this very forum.
Further, if you pay your bills on time, there *are no fees to you, the consumer.*  An equivalent to getting a free loan, for a month!  As they say, none better at twice the price.
I'd love to borrow BTC at those usurious rates -- anyone lending?

I do have a huge amount of faith in KnC which is more than superficial as I've met everyone involved, and seen what they are capable of. Is there still inherent risk, of course. There could be a delay, but they will make and produce a chip capable of hashing.

Likewise, as this is the Cointerra thread, on paper these guys are credible, hopefully someone will visit. If I was to consider them I might take a jolly to Austin, sign an NDA (which for all intents and purposes is entirely worthless), and see what they are capable of.

To claim I'm undertaking fraud as I acknowledge there could be a delay is ridiculous, think of all the things you buy ahead of time. Credit cards are specifically marketed at protecting you for such purposes. That's not fraudulent use at all.

You're not undertaking fraud because there's a chance of delays.  You're undertaking fraud because you are investing, rather than pre-ordering, and hedging your bet with chargeback.  You attempt to justify doing this with the following:
1.  Your bankers are scumbags.
2.  That's what buyer protection is for in the first place.

If your banker's scamming justifies your scamming in turn, i have nothing but a sad inkling that they're better at scamming than you -- this all might end in tears.
If you think that buyer protection entitles you to make risky purchases & chargeback if things do not work out, you're simply wrong.  That is not its intended purpose.  
You seem to understand that what you're doing is not strictly legit, hence the "bankers are scumbags, they deserve it" defence (if not, what was your point?).
My point here is relatively benign, i'm not worried about the bankers, they can take care of themselves.  I am worried about the children & the feeble-minded who may believe that your scheme has legitimate merit, and through gullibility lose their money and/or get nailed for fraud.

[Ytterbium]

I'm still wondering about the actual level of protection under section 75, given the Terms you accepted when you ordered stipulated it was a business sale and you admitted to be a business.

So, one of the two or both is/are acting in bad faith. You're acting in bad faith because you claim to do the trade as an individual (i.e. not a business) to be covered by S75 or a business (which you are not) to be able to buy from them (circumventing the Terms) and they're acting in bad faith because they don't want to offer the necessary security for private customers (and no warranty) - but this is more debatable.

Did you have a lawyer look it over? (apologies if it was mentioned already, TL;DR)

I'm going to look at the same question over here (different laws, different judges).

I doubt it'll be that big of an issue,  KnC's refund policy is that you can ask for a refund at any time until they ship your unit. If they turn out to be a scam and violate their refund policy then it shouldn't be too hard to sue them, as we know who they are and Bitcoinorama and KnC are both in the EU.

[Damnsammit]

Very excited about this!  I'd love to support a Texas-based ASIC company

[crumbs]

I'm still wondering about the actual level of protection under section 75, given the Terms you accepted when you ordered stipulated it was a business sale and you admitted to be a business.

So, one of the two or both is/are acting in bad faith. You're acting in bad faith because you claim to do the trade as an individual (i.e. not a business) to be covered by S75 or a business (which you are not) to be able to buy from them (circumventing the Terms) and they're acting in bad faith because they don't want to offer the necessary security for private customers (and no warranty) - but this is more debatable.

Did you have a lawyer look it over? (apologies if it was mentioned already, TL;DR)

I'm going to look at the same question over here (different laws, different judges).

I doubt it'll be that big of an issue,  KnC's refund policy is that you can ask for a refund at any time until they ship your unit. If they turn out to be a scam and violate their refund policy then it shouldn't be too hard to sue them, as we know who they are and Bitcoinorama and KnC are both in the EU.

Nah, shouldn't be that hard to sue them.  We'll do it the same ol' way we handled Pirateat40 -- we'll rant all sorts of vengeance on these boards & wait for our parents the bankers to do something.  
BTW, what does KNC doing in this thread?  Are they on iffy terms with reality too?

[lajz99]

Wow, when you guys start a new thread without all of the BS I may be interested.  This thread is useless at this point.

[S M I L Y]

I am a local Austin resident.  I just shot off an email to them asking for a meetup.

Ill report back what I can if they dont make me sign an NDA.

[Bitcoinorama]

You're not undertaking fraud because there's a chance of delays.  You're undertaking fraud because you are investing, rather than pre-ordering, and hedging your bet with chargeback.  You attempt to justify doing this with the following:
1.  Your bankers are scumbags.
2.  That's what buyer protection is for in the first place.

If your banker's scamming justifies your scamming in turn, i have nothing but a sad inkling that they're better at scamming than you -- this all might end in tears.
If you think that buyer protection entitles you to make risky purchases & chargeback if things do not work out, you're simply wrong.  That is not its intended purpose.  
You seem to understand that what you're doing is not strictly legit, hence the "bankers are scumbags, they deserve it" defence (if not, what was your point?).
My point here is relatively benign, i'm not worried about the bankers, they can take care of themselves.  I am worried about the children & the feeble-minded who may believe that your scheme has legitimate merit, and through gullibility lose their money and/or get nailed for fraud.

No, no, no, and again, no.

You're assuming a hell of a lot there and appear a little unbalanced. Twisting my words and misrepresenting my intention is fraudulent.

My reference to the banks fraud was sarcasm, but substantiated with fact that ironically (I did use that word before), both my main banks have been involved in the most atrocious acts of financial fraud in history.

Back to the point of this, before Cointerra can finally have their thread back;

I have undertaken more research than any typical consumer using a card from one of my banks.

I went in person and saw for myself the company exists and is capable of undertaking what it's claimed which is a hell of a lot more than most consumers do before pre-ordering a holiday with a travel agent etc.

I then rang my bank, explained the type of purchase in detail, the timescale and queried whether than was an acceptable purchase in their eyes and whether I would be eligible for their protection outside of Paypal's 45 days. I was ringing to see whether they would indeed uphold protection as I read that some banks claim indirect third party payment processors, such as Paypal and Amazon, negate their consumer protection policy. I recorded this, I advise others do the same, this is not fraud, it's common sense due diligence.

I'm not advocating fraud. I'm not ditching my purchase on my bank. I have every confidence KnC from what I saw will deliver, whether it is on time or not, then we'll see. I won't be throwing my toys out the pram over any reasonable delay. I haven't risked a huge amount in my eyes. I'm comfortable with then time and money I have spent on this. I would certainly never advocate fraud or getting into debt over this. If you still think any of this is fraudulent again speak to your bank. It's not. I'm a consumer making a purchase for a product to be delivered within a certain period of time. This is entirely legal. Before November is fine by me, afterwards I would feel the contract to deliver by a certain point to be broken. I can then request a refund. if KnC fail me, my bank has my back. I have no unrealistic aspirations. I also don't want to see people get burned, but they have to take responsibility to do their own groundwork, call their issuing bank, they can certainly visit Stockholm if they wish.

The fact that not one customer of Butterfly Labs, out of all that that purchased looked into this and still allow themselves to held hostage is utter madness. Personally I have always wanted to see Butterfly Labs succeed, as miners we deserve choice in products and price to remain competitive. Not one or two dominant centralised manufacturers. It's bad for Bitcoin, and bad for us.

Now let's please let Cointerra have their thread back, no doubt though this talk of consumer protection benefits their future customers as hopefully people will start to make informed choices, that does require them picking up the phone, listening to some generic music, waiting to speak to a knowledgable person in the institution they wish to bank with. This is sensible advise for anyone.

[aerobatic]

There must be a reason that KnC chose to put 4 dies on a chip instead of one big phat chip.  Presumably having one package with 4 dies on it, is cheaper to produce than 4 packages.   Also, if they had smaller chips, each of 25 GH performance... would anyone care?  the marketing impact sure looks good when everyone else has MH chips or at best a 4 GH chip and you come out of nowhere with a 100 GH chip!   that's a HUGE leap!  No comparison.   Would people have been blown away so much if they had only announced a 25 GH chip?  (even if the same total gigahashes were in a Jupiter box, made up of a higher number of lesser chips)

Wonder what cointerra's leap will be?

I think the strategy could still work well.  The KnC chip, for example has four modules with 48 "engine IPs" each, and they are expecting to to use 250W or less.  The heatsink they're planning on using is supposed to be able to dissipate 320W of heat.

But lets say they're wrong and their chip actually ends up putting out 500w.

If each of the 4 engines was on a separate die, and putting out 125W each they'd have a much easier time figuring out a way to keep them cool.

If they split the chip up even more, putting, say 12 "engine IPs" on a chip, if they were twice their expected power output they'd only need to remove 30W of heat per physical package.

[Ytterbium]

No, no, no, and again, no.

You're assuming a hell of a lot there and appear a little unbalanced. Twisting my words and misrepresenting my intention is fraudulent.

Hit the ignore button dude, that guy's not just stupid he's actively trolling.

[gateway]

I know various ASIC is coming out towards the end of the year but keep in mind it has to really make sense to buy these and get ROI if not more, what is 5k today for 400Gh/s, wont be great if you spend 5k in nov/dec for the same amount, these devices/products/chips really need to start coming down.. ..

[ProfMac]

No, no, no, and again, no.

You're assuming a hell of a lot there and appear a little unbalanced. Twisting my words and misrepresenting my intention is fraudulent.

Hit the ignore button dude, that guy's not just stupid he's actively trolling.

I replied to him a time or two in the FastHash announcement thread.  He earned the distinction of being the 2nd person I have ignored.

[erk]

There must be a reason that KnC chose to put 4 dies on a chip instead of one big phat chip.  Presumably having one package with 4 dies on it, is cheaper to produce than 4 packages.   Also, if they had smaller chips, each of 25 GH performance... would anyone care?  the marketing impact sure looks good when everyone else has MH chips or at best a 4 GH chip and you come out of nowhere with a 100 GH chip!   that's a HUGE leap!  No comparison.   Would people have been blown away so much if they had only announced a 25 GH chip?  (even if the same total gigahashes were in a Jupiter box, made up of a higher number of lesser chips)

KNCminer do not put 4 dies on a chip, it's a single die, I suggest you look at their R&D diagram properly at the grey area labeled die.

@Ytterbium: WTF are you?  You've been here all of two weeks, how about some STFU?

Just add him to your ignore list.


Lets try and get this thread back on track.

[San1ty]

Interesting, following!

[aerobatic]

ok.. I looked at the diagram again and they refer to them as quads and diagrammatically theyre slightly separated, but each quad has its own power and clock...  and is controlled separately from the fpga...

so... I dont think it matters whether its four separate dies, or one big die split into 4 'quads' (or even a multi chip reticle).. im not really sure now... however, im pretty sure that four separate identical dies would be cheaper to make and have a higher yield than one big one...  and the nature of bitcoin hashing is that theres an awful lot of replication in the asic of identical hasher units so it does lend itself to that approach..

KNCminer do not put 4 dies on a chip, it's a single die, I suggest you look at their R&D diagram properly at the grey area labeled die.

[Loredo]

He earned the distinction of being the 2nd person I have ignored.

Assuming I'm not the one sharing that distinction, I meant to ask you earlier:  based on something you wrote, might the phrase "hook 'em" have some meaning to you?

[ProfMac]

He earned the distinction of being the 2nd person I have ignored.

Assuming I'm not the one sharing that distinction, I meant to ask you earlier:  based on something you wrote, might the phrase "hook 'em" have some meaning to you?

Can you find my photo at The Hole in the Wall?

[Loredo]

Can you find my photo at The Hole in the Wall?

We're back next month; I'll check then.

If you frequent such places, and find yourself in Denver for a conference or because you slept past your bus stop, check out the Satire Lounge on Colfax.

[iCEBREAKER]

Thanks for rooting for Cointerra! We will make all Texans proud

Most real Texans aren't proud of anything that goes on in Austin, with the possible exception of football.  And then, only some years.   

What about the time Texas Governor Rick Perry shot a man dead, just to watch him die?  That was very popular.   

[Loredo]

What about the time Texas Governor Rick Perry shot a man dead, just to watch him die?  That was very popular.  

  No, no, no.  While I do have a photo of the Gov holding his 44 magnum Ruger over his head walking in downtown Austin, I'm fairly sure what you cite is an urban myth.  

He did shoot a coyote one morning while jogging, but in self defense.  

[iCEBREAKER]

What about the time Texas Governor Rick Perry shot a man dead, just to watch him die?  That was very popular.  

  No, no, no.  While I do have a photo of the Gov holding his 44 magnum Ruger over his head walking in downtown Austin, I'm fairly sure what you cite is an urban myth.  

He did shoot a coyote one morning while jogging, but in self defense.  

"Coyote" is slang for a human smuggler who helps Mexcan wetbacks invade our Blessed Amercan Homeland.



^I believe that's Gov Perry on the left.  Can't tell for sure with that cap hiding his Good Hair.

That coyote deserved its fate.  Rick Perry For Presdent 2016!  

[Loredo]

^I believe that's Gov Perry on the left.  Can't tell for sure with that cap hiding his Good Hair.

Could be.  But it looks more like Josh Zerlan to me.

[iCEBREAKER]

Can you find my photo at The Hole in the Wall?

I love that place.  Discovered Woody Pines there during SX.  Great music and new favorite band, even for a normally 100% dubstep type.

Damn, I would kill for a margarita now.   

[-Redacted-]

Sounding more realistic....

http://thegenesisblock.com/billionaire-investor-and-samsung-lead-cpu-architect-bet-on-bitcoin-mining/

[minternj]

Realistic like the article right under it which was a hoax?

edit - Fyi i do think this cointerra is credible, just having some fun. But in the article i see,

"They plan on starting pre-orders by the end of the month, with production scheduled for December."

Wow. December? Good luck with that one! You're 2 months too late. It better be like 1000 for 400GH

[gateway]

Wow. December? Good luck with that one! You're 2 months too late. It better be like 1000 for 400GH

Ya that's the prob with all of this a getting roi back, even 1k by dec might be a stretch :/

[KS]

I'm still wondering about the actual level of protection under section 75, given the Terms you accepted when you ordered stipulated it was a business sale and you admitted to be a business.

So, one of the two or both is/are acting in bad faith. You're acting in bad faith because you claim to do the trade as an individual (i.e. not a business) to be covered by S75 or a business (which you are not) to be able to buy from them (circumventing the Terms) and they're acting in bad faith because they don't want to offer the necessary security for private customers (and no warranty) - but this is more debatable.

Did you have a lawyer look it over? (apologies if it was mentioned already, TL;DR)

I'm going to look at the same question over here (different laws, different judges).

I doubt it'll be that big of an issue,  KnC's refund policy is that you can ask for a refund at any time until they ship your unit. If they turn out to be a scam and violate their refund policy then it shouldn't be too hard to sue them, as we know who they are and Bitcoinorama and KnC are both in the EU.

What happens if they send you an overpriced toaster ? So yes, you can sue, but as a "business" (not the same warranty as a private person/consumer) and it becomes very expensive. That's quite a bit different from doing a chargeback under S75.

[KS]

I'm still wondering about the actual level of protection under section 75, given the Terms you accepted when you ordered stipulated it was a business sale and you admitted to be a business.

So, one of the two or both is/are acting in bad faith. You're acting in bad faith because you claim to do the trade as an individual (i.e. not a business) to be covered by S75 or a business (which you are not) to be able to buy from them (circumventing the Terms) and they're acting in bad faith because they don't want to offer the necessary security for private customers (and no warranty) - but this is more debatable.

Did you have a lawyer look it over? (apologies if it was mentioned already, TL;DR)

I'm going to look at the same question over here (different laws, different judges).

I doubt it'll be that big of an issue,  KnC's refund policy is that you can ask for a refund at any time until they ship your unit. If they turn out to be a scam and violate their refund policy then it shouldn't be too hard to sue them, as we know who they are and Bitcoinorama and KnC are both in the EU.

Nah, shouldn't be that hard to sue them.  We'll do it the same ol' way we handled Pirateat40 -- we'll rant all sorts of vengeance on these boards & wait for our parents the bankers to do something.  
BTW, what does KNC doing in this thread?  Are they on iffy terms with reality too?

Indeed.

S75 applies to everyone else too, this is not about them per se.

[aerobatic]

So you guys are saying that the boxes that KnC are currently pre-selling for $7000 and BitFury are preselling for $8000 for October delivery would struggle to be priced for December delivery at $1000?   That seems like a very steep price decrease and I think you might be over-egging the devaluation... and if anyone really believed that, no one would buy a $7000 box for October!

Wow. December? Good luck with that one! You're 2 months too late. It better be like 1000 for 400GH

Ya that's the prob with all of this a getting roi back, even 1k by dec might be a stretch :/

[jlsminingcorp]

Sounding more realistic....

http://thegenesisblock.com/billionaire-investor-and-samsung-lead-cpu-architect-bet-on-bitcoin-mining/

Notice that the 10x increase in power efficiency rumor has already started to propagate and has found its way into this article. Cointerra suggested that this was not going to be achievable a couple of days ago (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=267552.msg2867038#msg2867038).

[creativex]

So you guys are saying that the boxes that KnC are currently pre-selling for $7000 and BitFury are preselling for $8000 for October delivery would struggle to be priced for December delivery at $1000?   That seems like a very steep price decrease and I think you might be over-egging the devaluation... and if anyone really believed that, no one would buy a $7000 box for October!

I wouldn't be so certain. Bitfury for August delivery was priced at 22k and then 19.25k. Many companies are claiming they're bringing products to market in Q4 and ASICMiner has hundreds of Th/s to deploy if they're to stick to their schedule. December delivery is too late to have much pricing power in this environment, but how many pre-order investors will recognize that?

Cheers.

[eve]

Realistic like the article right under it which was a hoax?

edit - Fyi i do think this cointerra is credible, just having some fun. But in the article i see,

"They plan on starting pre-orders by the end of the month, with production scheduled for December."

Wow. December? Good luck with that one! You're 2 months too late. It better be like 1000 for 400GH

that would be a more reasonable price or 1000 for 500GH but will they deliver?

[Bitcoinorama]

So you guys are saying that the boxes that KnC are currently pre-selling for $7000 and BitFury are preselling for $8000 for October delivery would struggle to be priced for December delivery at $1000?   That seems like a very steep price decrease and I think you might be over-egging the devaluation... and if anyone really believed that, no one would buy a $7000 box for October!

Someone doesn't understand difficulty vs hashrate.

A $7000 KnC Box in Late September/Early October should be able to recoup it's costs in 3 Months or so, making considerably less every month.

By the time Late December rolls around (And don't kid yourself, every time someone says the month they plan to release, count it as the very last day of that month), at the same hashrate (400GH) if it costs over $1,000 you will probably see even less of a return even if the power consumption is extremely low or you have free power.

If KnC releases the amount of Hash Power that is predicted, we can easily see 300M-500M Difficulty come January 1st.

Either way, with all the new players popping up left and right even with the Credentials these guys have I will be hard pressed to make another pre-order that is estimated to ship around 5 months from now. I know there are new people here who are not aware of the ASIC Flood that is going to happen over the next 5 months and will end up making pre-orders that are based on current math but they will likely get burned hard.

HashFast/VMC/KnC all plan to ship before December. Avalon Chips haven't even arrived in Bulk yet. Butterfly Labs may eventually start shipping past day 1 (Hah I know).

Unless we start seeing $1-2/GH in Late December/January or an extreme boost to the bitcoin price, there won't be much demand for more mining equipment.

(I for one hope there is a large boost to bitcoin price but that again makes mining even more risky if there is another bubble)


All of that being said,

It is still exciting to see new players enter the market.

It's good for us miners. The original estimated profits were always going to be diluted by new entrants, not mining companies, but miners themselves. The mining companies just serve a purpose feeding the hunger that exists, and the more quality companies we get to choose from that compete against eachother, the better the deal we get.

The waiting game whilst BFL and Avalon attempted to fill a gap was the time to make excessive profits mining if you were lucky to get your hand in an ASIC when all anyone else had was GPUs and FPGAs, and understandably there's some belief, that's in fact that's exactly what BFL and Bitsyncom were doing for themselves.

Personally I see this ASIC revolution very quickly becoming as profitable as GPUs once were. Of course profit will be squeezed out until new entrants are no longer satisfied and stop purchasing. The guys that had the FPGAs did best and most consistently for the length of time they bridged from FPGA to ASIC as they were able to readily add to their rigs with immediate purchasing for a decent amount of time during the ASIC delays.

I don't believe we will get anywhere near $1,000 per Gh by December though, no way, not unless there are a huge amount of buyers waiting in the wings to purchase as and when a product is available without pre-order. I reckon it will have a more inversely proportional linear effect in price as manufacturers compete against eachother dropping bit by bit so as not to shave too much from their own profits too rapidly. They are developing companies at the same time and not even they know what the capacity for new custom is yet. I think we'd be lucky to see $4,000. These new guys wouldn't be making back their NRE costs otherwise. Perhaps after they can fight between themselves.

At the moment the 'Bitcoin craze' is focused on delivering this new tech to process and verify BTC transactions, negating the fact there's not a huge deal of transactions actually taking place. That's what needs to improve or all this has been for nothing. The money is in Bitcoin's mainstream adoption and encouraging that takes place through developing innovative ways for the public to adopt and use Bitcoin for it's low transaction costs, secure payment methods (as long as they treat it as they do cash and understand the lack of recourse) and varying anonymity. This new payment requires some education for people, we've seen enough people get scammed here, and the members of this forum are meant to be Bitcoin savvy. Traditional payment methods cater for the inherent stupidity in the general public and the inability for them to take responsibility for their actions. That's a huge barrier for Bitcoin to overcome before it's used frequently as a mainstream currency...

[Flashman]

I don't believe we will get anywhere near $1,000 per Gh by December though, no way, not unless there are a huge amount of buyers waiting in the wings to purchase as and when a product is available without pre-order.

Hmmm, seems to me that there's not any large influx of new money around any time soon, and all there is is us bunch of thrice bitten, twice shy old curmudgeons who need a 2 or 3 months production out of ASICs already in hung up vapourware hell, before we'll consider reinvestment. Oct, Nov, Dec is going to be a tense time waiting for all the ordered hardware to hit the network so that it is possible to see whether it's going to be worth running even 5 Terahash by then.

<ski instructor> If you based your ASIC project financial projections on the $/GH of Avalon Batch 3, or even 1st round of AM blades..... you're going to have a bad time.</ski instructor>

Anyway, what I see is that there's gonna be a huge oversupply of miners, all trying to pry open the wallets of gunshy vets...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
Who are probably all mostly tapped out for the next 3 months even if they ARE actually interested.

Then in addition, remember this, they are worth way, way less in projected benefit per gigahash than miners people thought they had a hope in hell of getting with "only" a 8 figure difficulty, or at least low 9s. It was a situation somewhat similar to Tickle Me Elmos, or Game Consoles, just before that first Christmas, Christmas is over, nobody wants a $500 Elmo now.

[2112]

Notice that the 10x increase in power efficiency rumor has already started to propagate and has found its way into this article. Cointerra suggested that this was not going to be achievable a couple of days ago (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=267552.msg2867038#msg2867038).

And I need to make a correction to your correction. The power efficiency increase is achievable, just not by Cointerra, simply because Cointerra doesn't have the required expertise in the back-end of the IC design. This still leaves the room for improvements made either by a new entrant or one of the existing vendors.

[jlsminingcorp]

Notice that the 10x increase in power efficiency rumor has already started to propagate and has found its way into this article. Cointerra suggested that this was not going to be achievable a couple of days ago (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=267552.msg2867038#msg2867038).

And I need to make a correction to your correction. The power efficiency increase is achievable, just not by Cointerra, simply because Cointerra doesn't have the required expertise in the back-end of the IC design. This still leaves the room for improvements made either by a new entrant or one of the existing vendors.

Thanks for the addition, that's quite right, I was only talking about the power efficiency that cointerra have discussed. It will be great to see even higher power efficiencies in the future.

[Bitcoinorama]

Cointerra, a well-funded startup of highly experienced ASIC designers, is pleased to announce that we are developing a high performance, low power and low cost 28nm ASIC which is expected to arrive in Q4 2013.

To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

Signed up, looking forward for more info.

That's the first positive message I've ever seen you type! Congrats, it's quite refreshing...

[Sitarow]

Cointerra, a well-funded startup of highly experienced ASIC designers, is pleased to announce that we are developing a high performance, low power and low cost 28nm ASIC which is expected to arrive in Q4 2013.

To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

Coinlab has anything to do with this?



At the advertised price for 10TH if network difficulty increase is constant at 20% or every 12 days and BTC value stays at $100USD each BTC.





Would be better to purchase BTC?

[dwdoc]

I think the winner will be the company that doesn't rely on pre-orders to fund development/production, and has stock on hand for new product launches. When an item runs out of stock, they stop taking money for it, and send you an email when it's back in stock so you can then place an order. That's how most other online electronics orders seem to work.

Other electronics are not money printing machines.  If a company does not need pre-order cash for development it will use its miners to hash for themselves or sell them for an amount that will barely ROI. What incentive do they have to do otherwise?  Look at what miners are sold for in secondary markets on this forum. That is how individuals and companies operate with miners in hand.

[Ytterbium]

While Cointerra sounds interesting,

having the blessing of Bitcoin megamouth and crumbs is actually bad press.....

Btw, Crumbs just deleted a posted referring to Cointerra with a "We". Implying that he is somehow involved with it.

Interesting.

What did he actually say, you remember his exact quote? it would be surprising if crumb was pro Cointerra when he was bashing KnC and HashFast just for taking pre-orders.

[dwdoc]

I'm in Texas and Austin is definitely our version of Silicon Valley.
Subscribed and watching with interest.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/05/why-austin-is-techs-new-destination-of-choice/

[bitzip]

I just received an email from CoinTerra

"TerraMiner IV will ship in December this year and retails for $15,750. "

"TerraMiner IV is currently the most powerful, high-performance Bitcoin mining rig available for pre-order and packs a hashrate of greater than 2 TH/s."

It doesn't mention how many watts.

I hate pre orders.  What kind of track record do they have on delivering new products on time?  What will be the difficulty in December?

[roy7]

It doesn't mention how many watts.

1200W I thought I saw in email or web site but can't find it now.

[crumbs]

...
"TerraMiner IV is currently the most powerful, high-performance Bitcoin mining rig available for pre-order and packs a hashrate of greater than 2 TH/s."
...

So, of all the mining rigs that haven't been built yet, this mining rig that hasn't been built is the most powerful?  While other nonexistent rigs don't hash @ < 2 TH/s, this baby doesn't hash @ > 2 TH/s?  

Awesomeness.  

Come on, other ASICless ASIC companies!  Step up your game & promise more for less, sooner!

[papamoi]

hi guys

i m announcing a babyterrahash coin miner wich will hash @ 100 th/sec

and i m taking preorder now

please send mt all your saving to the account i ll disclose only to the pigeons who are interested in it

Please give me your money and shut up

thanks

[sharknutzz]

hi guys

i m announcing a babyterrahash coin miner wich will hash @ 100 th/sec

and i m taking preorder now

please send mt all your saving to the account i ll disclose only to the pigeons who are interested in it

Please give me your money and shut up

thanks

Ok, I'll send you BTC0.0000001

You seem like an honest seller, no escrow required.

[MikeMike]

hi guys

i m announcing a babyterrahash coin miner wich will hash @ 100 th/sec

and i m taking preorder now

please send mt all your saving to the account i ll disclose only to the pigeons who are interested in it

Please give me your money and shut up

thanks

Ok, I'll send you BTC0.0000001

You seem like an honest seller, no escrow required.

I'm going to wait for the 2TH/s Upgrade!
 

[Loredo]

Other electronics are not money printing machines.  If a company does not need pre-order cash for development it will use its miners to hash for themselves or sell them for an amount that will barely ROI. What incentive do they have to do otherwise?  Look at what miners are sold for in secondary markets on this forum. That is how individuals and companies operate with miners in hand.

Even though this post is "old" (11 days is old as fast as stuff is happening) I'm going to point this out again.

Bitcoin miners are not money printing machines (and the Federal magistrate language in the Pirate motion to dismiss is notwithstanding here).  They print bitcoins.

You or I may not think there's a difference, either now or in the future, but someone who can make and sell the hardware may think so.  In that case, selling the machines now for USD, letting the customers take the fungibility/conversion risk would not only make sense, it would be the best course open to them - remember, conditional on a bearish/non-money view of BTC.

[maursader]

Cointerra, a well-funded startup of highly experienced ASIC designers, is pleased to announce that we are developing a high performance, low power and low cost 28nm ASIC which is expected to arrive in Q4 2013.

To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

I'm interested in making a purchase of one or two of these units... however, I'm very weary about placing pre-orders with the whole BFL thing. Do you guys accept escrow if I were to pay the fees? I would like to go through John in this forum to be honest.

I've heard horror stories about BFL not honouring refunds and other such variants.. and although I'm interested, I still would like to see/have some reassurance.

[aerobatic]

just got a mail from these guys - whats the word on them?
i see the price has dropped from 15000 to 6000 usd.

the prices were related to delivery date and performance.

the december batch was priced at $15,000 for 2 TH..(and no longer seems to be listed on their site, so presumably sold out) and the january price is $6,000 for 2 TH.

[RoadStress]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

[mgio]

just got a mail from these guys - whats the word on them?

i see the price has dropped from 15000 to 6000 usd.

The price difference is December vs January shipping.

I'm so tempted to order from them. 2 TH/s for that price seems amazing. But then I think about what the difficulty will be in January and I realize that 2 TH/s in January isn't any better than 500 GH/s now. Sigh.

[iCEBREAKER]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

The market got tired of IPOs/pre-orders by the time Cointerra launched.

When Cointerra/CryptX went public the miners, investors, and speculators were exhausted and broke from

-BFL
-ASICminer
-Avalon
-Bitfury
-ActiveScamming
-KnC
-Hashfast/IceDrill
-LabScam
-ScamGarden
-etc, etc, etc

There was simply not enough demand to meet Cointerra's oversupply, everybody was all in and tapped out.

Cointerra was late to the party, conceding first/early mover advantage to their more nimble and engineering focused competition.

Now they are at least a week behind their self-imposed "first week of October" deadline for tape-out and are desperate to get the rest of the NRE paid.  Hence the fire sale on Jan 2014 hardware.

[tom99]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

The market got tired of IPOs/pre-orders by the time Cointerra launched.

When Cointerra/CryptX went public the miners, investors, and speculators were exhausted and broke from

-BFL
-ASICminer
-Avalon
-Bitfury
-ActiveScamming
-KnC
-Hashfast/IceDrill
-LabScam
-ScamGarden
-etc, etc, etc

There was simply not enough demand to meet Cointerra's oversupply, everybody was all in and tapped out.

Cointerra was late to the party, conceding first/early mover advantage to their more nimble and engineering focused competition.

Now they are at least a week behind their self-imposed "first week of October" deadline for tape-out and are desperate to get the rest of the NRE paid.  Hence the fire sale on Jan 2014 hardware.

   No CC and Paypal.

[Vagnavs]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

The market got tired of IPOs/pre-orders by the time Cointerra launched.

When Cointerra/CryptX went public the miners, investors, and speculators were exhausted and broke from

-BFL
-ASICminer
-Avalon
-Bitfury
-ActiveScamming
-KnC
-Hashfast/IceDrill
-LabScam
-ScamGarden
-etc, etc, etc

There was simply not enough demand to meet Cointerra's oversupply, everybody was all in and tapped out.

Cointerra was late to the party, conceding first/early mover advantage to their more nimble and engineering focused competition.

Now they are at least a week behind their self-imposed "first week of October" deadline for tape-out and are desperate to get the rest of the NRE paid.  Hence the fire sale on Jan 2014 hardware.

   No CC and Paypal.

+1
would have placed an order already if that was in place

[RoadStress]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

The market got tired of IPOs/pre-orders by the time Cointerra launched.

When Cointerra/CryptX went public the miners, investors, and speculators were exhausted and broke from

-BFL
-ASICminer
-Avalon
-Bitfury
-ActiveScamming
-KnC
-Hashfast/IceDrill
-LabScam
-ScamGarden
-etc, etc, etc

There was simply not enough demand to meet Cointerra's oversupply, everybody was all in and tapped out.

Cointerra was late to the party, conceding first/early mover advantage to their more nimble and engineering focused competition.

Now they are at least a week behind their self-imposed "first week of October" deadline for tape-out and are desperate to get the rest of the NRE paid.  Hence the fire sale on Jan 2014 hardware.

   No CC and Paypal.

I must +1 this. If they were legitimate there was no reason to not accept at least CC payments. Paypal is a risk because they can block the account, but i don't see a reason to not accept CC payments.

Also as i stated before i read the Securities sub-forum very seldom, but it seems to me that there are 2 separate groups of people. One group is the one that is active here and wants real hardware and one group is the group that wants shares in mining companies and i don't think you can say that people ran out of money. I see that people are interested in buying BitFury boards for 1k$, why wouldn't they be interested in Cointerra?

[aerobatic]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

RoadStress, whats your source for the hashfast $20m?

we know they offered 550 Baby jets for sale.. at $5800 each.. so thats, er, $3m.. and that theyve sold newer models at lower prices... but what else do we know that gets us to a $20m number?

[RoadStress]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

RoadStress, whats your source for the hashfast $20m?

we know they offered 550 Baby jets for sale.. at $5800 each.. so thats, er, $3m.. and that theyve sold newer models at lower prices... but what else do we know that gets us to a $20m number?

Honestly i didn't kept track, but i'm pretty sure i read it somewhere. Threads are advancing too fast so i can't keep track. Maybe cypherdoc said it in a post. Can someone help me?

[aerobatic]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

RoadStress, the only person who said that Cointerra didnt raise enough cash to meet their NRE is Icebreaker - that doesnt make it a fact.  no asic company, has ever announced how much cash theyve raised.. not knc, not hashfast, not cointerra...  The fact that cointerra doesnt sit here manning the forums arguing with every troll doesnt mean whatever bull that comes out of icebreakers keyboard should be taken with anything other than a pinch of salt.  maybe he's scared they might actually ship what they promised...

Judging by the colour of his ignore button i think its safe to assume the truth is pretty much the opposite of much of what he says.  We shall see if they raised enough for their tape-out NRE in due course, if and when they announce their tape-out.  And what will icebreaker say then?  he'll find some other way to spread FUD... Since they claimed to have done a mock tape out recently, its probably safe to assume their actual tape out isnt so far away (no doubt its later than planned, but so were most of the others too, including icebreakers favourite xyz company.   (hashfast went from mock tapeout to tapeout in about a week or two so lets see when ct does it)   ct updates its own web site and alas doesnt maintain a presense on these forums, but i dont think anyone rational could conclude that theyve given up as the nice renders of their hardware box design show more detail than ive seen from any of the others so far (except KnC... well done Sam & Andreas!)

and based on the ct specs they are either completely making it up (unlikely), or they have performance the others could only dream of.. and you couldn't accuse them of not being able to code RTL.  What a ridiculous assumption.  And icebreaker claiming that the ct engineers' years of experience designing intel, nvidia, and samsung chips is somehow a negative for them being able to design a bitcoin mining asics, is pure insanity.  and claiming that designing for low power is a simple skill and a disadvantage when designing bitcoin asics... when the whole point about bitcoin hardware is to design for low power & performance.. a difficult balance but one that certainly people who are used to designing for low power will be used to.  The ceo of cointerra is the ex-lead architect of samsung's cpu division - and the samsung galaxy S4 phone is very impressive, especially its cpu (ok, and its oled screen).  some of the other hardware engineers at cointerra came from the graphics chip world, known for their high performance asics and optimised datapaths.  to claim, as icebreaker does, that these guys cant 'write rtl code worth shit'... shows how far removed from the truth the guy is - and if not insane, just a troll with a huge chip on his shoulder and a penchant for overzealous untruths.    whats he scared of?  that cointerra might actually deliver what theyve promised?   they sure have a lot to live up to... the spec theyve 'promised us' is significantly faster, lower power, and way cheaper than any of the other options out there (and, delivered later, its true)...    whether they deliver what they promise - only time will tell!

[aerobatic]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

RS, if i had to guess how much each company has raised.. I wouldve put KnC firmly at the top (this year), since they were the first to offer 28nm, and took a lot of pre-orders, back in the day when people still thought pre-orders were a great idea...  So i would bet that if anyone's taken anywhere close to $20m, its KnC.   And of course, ButterFlyLabs, who are probably well in excess of $20m in pre-orders.  I would guess more like $40m...!  And of course, theyre shipping... of sorts!

I really dont think the other guys.. Be it hf, ct, cc, bf, etc... will have raised anywhere close to $20m from their pre-orders.  But i think they WILL do well once theyre shipping in volume, as the 28nm guys (and bitfury) have got significantly better hardware than the older generation guys..  the guys offering silicon that needs more than 1 watt/GH and doesnt offer sub $5/GH dont stand a chance in the next round.

Going off topic a bit here... But in 2014, the bulk of the sales of bitcoin hardware will be those products that are low cost, high performance and low power.  Ie: Complete Systems (not chips) selling for <$3/GH in early 2014, <$2/GH in mid 2014, and probably even <$1/GH by end of 2014 (assuming a die shrink to hit that figure).  And the only people who can do that will be those that have extremely high GH speed asics - best value is the highest GH per die area (gh/mm2) since most of the rest of the system cost is identical between suppliers (they all have a box, some fans, some heatsinks, some power supplies, a controller board etc... All pretty much the identical cost of goods...  so the only differentiator will literally be how many GH's they squeezed out of a mm of die!   The more optimised the designs, the higher the GH will be per die sq mm and the better asics will become the dominant players in the market, when it becomes a commodity.

[aerobatic]

...

Any way to combine two consecutive walls of text into a single megawall of text?

Why dont you give it a try

[crumbs]

...

Any way to combine two consecutive walls of text into a single megawall of text?

Why dont you give it a try

You're not even trying

[iCEBREAKER]

blah blah blah

and based on the ct specs they are either completely making it up (unlikely), or they have performance the others could only dream of.. and you couldn't accuse them of not being able to code RTL.  What a ridiculous assumption.  And icebreaker claiming that the ct engineers' years of experience designing intel, nvidia, and samsung chips is somehow a negative for them being able to design a bitcoin mining asics, is pure insanity.  and claiming that designing for low power is a simple skill and a disadvantage when designing bitcoin asics... when the whole point about bitcoin hardware is to design for low power & performance.. a difficult balance but one that certainly people who are used to designing for low power will be used to.  The ceo of cointerra is the ex-lead architect of samsung's cpu division - and the samsung galaxy S4 phone is very impressive, especially its cpu (ok, and its oled screen).  some of the other hardware engineers at cointerra came from the graphics chip world, known for their high performance asics and optimised datapaths.  to claim, as icebreaker does, that these guys cant 'write rtl code worth shit'... shows how far removed from the truth the guy is - and if not insane, just a troll with a huge chip on his shoulder and a penchant for overzealous untruths.    whats he scared of?  that cointerra might actually deliver what theyve promised?   they sure have a lot to live up to... the spec theyve 'promised us' is significantly faster, lower power, and way cheaper than any of the other options out there (and, delivered later, its true)...    whether they deliver what they promise - only time will tell!

Time is already telling.  Specifically, the time now (second week of October) versus Cointerra's tape-out target date ("first week of October") is very telling.

I notice you never explain how Cointerra can make physical claims about their chip's GH/W/sec before they have put it into physical simulation.  Maybe you should take on that challenge instead of going for cheap shots at me?

You really dig yourself in by mistakenly including Samsung in your list of actual chip design companies like Intel and nVidia.  Samsung isn't doesn't design CPUs, they simply license IP from ARM, etc and throw the pre-made components together on SOCs.

"ex-lead architect of samsung's cpu division?"  Oh please!  Samsung's Galaxy runs on a CPU designed by ARM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S#Processor

The Samsung Galaxy S used the Samsung S5PC110 processor.  This processor combined a 45 nm 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 based CPU core with a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU made by Imagination Technologies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A8

The ARM Cortex-A8 is a processor core designed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARM v7 (32-bit) instruction set architecture.

You need to educate yourself on the facts before presuming to correct and daring to scold your superiors.

You really seem incapable of understanding the difference between integrating prebuilt parts for a SOC and designing a new kind of Bitcoin ASIC from scratch.

If Cointerra can write RTL worth shit quickly, why has their tape-out been delayed for over a week?

[aerobatic]

Time is already telling.  Specifically, the time now (second week of October) versus Cointerra's tape-out target date ("first week of October") is very telling.

I notice you never explain how Cointerra can make physical claims about their chip's GH/W/sec before they have put it into physical simulation.  Maybe you should take on that challenge instead of going for cheap shots at me?

I think the point youre missing is that tape-out is the end of the physical design and simulation process but that that you get substantially correct data way before you tape-out.  Once physical design has been finished and layout has been done, you can do power and timings simulations and get pretty accurate data.   Every single other asic company in the bitcoin world has done the same thing.  You dont need to wait til you tape out to get that data.  You get it during the physical design process, weeks before you actually tape-out.

The typical physical design process starts when the rtl is complete and the functional simulation already works.. And takes about 3 months (though knc & hashfast have both proved you can do it in closer to 2 months if you really motivate everyone at the physical design house to work fast and sleep less.).  Cointerra is also trying to do it in less than 3 months... We'll see if they make it.

Btw, im not a complete stranger to silicon design, though its been a long time since ive done it.  My team designed one of the first (possibly The first) gpus, and also an early risc microprocessor that competed with arm, though we didnt alas beat them. Once standardised in a cellphone the rest was history.

And as for being late to tape out... I was aware of the tape-out goals of several of the asic companies, and whether they revealed the dates publically or not, few, if ever, tape-out on the day they expected to.  Things happen, its not an exact science.  Of course i had hoped ct wouldve taped out last week.. But im sure theyre busy trying to make up lost time and tape out just as soon as they can.  Theyre still expecting to deliver systems in december (and seeing as knc did it (well done guys), and hashfast are expecting to do it (fingers crossed), i see no reason why cointerra cant also expect to go from tapeout to actual shipping systems in 2 months as well).  Those guys all paid extra to their fabs to get the 'super rocket runs' or whatever the fab calls it when they charge shitloads extra to make things happen faster.  Literally the fabs employ guys to hand carry the wafers during the mask production phase and move things along much quicker - almost twice as fast - as their regular priced mask layer production.

I just think youre plain wrong to keep writing that cointerra cant design rtl worth shit.  Its insane.  Ct has a chip spec that thats more GH per die mm than any of the others, and that didnt happen by accident.  Maybe it took them too much extra time to optimise the circuitry so much better than the others.. Maybe that was time wasted when they couldve been shipping earlier like the others are... But instead, ct's differentiator is that they'll have a very efficient chip.  And of course i wouldve liked to see it hashing weeks sooner, but i also dont only intend to hash with it for a week or two, but will have it switched on for perhaps the whole year... So i want it to be the fastest gh's, for the fewest dollars, and use the lowest KwH... And i think the extra time ct spent optimising the design will have longterm payback.

Sorry crumbs for another wall!

[DPoS]

2TH in Jan is like having a couple Avalons right now

They'd have to sell 20TH for $5,000 to get anyone to sign up now for Jan

[testerx]

Any updates on this?  If they don't tape out soon there's no way the December units are going to ROI.  What's with the complete lack of updates?

[Paladin69]

Any updates on this?  If they don't tape out soon there's no way the December units are going to ROI.  What's with the complete lack of updates?

2TH by December is probably going to make a little over 1 btc per day at the rate this thing is climbing.  A lot of people are going to get crushed by all of these companies.

[DPoS]

Any updates on this?  If they don't tape out soon there's no way the December units are going to ROI.  What's with the complete lack of updates?

2TH by December is probably going to make a little over 1 btc per day at the rate this thing is climbing.  A lot of people are going to get crushed by all of these companies.

luckily this one doesn't really exist

hashfast is kinda a wish on a star as well

[maursader]

So what's the deal:

1. Is this company legit?
2. What do you suspect the BTC mining output will be for the DEC/JAN shipments?

I'm thinking the opinions are pretty wishy washy.

[DPoS]

So what's the deal:

1. Is this company legit?
2. What do you suspect the BTC mining output will be for the DEC/JAN shipments?

I'm thinking the opinions are pretty wishy washy.

seems like venture capital greater fool game here

it'll end with someone taking a big tax writeoff

[cointerra]

Any updates on this?  If they don't tape out soon there's no way the December units are going to ROI.  What's with the complete lack of updates?

The mock-tape out is already made and we will be taping out shortly. Everyone can expect reports closer together in the near future as we get closer to chip production and other major events. We are still very much on track for our presented delivery time.

[cointerra]

So what's the deal:

1. Is this company legit?
2. What do you suspect the BTC mining output will be for the DEC/JAN shipments?

I'm thinking the opinions are pretty wishy washy.

1. We are very much 'legit' and have an office in Austin as listed on our website. We have recently had several people drop by our office to say hello and meet our team.
2. Without speculating in exact BTC output, it stands to argue that whoever mines with the highest hash-rate/power consumption ratio will see ROI for quite some time as older and less profitable miners leave the network. Of course Diff cannot exponentially increase past what any hardware can profitably mine, as was seen when GPU made CPU mining obsolete and now with ASIC making GPU mining obsolete.

[donch]

2. Without speculating in exact BTC output, it stands to argue that whoever mines with the highest hash-rate/power consumption ratio will see ROI for quite some time as older and less profitable miners leave the network. Of course Diff cannot exponentially increase past what any hardware can profitably mine, as was seen when GPU made CPU mining obsolete and now with ASIC making GPU mining obsolete.

This is true provided the batch "with the highest hash-rate/power consumption ratio" is delivered quickly as a whole, with the batch size being limited to a reasonable quantity.

BFL messed up in this regard in both respects. They delivered their queue slowly, thereby leaving most reward to those at the start of the queue. They also oversold their single batch at two stages of pricing, knowing that those at the end of the queue would never see a return.

Your statement may prove true for some of your customers, but can you guarantee it for all?

[cointerra]

2. Without speculating in exact BTC output, it stands to argue that whoever mines with the highest hash-rate/power consumption ratio will see ROI for quite some time as older and less profitable miners leave the network. Of course Diff cannot exponentially increase past what any hardware can profitably mine, as was seen when GPU made CPU mining obsolete and now with ASIC making GPU mining obsolete.

This is true provided the batch "with the highest hash-rate/power consumption ratio" is delivered quickly as a whole, with the batch size being limited to a reasonable quantity.

BFL messed up in this regard in both respects. They delivered their queue slowly, thereby leaving most reward to those at the start of the queue. They also oversold their single batch at two stages of pricing, knowing that those at the end of the queue would never see a return.

Your statement may prove true for some of your customers, but can you guarantee it for all?

It is our belief that offering high hash-rate at lowest possible power consumption will be profitable until 3rd Gen ASIC, due to the fact that at a certain point only the miners with the lowest power consumption per GH/s will be able to provide ROI.

Thus less profitable miners will to a large extent stop mining and difficulty will adjust to a point where just as it was true for CPU/GPU and soon Gen 1 ASIC profitability will be assured only with the latest generation of ASIC miners.

Since the TerraMiner series will lead the Gen 2 ASIC technology race when it comes to hash power per kW/h we believe our customers will enjoy ROI for quite some time.

[amencon]

we believe our customers will enjoy ROI for quite some time.

You might want to qualify this statement.  If you mean to say that you believe most of your customers will have a long period of mining where the electricity cost to mine a BTC is lower than he cost to buy on an exchange then you aren't really addressing whether or not your customers will "ROI" on their investment in your product (i.e. Mine as much BTC or more as they spent to purchase the gear).

I'd suspect most of your potential customers (me included) aren't very interested in how long they can make a cent a day but whether or not they will end up making money over the life of machine vs what they spent.

This is a bit of a trick question though as you shouldn't attempt and can't tell your customers how profitable they will be as there are factors involved outside your control.  My advise is to avoid making responses of this nature whatsoever as it comes across as naive at best and disingenuous or fraudulent at worst.

[DPoS]

I'd suspect most of your potential customers (me included) aren't very interested in how long they can make a cent a day but whether or not they will end up making money over the life of machine vs what they spent.

that's the whole point of selling miners..   If they bothered to do all this on their own dime, and mine until they have to shut them off, they would probably come out negative as well.

Since they get to sell everyone the dream, up front, they get their ROI.

And we already had one company (ASICminer) that was able to do same day orders, but you saw that the true price of mining is more than the much bandied about mantra of 'get more BTC than you spend' ROI.

So surely there are other factors out there that drive up the price that people still will pay for miners that will not produce the same BTC they paid.  Many many reasons for that and not only 'because they are dumb and don't know how to use genesis block calc'

[amencon]

I'd suspect most of your potential customers (me included) aren't very interested in how long they can make a cent a day but whether or not they will end up making money over the life of machine vs what they spent.

that's the whole point of selling miners..   If they bothered to do all this on their own dime, and mine until they have to shut them off, they would probably come out negative as well.

Since they get to sell everyone the dream, up front, they get their ROI.

And we already had one company (ASICminer) that was able to do same day orders, but you saw that the true price of mining is more than the much bandied about mantra of 'get more BTC than you spend' ROI.

So surely there are other factors out there that drive up the price that people still will pay for miners that will not produce the same BTC they paid.  Many many reasons for that and not only 'because they are dumb and don't know how to use genesis block calc'

The "other factors" seem to mostly be "BTC price might go up and I'll ROI" investment strategies. 

Not disagreeing with you about that being the point of selling miners, just giving them some advice that using disingenuous statements might turn off some potential customers.  Then again maybe they'll trick more people than they'll lose.  In the end it's their call which approach to take but those types of comments will definitely give me a pause when considering a purchase from them. 

I'd rather see a marketplace of manufacturers offering honest bad investments rather than using duplicitous language to rope dummies in.

[DPoS]

there are quite a few

one example would be group buys.  The one running the group buy, pads his ROI by providing the service and getting paid for that.  And many in the group may not want to deal with running a miner, or getting bitcoins through exchanges or wherever. Since they are small player, they look at it more like a fee to getting bitcoins, etc

And think of the people who get to fudge with corporate budgets..  have you been around big corp purchase orders?  You think it is hard to add $20,000 as 'blahblah servers' on a half million budget and then stash them somewhere in a datacenter for free electricity?  Do you know many of the things big corp buys do not even get out of the boxes they were shipped in?  Projects that die but items still bought?

Step back and see everyone who is in this game

[maursader]

Is there any way to predict what the hash rates will be in January when Cointerra is expected to ship these 1TH/s and 2TH/s units? I'm considering buying one, and I'm looking for reasons to either buy it, or not buy it. Please help me out here, I'm on the fence, and it's pretty painful. Should I expect that it's gonna be worth it? or not?

Cheers.

[Paladin69]

Is there any way to predict what the hash rates will be in January when Cointerra is expected to ship these 1TH/s and 2TH/s units? I'm considering buying one, and I'm looking for reasons to either buy it, or not buy it. Please help me out here, I'm on the fence, and it's pretty painful. Should I expect that it's gonna be worth it? or not?

Cheers.

A 550 GH Jupiter right now only earns 1 btc per day.  The next difficulty will drop that to less than 0.7 btc per day.

I shutter to think what 2TH will make by December and January.  That is many difficulty changes away.

[amencon]

there are quite a few

one example would be group buys.  The one running the group buy, pads his ROI by providing the service and getting paid for that.  And many in the group may not want to deal with running a miner, or getting bitcoins through exchanges or wherever. Since they are small player, they look at it more like a fee to getting bitcoins, etc

And think of the people who get to fudge with corporate budgets..  have you been around big corp purchase orders?  You think it is hard to add $20,000 as 'blahblah servers' on a half million budget and then stash them somewhere in a datacenter for free electricity?  Do you know many of the things big corp buys do not even get out of the boxes they were shipped in?  Projects that die but items still bought?

Step back and see everyone who is in this game

Sure these all might be factors for a handful of people here and there.  Interesting about the corporate budget angle, hadn't thought of that.

None of this really has much to do with my original point of the somewhat sneaky use of the word ROI in Cointerra's comment and it's possible effect on potential buyers though.

The fact there are some minority of purchasers that buy full well knowing they will likely not ROI, shouldn't give ASIC manufacturers carte blanche to make any claims they want.

[amencon]

Is there any way to predict what the hash rates will be in January when Cointerra is expected to ship these 1TH/s and 2TH/s units? I'm considering buying one, and I'm looking for reasons to either buy it, or not buy it. Please help me out here, I'm on the fence, and it's pretty painful. Should I expect that it's gonna be worth it? or not?

Cheers.

Unfortunately it's all a guess right now.  We know that KNC's machine works and is shipping in bulk and that they will release another batch come November.  There are some decent threads in mining speculation sub-forum that try to estimate how much hashrate is coming online given the known manufacturers come through with their offerings. 

The problem is there are many factors in play:
- Will the competition release as much hashrate as they claim they will?
- Will Cointerra ship on time and within spec?
- Are there other "dark pools" of hashrate soon to go online?
etc.

Personally I think there is a reasonable chance that Cointerra's machine will not mine as many BTC as they cost.  Add in the opportunity cost involved in a pre-order and all the risks of a physical machine (delivered late, defective etc.) and I think it's a risky investment that should only be made with money you wouldn't mind terribly losing at least a portion of.

I think the hope with Cointerra is that their machine is more efficient than not only the current competition but also medium term future competitors.  Then as mining becomes less profitable there are less orders and global hashrate tapers off it's exponential increase and other machines drop out due to inefficiency and Cointerra is left marginally profitable for a long time before the next gen comes out and finally obsoletes them.  Looking that far in the future with any aspect of Bitcoin is definitely dicey though.

[maursader]

Thanks for that post. I'd like to hear more on this.

@Cointerra, I'm from Canada. I'd like to come down and visit you guys, check out the scene if possible. If all checks out, I'd like to buy a few.. starting with 5, or more. @Cointerra - Can you please PM me about this? I'm very interested.

[HeRetiK]

Is there any way to predict what the hash rates will be in January when Cointerra is expected to ship these 1TH/s and 2TH/s units? I'm considering buying one, and I'm looking for reasons to either buy it, or not buy it. Please help me out here, I'm on the fence, and it's pretty painful. Should I expect that it's gonna be worth it? or not?

Cheers.

This might give you a raw idea of what to expect the upcoming months:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

[maursader]

Thanks for that, I'll check it out as well.

[amencon]

Is there any way to predict what the hash rates will be in January when Cointerra is expected to ship these 1TH/s and 2TH/s units? I'm considering buying one, and I'm looking for reasons to either buy it, or not buy it. Please help me out here, I'm on the fence, and it's pretty painful. Should I expect that it's gonna be worth it? or not?

Cheers.

This might give you a raw idea of what to expect the upcoming months:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

Yup that was primarily the one I was thinking of but was too lazy to find and link it.  Thanks.

[btc_uzr]

2. Without speculating in exact BTC output, it stands to argue that whoever mines with the highest hash-rate/power consumption ratio will see ROI for quite some time as older and less profitable miners leave the network. Of course Diff cannot exponentially increase past what any hardware can profitably mine, as was seen when GPU made CPU mining obsolete and now with ASIC making GPU mining obsolete.

This is true provided the batch "with the highest hash-rate/power consumption ratio" is delivered quickly as a whole, with the batch size being limited to a reasonable quantity.

BFL messed up in this regard in both respects. They delivered their queue slowly, thereby leaving most reward to those at the start of the queue. They also oversold their single batch at two stages of pricing, knowing that those at the end of the queue would never see a return.

Your statement may prove true for some of your customers, but can you guarantee it for all?

It is our belief that offering high hash-rate at lowest possible power consumption will be profitable until 3rd Gen ASIC, due to the fact that at a certain point only the miners with the lowest power consumption per GH/s will be able to provide ROI.

Thus less profitable miners will to a large extent stop mining and difficulty will adjust to a point where just as it was true for CPU/GPU and soon Gen 1 ASIC profitability will be assured only with the latest generation of ASIC miners.

Since the TerraMiner series will lead the Gen 2 ASIC technology race when it comes to hash power per kW/h we believe our customers will enjoy ROI for quite some time.

W per GH/s is indeed the key

I'm considering to buy from you as well, but currently it I'm not sure whether KnC's 2nd Gen devices in march will make it unprofitable as they might beat your W per GH/s value.
As far as I know they were developing all the time in parallel this hardcopy for 1st Gen, as well as tuned custom design for 2nd Gen.
So they likely have started earlier in April/May and spent more time for development/testing/tuning and it will relase it later, therefore it is possible that their next gen might beat your values.

At the moment I have to accept a later queue-place for a better risk forecast, alternative in my eyes would be risking my investment for a better queue.

[DPoS]

If you are worried about watts/Gh then you won't be close to getting ROI.   You have to make the lion share of your ROI well before the % of paying for power vs mining returns per month becomes significant

Probably better to figure out how much watts per month you can use if you go solar and then just hunt down and add miners that other's sell on the cheap if you want long term hashing

[maursader]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

[DPoS]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

crickets 

[cointerra]

Thanks for that post. I'd like to hear more on this.

@Cointerra, I'm from Canada. I'd like to come down and visit you guys, check out the scene if possible. If all checks out, I'd like to buy a few.. starting with 5, or more. @Cointerra - Can you please PM me about this? I'm very interested.

Hello maursader,
we would love to have you visit our office and meet the team. I will PM you and we can set up a date for you to visit our offices and the beautiful city of Austin.

[cointerra]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

Of course no one in the ASIC industry can make any guarantees when it comes to ROI times etc. However, looking at diff increases historically and the ROI of CPU/GPU and first gen ASIC we foresee that our miners will indeed have quite a long time of very healthy ROI on arrival.

The basis for this is not primarily diff increase speculation but the fact that diff as a function follows the general rule that people will mine until their miners simply are not profitable any longer. We can see this in the plateau in the technological shifts so far and there really is no reason to expect a different behavior with Gen 2 ASIC. Meaning that when 28nm in this case becomes the 'standard' for Bitcoin mining, both GPU (already happened to a large extent) and Gen 1 ASIC will be forced off the network as a result of no longer being profitable.

What we expect here is that the dominant technology will be the best Gen 2 ASIC from a hash-rate/power consumed standpoint, and until Gen 3 ASIC hits the market these miners will provide ROI.

As CoinTerra produces ASIC with what is currently slated to be the most profitable hash-rate/power consumption calculation, we are confident that our miners will provide ample ROI as the leading technology for mining Bitcoin quickly and with low power consumption.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

[bobsag3]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

Of course no one in the ASIC industry can make any guarantees when it comes to ROI times etc. However, looking at diff increases historically and the ROI of CPU/GPU and first gen ASIC we foresee that our miners will indeed have quite a long time of very healthy ROI on arrival.

The basis for this is not primarily diff increase speculation but the fact that diff as a function follows the general rule that people will mine until their miners simply are not profitable any longer. We can see this in the plateau in the technological shifts so far and there really is no reason to expect a different behavior with Gen 2 ASIC. Meaning that when 28nm in this case becomes the 'standard' for Bitcoin mining, both GPU (already happened to a large extent) and Gen 1 ASIC will be forced off the network as a result of no longer being profitable.

What we expect here is that the dominant technology will be the best Gen 2 ASIC from a hash-rate/power consumed standpoint, and until Gen 3 ASIC hits the market these miners will provide ROI.

As CoinTerra produces ASIC with what is currently slated to be the most profitable hash-rate/power consumption calculation, we are confident that our miners will provide ample ROI as the leading technology for mining Bitcoin quickly and with low power consumption.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

Have yall thought of a hosting option? I am a native of Dallas, travel to austin once in a while, and run a hosting company out of Missouri (Somehow power here is cheaper than deregulated Texas... strange). I would of course be happy to meet in person etc, An excuse to fly home and see family in Dallas and SA.

[Nemesis]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

Of course no one in the ASIC industry can make any guarantees when it comes to ROI times etc. However, looking at diff increases historically and the ROI of CPU/GPU and first gen ASIC we foresee that our miners will indeed have quite a long time of very healthy ROI on arrival.

The basis for this is not primarily diff increase speculation but the fact that diff as a function follows the general rule that people will mine until their miners simply are not profitable any longer. We can see this in the plateau in the technological shifts so far and there really is no reason to expect a different behavior with Gen 2 ASIC. Meaning that when 28nm in this case becomes the 'standard' for Bitcoin mining, both GPU (already happened to a large extent) and Gen 1 ASIC will be forced off the network as a result of no longer being profitable.

What we expect here is that the dominant technology will be the best Gen 2 ASIC from a hash-rate/power consumed standpoint, and until Gen 3 ASIC hits the market these miners will provide ROI.

As CoinTerra produces ASIC with what is currently slated to be the most profitable hash-rate/power consumption calculation, we are confident that our miners will provide ample ROI as the leading technology for mining Bitcoin quickly and with low power consumption.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

The problem is.... you see.... your customers will be COMPETING with YOU/YOUR TEAM in mining as well (so being the most efficient hardware is pointless) Guess who will have the upper hand?

If anyone here dont see this, they deserve to lose their bet.

[ralree]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

crickets 

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

bitchslapped. 

[Dagger75]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

Of course no one in the ASIC industry can make any guarantees when it comes to ROI times etc. However, looking at diff increases historically and the ROI of CPU/GPU and first gen ASIC we foresee that our miners will indeed have quite a long time of very healthy ROI on arrival.

The basis for this is not primarily diff increase speculation but the fact that diff as a function follows the general rule that people will mine until their miners simply are not profitable any longer. We can see this in the plateau in the technological shifts so far and there really is no reason to expect a different behavior with Gen 2 ASIC. Meaning that when 28nm in this case becomes the 'standard' for Bitcoin mining, both GPU (already happened to a large extent) and Gen 1 ASIC will be forced off the network as a result of no longer being profitable.

What we expect here is that the dominant technology will be the best Gen 2 ASIC from a hash-rate/power consumed standpoint, and until Gen 3 ASIC hits the market these miners will provide ROI.

As CoinTerra produces ASIC with what is currently slated to be the most profitable hash-rate/power consumption calculation, we are confident that our miners will provide ample ROI as the leading technology for mining Bitcoin quickly and with low power consumption.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

The problem is.... you see.... your customers will be COMPETING with YOU/YOUR TEAM in mining as well (so being the most efficient hardware is pointless) Guess who will have the upper hand?

If anyone here dont see this, they deserve to lose their bet.

Exactly, the miners buying equipment will always be the ones losing in this scenario.  Just look at Bitfury, https://ghash.io/ they just added another 100TH/s Today so up to 625TH/s now!!  Meanwhile October orders for the V3 Bitfury Hash boards are still asking Dave where there gear is since it's running later than Promised...it looks like the answer to that question is Right here https://ghash.io/ once again.

We're gonna keep losing big until we make our stand and demand Gear that is priced much cheaper so as to be able to ROI before the Miner no longer pays for Electricity.

I just don't understand how anyone is still getting any Pre-order business anymore either.  Some must just have alot of money to blow...

[DPoS]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

crickets 

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

bitchslapped. 

lol how>?>  by them saying a big good luck?

[DPoS]

I just don't understand how anyone is still getting any Pre-order business anymore either.  Some must just have alot of money to blow...

problem is you are still in the old gpu miner mentality ...  with the stakes raised people can play 'cost basis' tricks on the old ledger.. etc

[Dagger75]

I just don't understand how anyone is still getting any Pre-order business anymore either.  Some must just have alot of money to blow...

problem is you are still in the old gpu miner mentality ...  with the stakes raised people can play 'cost basis' tricks on the old ledger.. etc

I hear what you're saying, but I think very few have that opportunity available to them.  It's gonna really suck having to watch this from the "outside" once my current Asics cost more to run then they earn.

I hope come Summer of 2014 things start to look alittle more clear for us miners and the whole network doesn't consist just 6-12 Large Corporate Miners mining using the ASIC design that our pre-orders paid for to milk to Network for all it's worth.     Keeping my fingers crossed that they understand Bitcoin enough to realize a Centralized Network will ruin Bitcoin so no more $200,000+ a Day for 25% of the network.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Going off topic a bit here... But in 2014, the bulk of the sales of bitcoin hardware will be those products that are low cost, high performance and low power.  Ie: Complete Systems (not chips) selling for <$3/GH in early 2014, <$2/GH in mid 2014, and probably even <$1/GH by end of 2014 (assuming a die shrink to hit that figure).

There will be no die shrink in 2014 and probably not in 2015. 

[ralree]

lol how>?>  by them saying a big good luck?

Just thought it was funny that you were implying they weren't going to comment, when they commented just a few hours later.  No ill will, my friend .

[ralree]

Going off topic a bit here... But in 2014, the bulk of the sales of bitcoin hardware will be those products that are low cost, high performance and low power.  Ie: Complete Systems (not chips) selling for <$3/GH in early 2014, <$2/GH in mid 2014, and probably even <$1/GH by end of 2014 (assuming a die shrink to hit that figure).

There will be no die shrink in 2014 and probably not in 2015. 

+1.  20nm doesn't offer much over 28nm (30% speed increase, more density or less power - read TSMC's page on this).  28nm will be the standard for most of next year I think, if not longer. 

[erk]

Going off topic a bit here... But in 2014, the bulk of the sales of bitcoin hardware will be those products that are low cost, high performance and low power.  Ie: Complete Systems (not chips) selling for <$3/GH in early 2014, <$2/GH in mid 2014, and probably even <$1/GH by end of 2014 (assuming a die shrink to hit that figure).

There will be no die shrink in 2014 and probably not in 2015.  

+1.  20nm doesn't offer much over 28nm (30% speed increase, more density or less power - read TSMC's page on this).  28nm will be the standard for most of next year I think, if not longer.  

Intel have been doing some 14nm, but lot's of yield problems. 28nm will be the best ASIC price/performance point for a couple of years I reckon.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20131017232018_Intel_14nm_Atom_Airmont_Processors_Are_On_Track_for_2014.html

[aerobatic]

+1.  20nm doesn't offer much over 28nm (30% speed increase, more density or less power - read TSMC's page on this).  28nm will be the standard for most of next year I think, if not longer.  

Intel have been doing some 14nm, but lot's of yield problems. 28nm will be the best ASIC price/performance point for a couple of years I reckon.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20131017232018_Intel_14nm_Atom_Airmont_Processors_Are_On_Track_for_2014.html

I think if a newer process is available, then someone will use it.  all the people who rushed into 28nm (KnC, HF, CT, CC) will probably also rush into the next one just as soon as they can afford it (the NRE's are even higher).  Im assuming thats H2 of 2014, but maybe its early 2015 if the next die shrink is late due to yield problems.

[aerobatic]

+1.  20nm doesn't offer much over 28nm (30% speed increase, more density or less power - read TSMC's page on this).  28nm will be the standard for most of next year I think, if not longer. 

I think youve misunderstood the benefits of 20nm....  maybe you didnt understand so i will repeat it on each line...

1.  If it gets you 30% speed improvement... (all your hash engines go faster)
2.  AND it gets you 1.9x the density (double the number of hash engines)
3.  AND its 25% lower power (probably means more hash engines can be used without hitting thermal limits)

So we're talking quite a bit of potential speed improvement (and benefitting from lower power) at the same cost per die as 28nm.

If people can double the number of hash engines, AND, get 30% speed increase, AND have lower power... all from a die shrink, then thats three reasons to consider using it... outweighed by the huge cost of another NRE...  but if they can amortise that nre cost over enough chips made...

Also, i think everyone who has made silicon will find optimisations they can make...  whether they be circuit improvements, or relaxing the timing... (theres a trend in some of the designs to introduce gate closure timing errors to eek out faster hashing rates with some error allowance)... im not sure this concept wins much, but we'll see...

And for 14nm, whenever thats available... the differences are even greater.

-- Jez

[DeathAndTaxes]

+1.  20nm doesn't offer much over 28nm (30% speed increase, more density or less power - read TSMC's page on this).  28nm will be the standard for most of next year I think, if not longer.  

I think youve misunderstood the benefits of 20nm....  maybe you didnt understand so i will repeat it on each line...

1.  If it gets you 30% speed improvement... (all your hash engines go faster)
2.  AND it gets you 1.9x the density (double the number of hash engines)
3.  AND its 25% lower power (probably means more hash engines can be used without hitting thermal limits)

So we're talking quite a bit of potential speed improvement (and benefitting from lower power) at the same cost per die as 28nm.

If people can double the number of hash engines, AND, get 30% speed increase, AND have lower power... all from a die shrink, then thats three reasons to consider using it... outweighed by the huge cost of another NRE...  but if they can amortise that nre cost over enough chips made...

Also, i think everyone who has made silicon will find optimisations they can make...  whether they be circuit improvements, or relaxing the timing... (theres a trend in some of the designs to introduce gate closure timing errors to eek out faster hashing rates with some error allowance)... im not sure this concept wins much, but we'll see...

The bolded part is the fatal flaw of your logic.  Fabrication price per wafer @ 20nm is about 5x the cost as 28nm right now and it will be years before it hits cost parity.  The industry rule of thumb has been 2 years but (see NVidia slide at bottom) that has been slipping and the time before a new node reaches parity is taking longer and longer.  

However today lets assume all the fab marketing brochure-ware and give you the theoretical max of 30% higher speed and 1.9x density.   1.3 * 1.9 = 2.47.  So each wafer has 2.5x the hashing capacity which sounds great until you realize the nominal cost per wafer is 5x higher.   As a result you end up with 2x the cost per GH.   In reality you likely are going to get less, at more cost and with more potential delays, complications and risk.  When you consider lower yields, and the new higher NRE costs which have to be ammortized, the lack of preorder apetite and the fact that your product will be unattractive from day 1 conservatively you are looking at triple the cost per GH/s when comparing your state of the art 20nm tech to your 28nm competitors.   They can just set prices below your marginal cost and force you to sell at a loss or end up with mountains of expensive chips that nobody wants.

There will be no die shrink below 28nm in 2014.  It will be 2016 (maybe late 2015 and that is optimistic) before 20nm is cost competitive with 28nm.   Heres a hint.  AMD and NVidia have no 20nm plans yet.  That is how uneconomical it is.  These are companies which move MILLIONS of wafer starts a year, command the lowest marginal price, and an in a never ending battle to eke out a performance gain over the other.   They likely will extend another half product cycle at 28nm.   Don't point out Intel.  Intel owns their own fabs and plays their cards close to their chest.   Intel isn't a good benchmark for the rest of the industry.   For example 2012 was the first year TSMC had high volume cost competitive 28nm wafers ... Intel went full scale production on 22nm in 2011.  

And for 14nm, whenever thats available... the differences are even greater.

Sure .... eventually.   14nm high cost product will likely ramp up in 2016.  If it takes 3 years to achieve cost parity well you are looking at 2019(ish).  Given the need to offset NRE, and the sluggishness TSMC and other have had in getting new tech up to speed lets just call it an even 2020.

[Ytterbium]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

Because of how late they were shipping. KnC had no real competition for units, other then Avalon clone makers, and they started shipping in September (supposedly).  HashFast was supposedly going to ship this month (What's going on with them?) And Cointerra isn't supposed to ship until December.  Look at a graph of the difficulty and it's not hard to guess why they're selling fewer units.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I still don't get it how come they didn't raised 5 mil $ while HashFast raised 20 mil $ (seems a bit much), Avalon had 8 mil $ for chips and KnC managed to raise more than 5 mil $.

Because of how late they were shipping. KnC had no real competition for units, other then Avalon clone makers, and they started shipping in September (supposedly).  HashFast was supposedly going to ship this month (What's going on with them?) And Cointerra isn't supposed to ship until December.  Look at a graph of the difficulty and it's not hard to guess why they're selling fewer units.

Well KNC said "end of Sept".  HashFast said "end of Oct"  Cointerra said "end of Dec"  that is just SHA-2 industry talk for the next month so:

KNC - Oct
HashFast - Nov
Cointerra - Jan

The rest of it is on point.  Cointerra was/is simply too far out.   Trying to predict hashrate 30-60 days out if tough, trying to do it when 4 competitors will deliver product after you buy and before you receive is essentially impossible.

[aerobatic]

Quote...
The bolded part is the fatal flaw of your logic.  Fabrication price per wafer @ 20nm is about 5x the cost as 28nm right now and it will be years before it hits cost parity.  The industry rule of thumb has been 2 years but (see NVidia slide at bottom) that has been slipping and the time before a new node reaches parity is taking longer and longer.  


No fatal flaw. The cost of the entire system versus the die. It's somewhat low impact if the wafers cost a bit more as the rest of the cost in the box are the same.
Ie. chip costs. Eg. bumping. Dicing. Packaging. .. are the same.

System costs. Eg. Power supplies. Pcbs. Case. Cooling system etc. All of those are the same cost based on the number of parts.
and are much more than the cost of the actual die. I haven't calculated it but I'd bet the cost of the dies is less than 10% of the cost of the system. Faster dies makes the system much faster without adding much if any cost to the system.

[cointerra]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

Of course no one in the ASIC industry can make any guarantees when it comes to ROI times etc. However, looking at diff increases historically and the ROI of CPU/GPU and first gen ASIC we foresee that our miners will indeed have quite a long time of very healthy ROI on arrival.

The basis for this is not primarily diff increase speculation but the fact that diff as a function follows the general rule that people will mine until their miners simply are not profitable any longer. We can see this in the plateau in the technological shifts so far and there really is no reason to expect a different behavior with Gen 2 ASIC. Meaning that when 28nm in this case becomes the 'standard' for Bitcoin mining, both GPU (already happened to a large extent) and Gen 1 ASIC will be forced off the network as a result of no longer being profitable.

What we expect here is that the dominant technology will be the best Gen 2 ASIC from a hash-rate/power consumed standpoint, and until Gen 3 ASIC hits the market these miners will provide ROI.

As CoinTerra produces ASIC with what is currently slated to be the most profitable hash-rate/power consumption calculation, we are confident that our miners will provide ample ROI as the leading technology for mining Bitcoin quickly and with low power consumption.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

The problem is.... you see.... your customers will be COMPETING with YOU/YOUR TEAM in mining as well (so being the most efficient hardware is pointless) Guess who will have the upper hand?

If anyone here dont see this, they deserve to lose their bet.

We are not planning on setting up any form of mining operation before we deliver hardware to our customers. We also plan on offer very competitive hosting solutions allowing our customers to push our miners ROI as far as possible.

The CoinTerra Team

[Nemesis]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

Of course no one in the ASIC industry can make any guarantees when it comes to ROI times etc. However, looking at diff increases historically and the ROI of CPU/GPU and first gen ASIC we foresee that our miners will indeed have quite a long time of very healthy ROI on arrival.

The basis for this is not primarily diff increase speculation but the fact that diff as a function follows the general rule that people will mine until their miners simply are not profitable any longer. We can see this in the plateau in the technological shifts so far and there really is no reason to expect a different behavior with Gen 2 ASIC. Meaning that when 28nm in this case becomes the 'standard' for Bitcoin mining, both GPU (already happened to a large extent) and Gen 1 ASIC will be forced off the network as a result of no longer being profitable.

What we expect here is that the dominant technology will be the best Gen 2 ASIC from a hash-rate/power consumed standpoint, and until Gen 3 ASIC hits the market these miners will provide ROI.

As CoinTerra produces ASIC with what is currently slated to be the most profitable hash-rate/power consumption calculation, we are confident that our miners will provide ample ROI as the leading technology for mining Bitcoin quickly and with low power consumption.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

The problem is.... you see.... your customers will be COMPETING with YOU/YOUR TEAM in mining as well (so being the most efficient hardware is pointless) Guess who will have the upper hand?

If anyone here dont see this, they deserve to lose their bet.

We are not planning on setting up any form of mining operation before we deliver hardware to our customers. We also plan on offer very competitive hosting solutions allowing our customers to push our miners ROI as far as possible.

The CoinTerra Team

I never said you will have mining operation b4 shipping. As long as you have plan for a mining operation during shipping or even afterward, you will be competing with your customer. So your estimated ROI for your customer is MOOT.

Its also a conflict of interest.

Either you're purely operating as a hardware vendor for general public or you're not....(cant be producing hardware for your own mining operation or any private mining). Its very tempting because you can:
1. Fund your mining operation thro sales from your customers (oversold your products)
2. Having private deal with mining corps (oversold again)

Your customer got shafted either way.

[Nemesis]

Quote...
The bolded part is the fatal flaw of your logic.  Fabrication price per wafer @ 20nm is about 5x the cost as 28nm right now and it will be years before it hits cost parity.  The industry rule of thumb has been 2 years but (see NVidia slide at bottom) that has been slipping and the time before a new node reaches parity is taking longer and longer.  


No fatal flaw. The cost of the entire system versus the die. It's somewhat low impact if the wafers cost a bit more as the rest of the cost in the box are the same.
Ie. chip costs. Eg. bumping. Dicing. Packaging. .. are the same.

System costs. Eg. Power supplies. Pcbs. Case. Cooling system etc. All of those are the same cost based on the number of parts.
and are much more than the cost of the actual die. I haven't calculated it but I'd bet the cost of the dies is less than 10% of the cost of the system. Faster dies makes the system much faster without adding much if any cost to the system.

Make sense, i dont know the exact number but based on i've read the chip cost of say ...a GPU card, is quite low percentage wise of the whole cost of the card. So even if the chip cost is double, the cost of the card is only marginal higher.

[cointerra]

I'd like to see cointerra's input on this.

Of course no one in the ASIC industry can make any guarantees when it comes to ROI times etc. However, looking at diff increases historically and the ROI of CPU/GPU and first gen ASIC we foresee that our miners will indeed have quite a long time of very healthy ROI on arrival.

The basis for this is not primarily diff increase speculation but the fact that diff as a function follows the general rule that people will mine until their miners simply are not profitable any longer. We can see this in the plateau in the technological shifts so far and there really is no reason to expect a different behavior with Gen 2 ASIC. Meaning that when 28nm in this case becomes the 'standard' for Bitcoin mining, both GPU (already happened to a large extent) and Gen 1 ASIC will be forced off the network as a result of no longer being profitable.

What we expect here is that the dominant technology will be the best Gen 2 ASIC from a hash-rate/power consumed standpoint, and until Gen 3 ASIC hits the market these miners will provide ROI.

As CoinTerra produces ASIC with what is currently slated to be the most profitable hash-rate/power consumption calculation, we are confident that our miners will provide ample ROI as the leading technology for mining Bitcoin quickly and with low power consumption.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The CoinTerra Team

The problem is.... you see.... your customers will be COMPETING with YOU/YOUR TEAM in mining as well (so being the most efficient hardware is pointless) Guess who will have the upper hand?

If anyone here dont see this, they deserve to lose their bet.

We are not planning on setting up any form of mining operation before we deliver hardware to our customers. We also plan on offer very competitive hosting solutions allowing our customers to push our miners ROI as far as possible.

The CoinTerra Team

I never said you will have mining operation b4 shipping. As long as you have plan for a mining operation during shipping or even afterward, you will be competing with your customer. So your estimated ROI for your customer is MOOT.

Its also a conflict of interest.

Either you're purely operating as a hardware vendor for general public or you're not....(cant be producing hardware for your own mining operation or any private mining). Its very tempting because you can:
1. Fund your mining operation thro sales from your customers (oversold your products)
2. Having private deal with mining corps (oversold again)

Your customer got shafted either way.

Thank you for your input, and to clarify:

We do not have any set plans on running an in-house mining operation.

Our priority is and have always been to deliver the fastest and most effective Bitcoin mining hardware to our customers. I absolutely understand the logic behind your argument as this has been a subject of contention in the ASIC industry ever since the beginning, even in regards to burn-in testing on the test-net or on the live Bitcoin network etc.

We believe that the best companies in the industry can do is be transparent to the customers and this is something we intend to be.

[DPoS]

We believe that the best companies in the industry can do is be transparent to the customers and this is something we intend to be.

https://picostocks.com/businessplan/31

 

[maursader]

@cointerra, I have sent you a PM.

[aerobatic]

We believe that the best companies in the industry can do is be transparent to the customers and this is something we intend to be.

https://picostocks.com/businessplan/31

 

DPos -

ive seen several bizplans from bitcoin asic mining companies while they were in their original finance raising mode... and several of them originally thought they would raise large amounts of private money to cover the cost of production ($6+m) and then build a private mine.   But almost none of them actually happened.

The only ones that seem to have done it are the publicly funded ones (eg: AsicMiner, or the newer ones like IceDrill and 100/200TH that did it using other people's hardware.)

The only one that I know of that actually raised a big phat chunk of private money and stayed 'secret' is the '21e6 llc'.

As for Cointerra.. they werent the only ones who originally thought it might be a good idea to design an asic and start their own mine... but they didnt do that.  That would be INSTEAD of selling to the pre-order market.

Asic companies have two ways of raising the finance they need to start production (NRE costs are millions).  1.  they can raise from private investors.. in which case they wont be selling their asics as its more profitable to mine with them.. or, 2.  they can offer them to pre-order customers who are willing to put cash down.   once the asic company has followed track 1 or track 2, their destiny is pretty much set and theyre unlikely and unable to switch.

If an asic company DIDNT raise pre-orders, and doesnt need them, you should assume they will (most likely) NOT be selling their hardware to the public and (most likely) WILL be mining with it themselves (in secret?)

Now instead of private secret mines, the trend is for asic companies to offer their hashing hardware either directly or indirectly via resellers into the hashcloud market, where their hashpower is hosted and re-packaged into smaller and more affordable chunks that are more easily sold and much more decentralised in ownership.  these are 'no fuss, no muss' hashing power... sold by people like cloudhashing.com, cex.io etc

I really wouldnt hold it against cointerra that they originally may have thought they would raise lots of private cash and have a private mine, and instead, changed track, and offered their hardware for pre-order sale to end users.   Its pretty much what most asic companies have done... since the main people willing to take a risk in investing in asic mining hardware, are existing miners and bitcoin enthusiasts who are familiar and comfortable with the risks and rewards of the bitcoin world.   Regular financial investors arent.

[crumbs]

... 1.  they can raise from private investors.. in which case they wont be selling their asics as its more profitable to mine with them.. ...

Sorry for nitpicking, but selling chips is more profitable than mining.  AsicMiner is case in point, with business model involving sales of demonstrably unprofitable gear. 

[aerobatic]

... 1.  they can raise from private investors.. in which case they wont be selling their asics as its more profitable to mine with them.. ...

Sorry for nitpicking, but selling chips is more profitable than mining.  AsicMiner is case in point, with business model involving sales of demonstrably unprofitable gear.  

thats ok to nitpick.  i really dont think its as clear cut as that.

if you are building a secret mine.. your boxes dont need to be user friendly.  they may not need their own controllers or power supplies cos you can build out shared facilities.  they might not even be air cooled.. as you can use facilities' water to cool them externally.

building a secret mine, you dont need a sales department nor a customer support department.  you need minimal skeleton staff to keep your mine running and you dont need any externally facing employees at all.

building a secret mine, you can overclock and overdrive your own hardware much harder than you would allow a customer to do it.. since if it blows up, its your own fault and you can take the risks you wouldnt let your customers take.   In fact, the hardware can be more bare bones... you may not even need a case for it.. you can simply slot bare boards in racks.

and ultimately, selling hardware requires you to have a markup to justify selling it.   whereas, if you are buying at cost price, you get to mine at a lower cost.

thus, i argue that operating a secret mine could well be more profitable and controllable, than taking pre-orders and selling boxes to customers.  It all depends on how easily you can sell and at what price you can sell to customers.   Since Cointerra is selling their TH's at a lower price than anyone else, i think its safe to say that they arent making the same profit per box that the other guys are selling, so you cant exactly accuse them of profiteering.. can you !?

(edit) Actually, to nitpick a bit further and take your words literally, you said Selling CHIPS was more profitable.. and i think thats the key.  Selling CHIPS is indeed much more profitable.  But most of the new guys dont sell chips... or, tried and didnt find traction.. maybe these new 28nm chips are too complex and require too sophisticated a board.. or maybe they need to try harder, as clearly, if they were to sell chips, they dont have the huge box costs associated with them and its a much better business to sell chips than to sell fully built working boxes.

[DPoS]

  Since Cointerra is selling their TH's at a lower price than anyone else

Until they ship that is an open statement.   

As we all know from ASICminer, they sold their hardware as high as they could and only dropped price when conditions merited it (competition, diff increase)

KNC could slash their 1st gen prices right when Cointerra starts to look like they are shipping Dec/Jan (as they said they will look into doing things if competitors actually deliver) and also they have a 2nd Gen chip that may come out whenever too

Hashfast might be in the same driver seat if they deliver soon


I'll stick to my belief that Cointerra's real business model is to try to make a splash and get a greater fool to take over on the venture capital level.  They have raised the area for the bagholding. Instead of just the usual late pre-order customers getting the shaft, it will also be a late VC that wants to get into this 'bitcoin thing' that is left with a bigger bag

Look how bitfury is screwing some customers with how they are providing more to the mining pool as priority..if a VC buys Cointerra out, the pre-order customers can consider themselves screwed as the VC can see a fixed cost of developed hardware into short term mining gain.  Right now it is too muddy to think of it..  but not when it gets closer to an actual hashing machine to run through some cost/return numbers

[cointerra]

We believe that the best companies in the industry can do is be transparent to the customers and this is something we intend to be.

https://picostocks.com/businessplan/31

 

We will be communicating more information on the Picostocks listing. In short I can say that the Picostocks listing is not CoinTerra as a corporate entity selling shares but rather Picostocks as a company investing in CoinTerra and selling a form of pass-through ownership. We have a conversation open with Picostocks and will be making a clarifying statement regarding this.

[fractal02]

... 1.  they can raise from private investors.. in which case they wont be selling their asics as its more profitable to mine with them.. ...

Sorry for nitpicking, but selling chips is more profitable than mining.  AsicMiner is case in point, with business model involving sales of demonstrably unprofitable gear.  

But this business model is dead now...

See my sig for the best business model right now

[crumbs]

... 1.  they can raise from private investors.. in which case they wont be selling their asics as its more profitable to mine with them.. ...

Sorry for nitpicking, but selling chips is more profitable than mining.  AsicMiner is case in point, with business model involving sales of demonstrably unprofitable gear.  

thats ok to nitpick.  i really dont think its as clear cut as that.

if you are building a secret mine.. your boxes dont need to be user friendly.  they may not need their own controllers or power supplies cos you can build out shared facilities.  they might not even be air cooled.. as you can use facilities' water to cool them externally.

building a secret mine, you dont need a sales department nor a customer support department.  you need minimal skeleton staff to keep your mine running and you dont need any externally facing employees at all.

building a secret mine, you can overclock and overdrive your own hardware much harder than you would allow a customer to do it.. since if it blows up, its your own fault and you can take the risks you wouldnt let your customers take.   In fact, the hardware can be more bare bones... you may not even need a case for it.. you can simply slot bare boards in racks.

and ultimately, selling hardware requires you to have a markup to justify selling it.   whereas, if you are buying at cost price, you get to mine at a lower cost.

thus, i argue that operating a secret mine could well be more profitable and controllable, than taking pre-orders and selling boxes to customers.  It all depends on how easily you can sell and at what price you can sell to customers.   Since Cointerra is selling their TH's at a lower price than anyone else, i think its safe to say that they arent making the same profit per box that the other guys are selling, so you cant exactly accuse them of profiteering.. can you !?

(edit) Actually, to nitpick a bit further and take your words literally, you said Selling CHIPS was more profitable.. and i think thats the key.  Selling CHIPS is indeed much more profitable.  But most of the new guys dont sell chips... or, tried and didnt find traction.. maybe these new 28nm chips are too complex and require too sophisticated a board.. or maybe they need to try harder, as clearly, if they were to sell chips, they dont have the huge box costs associated with them and its a much better business to sell chips than to sell fully built working boxes.

I agree with most of what you say, with just a few exceptions:

The main one being i'm not arguing that mining is inevitably less profitable than selling, merely that it *can be*, and we have many examples where it's been shown to be.

Then there's the "overclock your own mining gear" argument.  That one just doesn't work IRL.  You will typically find just the opposite to be true -- Industrial gear being understressed & overbuilt, to improve uptime & reduce maintenance.  Once you have an easily scalable model, it's much more effective to simply scale scale scale, and forget squeezing out the last few %.  The cool thing about having a maskset is scaling up is as easy as ordering more from the baker & outsourcing assembly.  Rinse & repeat.

Also, the whole point of ASICs is they require very few external parts -- the boards are relatively cheap & simple.

But i do agree with most of what you say -- this stuff is perfect for huge scale.

[crumbs]

We believe that the best companies in the industry can do is be transparent to the customers and this is something we intend to be.

https://picostocks.com/businessplan/31

 

We will be communicating more information on the Picostocks listing. In short I can say that the Picostocks listing is not CoinTerra as a corporate entity selling shares but rather Picostocks as a company investing in CoinTerra and selling a form of pass-through ownership. We have a conversation open with Picostocks and will be making a clarifying statement regarding this.

I get it.  If Frankie's dad had some APPL stock, i could buy shares in Apple from Frankie, amirite?
I'd like to announce a new Cointerra stock offering.
I own shares in Cointerra pass-through on Picostocks, and am too selling Cointerra shares.
PROFFIT.
What can possibly go wrong?

[Dagger75]

Us Miners HAVE to stick together because for the last 18 Months we've been getting SCREWED by many of these various ASIC companies.  Greed is out of control in Bitcoin atm and unless we want the rich and "well to do" taking over mining completely we need to watch out for each other and Support local and group projects and not allow our fellow miners to purchase equipment that'll never get a ROI let alone any type of profit.  I know i'd rather see Bitcoin prosper for the right reasons instead of just to line the pockets of VC's and their various "Companies"

I know things are always much more completed but seriously, most of us see our fellow miners getting shafted several times a days and we all need to start supporting one another instead of just thinking it's cool to troll the forums and get entertained by others suffering....

This is not Aimed at Cointerra in particular as they can atleast offer the lowest cost per GH but still looking to be a major ROI concern when the product is ever shipped later this Winter or early 2014.

Sorry for offtopic but we gotta do something

[Ytterbium]

Us Miners HAVE to stick together because for the last 18 Months we've been getting SCREWED by many of these various ASIC companies.  Greed is out of control in Bitcoin atm and unless we want the rich and "well to do" taking over mining completely we need to watch out for each other and Support local and group projects and not allow our fellow miners to purchase equipment that'll never get a ROI let alone any type of profit.  I know i'd rather see Bitcoin prosper for the right reasons instead of just to line the pockets of VC's and their various "Companies"

I know things are always much more completed but seriously, most of us see our fellow miners getting shafted several times a days and we all need to start supporting one another instead of just thinking it's cool to troll the forums and get entertained by others suffering....

This is not Aimed at Cointerra in particular as they can atleast offer the lowest cost per GH but still looking to be a major ROI concern when the product is ever shipped later this Winter or early 2014.

Sorry for offtopic but we gotta do something

There is nothing you can do about it. This is what happens in a free market.

[spiccioli]

... 1.  they can raise from private investors.. in which case they wont be selling their asics as its more profitable to mine with them.. ...

Sorry for nitpicking, but selling chips is more profitable than mining.  AsicMiner is case in point, with business model involving sales of demonstrably unprofitable gear.  

But this business model is dead now...

See my sig for the best business model right now

Sure! losing 10% to 20% a day since monday and more than 50% since it started, per each GH/s you own, is the right business model... to go bankrupt.

spiccioli

[Paladin69]

Us Miners HAVE to stick together because for the last 18 Months we've been getting SCREWED by many of these various ASIC companies.  Greed is out of control in Bitcoin atm and unless we want the rich and "well to do" taking over mining completely we need to watch out for each other and Support local and group projects and not allow our fellow miners to purchase equipment that'll never get a ROI let alone any type of profit.  I know i'd rather see Bitcoin prosper for the right reasons instead of just to line the pockets of VC's and their various "Companies"

I know things are always much more completed but seriously, most of us see our fellow miners getting shafted several times a days and we all need to start supporting one another instead of just thinking it's cool to troll the forums and get entertained by others suffering....

This is not Aimed at Cointerra in particular as they can atleast offer the lowest cost per GH but still looking to be a major ROI concern when the product is ever shipped later this Winter or early 2014.

Sorry for offtopic but we gotta do something

I hate to be grim but mining is dead for the average guy.  You will be much better off getting refunds and buying direct.  Then just sit and hold.  You will be much happier in 2-3 years than chasing the difficulty.  I thought the difficulty would run away from everyone starting Spring to Summer next year.  It has already started instead.

[maursader]

Hello maursader,
we would love to have you visit our office and meet the team. I will PM you and we can set up a date for you to visit our offices and the beautiful city of Austin.

Didn't get that PM yet, see below:

@cointerra, I have sent you a PM.

Still waiting on that reply. I hope this doesn't signify the speed at which potential consumers will receive their ASIC machines. Seriously.

[cointerra]

Hello maursader,
we would love to have you visit our office and meet the team. I will PM you and we can set up a date for you to visit our offices and the beautiful city of Austin.

Didn't get that PM yet, see below:

@cointerra, I have sent you a PM.

Still waiting on that reply. I hope this doesn't signify the speed at which potential consumers will receive their ASIC machines. Seriously.

Hello Maursader,
We apologize for the delay. PM'd you promptly after the post, not sure why you did not get the message. Sending you another message asap so that we can plan for your visit.

The CoinTerra Team

[ralree]

1.  If it gets you 30% speed improvement... (all your hash engines go faster)
2.  AND it gets you 1.9x the density (double the number of hash engines)
3.  AND its 25% lower power (probably means more hash engines can be used without hitting thermal limits)

No, that's not what TSMC's page says:

TSMC's 20nm process technology can provide 30 percent higher speed,
1.9 times the density,
or 25 percent less power than its 28nm technology.

http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/20nm.htm

So no, it seem like it does ALL of these things - you have to pick one.  Of course, this could just be a badly written blurb, and perhaps you do get all these things.  If that's true, 20nm would be a possible foe for 28nm BTC ASICs.  Of course, pricing seems astronomical, so ROI would be a LOT slower.  That will change down the road, though.

[jayeeyee]

Are Cointerra legit?  Do they seem capable of delivering on time?  I don't want to see another BFL fiasco/clusterfu*k.

[RoadStress]

Are Cointerra legit?  Do they seem capable of delivering on time?  I don't want to see another BFL fiasco/clusterfu*k.

What do you think about this? Your personal opinion.

[Bicknellski]

Are Cointerra legit?  Do they seem capable of delivering on time?  I don't want to see another BFL fiasco/clusterfu*k.

Haters going to hate (I read that in a BFL thread somewhere)

[Puppet]

Are Cointerra legit?  Do they seem capable of delivering on time?  I don't want to see another BFL fiasco/clusterfu*k.

What do you think about this? Your personal opinion.

Legit? Yes, cant be any reasonable doubt.
Able to deliver? As in having the ability to pull it off, yes, no reasonable doubt there either. Will they? Who the fuck knows. Even intel sometimes misses their time tables. So far, not a single bitcoin asic vendor has come to market without some delay in their planning (yeah even bitfury). It seems reasonable to add at least a few weeks to their published timelines.

Of course the most important question is omitted: even if they pull it off, ship on time and within spec, will it be profitable? My opinion: nop.

Everyone wants to make money mining, the simple fact is that as more people want that, the less they will earn and far too many are already invested to warrant the current hardware prices. Just wait a few months and see what happens.

[cointerra]

Hello,
Just wanted to weight in and let everyone know that we are still on target for our delivery dates.

[Wesly]

Hello,
Just wanted to weight in and let everyone know that we are still on target for our delivery dates.

Does that mean your GoldStrike1 ASIC chip has taped out?

[testerx]

Cointerra, is there any way that you guys could deliver more hashrate to the December orders?  At the rate difficulty has skyrocketed the December orders are not going to be able to recoup the cost difference between themselves and orders from one month later.  KNC Miner ended up shipping about double the initially promised hashrate and I think something similar would be very beneficial.  Right now it's looking like it will be impossible to recoup the $8000 cost difference between your batches and unless you want people demanding refunds en masse I think increasing the amount of hashrate you're shipping to the early adopters would ease a lot of concerns.  I don't know how much is the right amount but as of right now there's no way 2 terahash is going to be enough to recoup the difference, barring some insane explosion in BTC price (which is going down).

Please consider this, I know a lot of us are really reconsidering our purchases. 

[DPoS]

2TH in Jan is like having a couple Avalons right now

They'd have to sell 20TH for $5,000 to get anyone to sign up now for Jan

[ralree]

Cointerra, is there any way that you guys could deliver more hashrate to the December orders?

This would make January customers rather angry unless they got the same benefit. 

At the rate difficulty has skyrocketed the December orders are not going to be able to recoup the cost difference between themselves and orders from one month later.

I never could understand how they could cut their prices so low for just a 1 month difference.  I wouldn't be surprised if more people ask to be moved into the January order queue.  I even ran the analysis on $10K Terraminer IVs ($5/GH), and even that doesn't make sense for the same investment after April (eg. 4 machines at $6K each versus 3 machines at $10K each). 

Perhaps it would be better to cancel your December orders and double your hashrate in January.  Just saying..

[ralree]

2TH in Jan is like having a couple Avalons right now

They'd have to sell 20TH for $5,000 to get anyone to sign up now for Jan

So 120GH/s now is like 2TH/s in January?  So you're saying the difficulty will be ~16x higher in January (6,450,000,000).  I really don't think the difficulty will be that high in a couple short months - it basically makes no sense.  Even if every single unit on this page ships, we're only at 20PH (~6x diff increase):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

And TONS of that equipment will not ship by January.

[DPoS]

just saying people are gunshy  - need to put bigger bait on the lure

[Double-Spent]

Did they taped out already?

[willphase]

Cointerra, is there any way that you guys could deliver more hashrate to the December orders? 

Each Terraminer IV has four GoldStrike1™ chips in it (Hence the IV in the name!)

Each GoldStrike1™ has a minimum hashrate of 504 Gh/sec at 1.4 GHz but the cooling system is designed to support chips clocked up to 700Gh/sec (2 Ghz) depending on binning.  So, it's possible that each Terraminer IV might have a speed of 2800 GH/sec

Source is here: http://cointerra.com/cointerra-demonstrates-working-fpga-releases-additional-chip-details/

Will

[aerobatic]

Cointerra, is there any way that you guys could deliver more hashrate to the December orders? 

Each Terraminer IV has four GoldStrike1™ chips in it (Hence the IV in the name!)

Each GoldStrike1™ has a minimum hashrate of 504 Gh/sec at 1.4 GHz but the cooling system is designed to support chips clocked up to 700Gh/sec (2 Ghz) depending on binning.  So, it's possible that each Terraminer IV might have a speed of 2800 GH/sec

Source is here: http://cointerra.com/cointerra-demonstrates-working-fpga-releases-additional-chip-details/

Will

agreed, its pretty normal in the bitcoin world, to overclock and overvolt the systems...   but they can only be sold, as a pre-order at least, based on their nominal speeds...  which is why KnC sold theirs as a 400 GH and now its 500-550 GH after it arrived.   And Hashfast is quoting a 400 GH chip but fully expects it to run much faster... and the same is true of cointerra...   I'm quite sure their 504 GH chip can be overclocked and overvolted as well (yes, hopefully to 700.. but we'll see).  Looking at the size of their radiators in the back of that thing, its pretty serious.. and the fans look pretty meaty too... so I'm sure the cooling system is more than capable of supporting some overclocking and overvolting.  quite how much i guess we won't know til we plug it in, which is exactly what Sam kept telling me at KnC... he said he knew it would overclock but he honestly didn't know by how much til they tried it.

-- Jez

[testerx]

Cointerra, is there any way that you guys could deliver more hashrate to the December orders?

Each Terraminer IV has four GoldStrike1™ chips in it (Hence the IV in the name!)

Each GoldStrike1™ has a minimum hashrate of 504 Gh/sec at 1.4 GHz but the cooling system is designed to support chips clocked up to 700Gh/sec (2 Ghz) depending on binning.  So, it's possible that each Terraminer IV might have a speed of 2800 GH/sec

Source is here: http://cointerra.com/cointerra-demonstrates-working-fpga-releases-additional-chip-details/

Will

Unless they're guaranteeing all the December batches will hit a much higher hash rate there's just no way were going to be able to justify a December unit vs January.  Even at three terahash it looks iff, the difficulty has managed to go up a lot more aggressively than even I thought. 

[-ck]

I posted this in the hashfast thread:

My hashfast contact and I have been working on the cgminer driver for a while for this protocol, and fortunately since they contacted me early, their final protocol is quite different to what they originally had in mind. I'm very pleased with the design overall, and the cgminer driver for it we've been working on will be pushed to a public repository tomorrow.

To be fair, cointerra had contacted me effectively even earlier in their development process than hashfast, so I'll have had even more input into their final protocol and driver design.

[testerx]

I posted this in the hashfast thread:

My hashfast contact and I have been working on the cgminer driver for a while for this protocol, and fortunately since they contacted me early, their final protocol is quite different to what they originally had in mind. I'm very pleased with the design overall, and the cgminer driver for it we've been working on will be pushed to a public repository tomorrow.

To be fair, cointerra had contacted me effectively even earlier in their development process than hashfast, so I'll have had even more input into their final protocol and driver design.

Gives me some confidence...though I really wish they would update us regarding this tapeout...

[iCEBREAKER]

Gives me some confidence...though I really wish they would update us regarding this tapeout...

The tape-out was supposed to be finished the first week of October.

It's now the last day of October.

Cointerra is, at minimum, one month behind schedule.

And of course they will have other delays.

So there is zero chance of Cointerra shipping in Dec.

Jan 2014 isn't looking good either.

So much for Cointerra's 'Dream Team.   

[RHA]

Just announced by Cointerra: http://terraminehosting.com/

TerraMine Hosting currently offers four exclusive hosting packages at a discounted introductory price.

    12-month hosting for TerraMiner II for $2,699 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th $2,999)
    6-month hosting for TerraMiner II for $1,599 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th, $1,899)
    12-month hosting for TerraMiner IV for $3,499 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th, $3,999)
    6-month hosting for TerraMiner IV for $2,599 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th, $2,999)

The monthly fee includes all running costs as well as setup and management fees charged by the hosting provider.

(It's not an offer for mining power like at cex.io. You have to have a TerraMiner ordered first to make an order for hosting.)

[iCEBREAKER]

Just announced by Cointerra: http://terraminehosting.com/

TerraMine Hosting currently offers four exclusive hosting packages at a discounted introductory price.

    12-month hosting for TerraMiner II for $2,699 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th $2,999)
    6-month hosting for TerraMiner II for $1,599 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th, $1,899)
    12-month hosting for TerraMiner IV for $3,499 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th, $3,999)
    6-month hosting for TerraMiner IV for $2,599 until Nov 15th (After Nov 15th, $2,999)

The monthly fee includes all running costs as well as setup and management fees charged by the hosting provider.

(It's not an offer for mining power like at cex.io. You have to have a TerraMiner ordered first to make an order for hosting.)

Oh goody, now I can purchase hosting for a chip that hasn't even been completely designed and won't physically exist for at least 60-90 days.

It sure is easier to offer ASIC hosting than complete the tape-out of an overly-ambitious chip that simply copied HashFast's specs and optimistically aspires to one-up them.   

Another first for Cointerra!     Now with 50% more ballpark estimates and wishful thinking!   

[RHA]

Oh goody, now I can purchase hosting for a chip that hasn't even been completely designed and won't physically exist for at least 60-90 days.

It was possible earlier to purchase a hosting for a machine with a yet non-existing chip: at KnC (in June-August), at BFL (Monarch), at Black Arrow (Minion)...
If it is completely designed and how long it will take to produce, is another matter.

[iCEBREAKER]

Oh goody, now I can purchase hosting for a chip that hasn't even been completely designed and won't physically exist for at least 60-90 days.

It was possible earlier to purchase a hosting for a machine with a yet non-existing chip: at KnC (in June-August), at BFL (Monarch), at Black Arrow (Minion)...
If it is completely designed and how long it will take to produce, is another matter.

A chip passes through several stages on its way from conception to hashing.

HashFast, KnC, BFL, and BlackArrow have taped-out their chips, so they actually exist on paper and somewhat/partially exist in the physical world.

Conterra has still not yet taped-out, so their chip design is not complete and thus their vaporware cannot be said to exist even on paper (much less the real world).

The only reasons for a month-long delay between mock and actual tape-out are

1) when put into physical simulation Conterra's chip didn't perform at the desired 'wishful thinking' spec of [HashFast + 1] and had to be re-designed to fix that

2) Conterra didn't raise enough money to pay for the rest of the NRE and some wafers

3) Conterra didn't raise enough money to pay for fixing the broken initial design and a second tape-out

4) some combination or all of the above

[Egon]

Job postings from the Cointerra site today (11/5/13):

Hiring lead physical design engineer
Hiring principal design engineer
Hiring principal verification engineer

Cointerra could you please comment on how this plays into your tape out schedule? This is your only official news posting on the site in the last 20 days...

[DPoS]

Job postings from the Cointerra site today (11/5/13):

Hiring lead physical design engineer
Hiring principal design engineer
Hiring principal verification engineer

Cointerra could you please comment on how this plays into your tape out schedule? This is your only official news posting on the site in the last 20 days...

these guys (like I said from first whiff) are just a bunch of contracting power point whiteboarding apes that live off of soaking up 6 month budget cycles

There are TONS of brilliant speaking non-producing professionals squawking daily in conference rooms across the world

Enjoy their vaporware

[iCEBREAKER]

Job postings from the Cointerra site today (11/5/13):

Hiring lead physical design engineer
Hiring principal design engineer
Hiring principal verification engineer

Cointerra could you please comment on how this plays into your tape out schedule? This is your only official news posting on the site in the last 20 days...

Wow, looks like Conterra fired their whole R&D team (most likely for blatant incompetence).

So much for Ravi and the ASIC All-Stars!

Conterra customers should start expecting delivery in 6-8 months from now.

[aerobatic]

Job postings from the Cointerra site today (11/5/13):

Hiring lead physical design engineer
Hiring principal design engineer
Hiring principal verification engineer

Cointerra could you please comment on how this plays into your tape out schedule? This is your only official news posting on the site in the last 20 days...

Wow, looks like Conterra fired their whole R&D team (most likely for blatant incompetence).

So much for Ravi and the ASIC All-Stars!

Conterra customers should start expecting delivery in 6-8 months from now.

you don't think its more likely that they've finished their first silicon and are now hiring a team for their second silicon.  In other news, kncminer's design partner, Alchip announced they're working on their second KnC silicon yesterday and BitFury is working on their second one..

Starting the second chip seems to be what people tend to do after they've finished the first chip.  Since hashfast has taped out already, do you think their asic engineers are now twiddling their thumbs or do you think may also be working on the next one too?  which is it, hashfast fanboy?

[pwnyboy]

you don't think its more likely that they've finished their first silicon and are now hiring a team for their second silicon.  

Are you insane?  By your logic, they finished designing something that beats every other ASIC maker, yet they're keeping that fact a secret.  That makes a tremendous amount of sense.

Anything else you'd like to postulate on?

[RoadStress]

you don't think its more likely that they've finished their first silicon and are now hiring a team for their second silicon.  In other news, kncminer's design partner, Alchip announced they're working on their second KnC silicon yesterday and BitFury is working on their second one..

Starting the second chip seems to be what people tend to do after they've finished the first chip.  Since hashfast has taped out already, do you think their asic engineers are now twiddling their thumbs or do you think may also be working on the next one too?  which is it, hashfast fanboy?

Proof of both statements?

[ImI]

What is Cointerras refund-policy?

[Egon]

you don't think its more likely that they've finished their first silicon and are now hiring a team for their second silicon.  In other news, kncminer's design partner, Alchip announced they're working on their second KnC silicon yesterday and BitFury is working on their second one..

Starting the second chip seems to be what people tend to do after they've finished the first chip.  Since hashfast has taped out already, do you think their asic engineers are now twiddling their thumbs or do you think may also be working on the next one too?  which is it, hashfast fanboy?

While that is possible, it doesn't seem likely to me... but the purpose of the post was to have Cointerra comment on why they are hiring prior to announcing a chip status update for Goldstrikes.

Cointerra please respond.

[chrono030]

Job postings from the Cointerra site today (11/5/13):

Hiring lead physical design engineer
Hiring principal design engineer
Hiring principal verification engineer

Cointerra could you please comment on how this plays into your tape out schedule? This is your only official news posting on the site in the last 20 days...

these guys (like I said from first whiff) are just a bunch of contracting power point whiteboarding apes that live off of soaking up 6 month budget cycles

There are TONS of brilliant speaking non-producing professionals squawking daily in conference rooms across the world

Enjoy their vaporware

This is the most likely scenario.  It doesn't make any sense that an organization would sandbag a successful tape out and hire some more people to do a R2 chip.  This reeks of ineptitude.

[DeathAndTaxes]

It also doesn't make sense a company would heavily hype early October tape out and then go silent without even a single one liner about tape out successful.

Saying "tape out successful" = good for future sales.
Saying nothing = bad for future sales.

There is absolutely no cost and only benefit for the company to announce their successful tapeout unless it hasn't happened.

[Wesly]

It also doesn't make sense a company would heavily hype early October tape out and then go silent without even a single one liner about tape out successful.

Saying "tape out successful" = good for future sales.
Saying nothing = bad for future sales.

There is absolutely no cost and only benefit for the company to announce their successful tapeout unless it hasn't happened.

Saying tape out not successful = death to the company, so they chose the next best choice..  say nothing.

[aerobatic]

It also doesn't make sense a company would heavily hype early October tape out and then go silent without even a single one liner about tape out successful.
Saying "tape out successful" = good for future sales.
Saying nothing = bad for future sales.
There is absolutely no cost and only benefit for the company to announce their successful tapeout unless it hasn't happened.

Saying tape out not successful = death to the company, so they chose the next best choice..  say nothing.

you guys are always predicting doom and gloom, and with the deafening silence i can see why its easy to make that assumption ...

I called them just now and they confirmed that they're quiet because they're working on the tape-out and they're expecting it to be done imminently.  they don't want to be saying repeatedly that its coming soon so they confirmed that its imminent - i.e. within days not weeks, and that all is well.. and that they will announce it the second its done (.. and to let them get on with it ;-)

you'll get the same answer if you call them.  so, lets wait a few days and see what happens!

[bobsag3]

It also doesn't make sense a company would heavily hype early October tape out and then go silent without even a single one liner about tape out successful.
Saying "tape out successful" = good for future sales.
Saying nothing = bad for future sales.
There is absolutely no cost and only benefit for the company to announce their successful tapeout unless it hasn't happened.

Saying tape out not successful = death to the company, so they chose the next best choice..  say nothing.

you guys are always predicting doom and gloom, and with the deafening silence i can see why its easy to make that assumption ...

I called them just now and they confirmed that they're quiet because they're working on the tape-out and they're expecting it to be done imminently.  they don't want to be saying repeatedly that its coming soon so they confirmed that its imminent - i.e. within days not weeks, and that all is well.. and that they will announce it the second its done (.. and to let them get on with it ;-)

you'll get the same answer if you call them.  so, lets wait a few days and see what happens!

They have been saying "hey don't want to be saying repeatedly that its coming soon so they confirmed that its imminent" for weeks now. They had plenty of time to roll out "hosting" to get more money- but still no news on what would be hosting. You should probably plant the grain before you worry about building the bakery dont you think?

[FeedbackLoop]

It also doesn't make sense a company would heavily hype early October tape out and then go silent without even a single one liner about tape out successful.
Saying "tape out successful" = good for future sales.
Saying nothing = bad for future sales.
There is absolutely no cost and only benefit for the company to announce their successful tapeout unless it hasn't happened.

Saying tape out not successful = death to the company, so they chose the next best choice..  say nothing.

you guys are always predicting doom and gloom, and with the deafening silence i can see why its easy to make that assumption ...

I called them just now and they confirmed that they're quiet because they're working on the tape-out and they're expecting it to be done imminently.  they don't want to be saying repeatedly that its coming soon so they confirmed that its imminent - i.e. within days not weeks, and that all is well.. and that they will announce it the second its done (.. and to let them get on with it ;-)

you'll get the same answer if you call them.  so, lets wait a few days and see what happens!

Sorry for meddling here but there is an enormous flaw in what you just said. According to that, they didn't say it was imminent two weeks ago when it was already imminent because then they would be repeating themselves one week after when it would be imminent again?

[aerobatic]

Sorry for meddling here but there is an enormous flaw in what you just said. According to that, they didn't say it was imminent two weeks ago when it was already imminent because then they would be repeating themselves one week after when it would be imminent again?

thats definitely a feedback loop if ever i saw one

[DeathAndTaxes]

I called them just now and they confirmed that they're quiet because they're working on the tape-out and they're expecting it to be done imminently.

I think I said a lack of statement likely means they haven't completed the tapeout (something that was scheduled for early Oct).  You confirmed my assumption.  Not sure how it was doom & gloom.

Still if the original timeline was tapeout done in early Oct and it is now early Nov how likely do you think delivery in Dec is?

Hint: rocket runs (high cost limited capacity) from foundry generally take 30+ days and standard runs are more like 60+ days.  That is from the date of tape out being complete.   Now that is just raw chips, be sure to add a week or two for packaging, PCB assembly, production, testing and shipping.

[aerobatic]

I called them just now and they confirmed that they're quiet because they're working on the tape-out and they're expecting it to be done imminently.

I think I said a lack of statement likely means they haven't completed the tapeout (something that was scheduled for early Oct).  You confirmed my assumption.  Not sure how it was doom & gloom.

Still if the original timeline was tapeout done in early Oct and it is now early Nov how likely do you think delivery in Dec is?

Hint: rocket runs (high cost limited capacity) from foundry generally take 30+ days and standard runs are more like 60+ days.  That is from the date of tape out being complete.   Now that is just raw chips, be sure to add a week or two for packaging, PCB assembly, production, testing and shipping.

agreed, I'm sure they will keep us abreast after tape-out of where it is.  they've certainly paid high expedite fees to the fab so we'll see how fast it comes out.  I'm pretty sure they're expecting closer to 30 than 60 for their chips to come back.  lets hear it from the horse's mouth when they're ready to announce.

[Puppet]

Its worth restating Cointerra uses Open-silicon as chip designer. The CEO of open silicon is also on the board of cointerra, and likely an investor. Open silicon is not a small company, and should have plenty of engineers to chose from if for some reason cointerra wasnt happy with the team they got assigned.

Secondly, did you guys miss the title of that job opening ?

Hiring: Principal Verification Engineer for Next Gen ASIC

[DPoS]

Its worth restating Cointerra uses Open-silicon as chip designer. The CEO of open silicon is also on the board of cointerra, and likely an investor. Open silicon is not a small company, and should have plenty of engineers to chose from if for some reason cointerra wasnt happy with the team they got assigned.

Secondly, did you guys miss the title of that job opening ?

Hiring: Principal Verification Engineer for Next Gen ASIC

how many crapterras did you order?

[monkee]

Secondly, did you guys miss the title of that job opening ?

Hiring: Principal Verification Engineer for Next Gen ASIC

they may consider their current offerings to be "next gen"

[Puppet]

how many crapterras did you order?

The exact same amount I ordered from all the other asic vendors: zero.

[Puppet]

they may consider their current offerings to be "next gen"

The actual job description mentions "Knowledge on latest technology node (FinFETs, 20nm, 16nm) is a plus".
Granted, thats not definitive, but common sense dictates this cant be for the current design. You wouldnt go through the process of hiring a new lead engineer at this late stage, that makes no sense whatsoever; With time this critical it could never yield a better result than continuing with the team you have. A qualified new lead engineer is not likely found and able to start working the next day, if you publish this job posting today, you probably wont have anyone working for you for another 3 months. So even if your entire team died in a plane crash, you would still rather contract a company that has a well oiled team in place, instead of hiring people and building your own.

Mind you, its entirely possible their schedule is slipping, but these job openings have nothing to do with it.

[HyperMega]

they may consider their current offerings to be "next gen"

The actual job description mentions "Knowledge on latest technology node (FinFETs, 20nm, 16nm) is a plus".
Granted, thats not definitive, but common sense dictates this cant be for the current design. You wouldnt go through the process of hiring a new lead engineer at this late stage, that makes no sense whatsoever; With time this critical it could never yield a better result than continuing with the team you have. A qualified new lead engineer is not likely found and able to start working the next day, if you publish this job posting today, you probably wont have anyone working for you for another 3 months. So even if your entire team died in a plane crash, you would still rather contract a company that has a well oiled team in place, instead of hiring people and building your own.

Mind you, its entirely possible their schedule is slipping, but these job openings have nothing to do with it.

Maybe there was some trouble in paradise?

With respect to the initially announced close cooperation with OpenSilicon it makes absolutely no sense to hire these kind of engineers, neither for the development/implementation of the actual gen nor the next gen. They are not required for the pure system competence and these kind of tasks (especially the physical implementation) should be outsourced to a partner with an experienced implementation team for which “after tape-out is before tape-out”.

Maybe OpenSilicon just realized how high the Cointerra margins finally could be, tried to renegotiate and got too greedy? Took the design as hostage and said no tape-out before we agree on higher royalties!

Sorry, probably just some funny FUD!

[VolanicEruptor]

they may consider their current offerings to be "next gen"

The actual job description mentions "Knowledge on latest technology node (FinFETs, 20nm, 16nm) is a plus".
Granted, thats not definitive, but common sense dictates this cant be for the current design. You wouldnt go through the process of hiring a new lead engineer at this late stage, that makes no sense whatsoever; With time this critical it could never yield a better result than continuing with the team you have. A qualified new lead engineer is not likely found and able to start working the next day, if you publish this job posting today, you probably wont have anyone working for you for another 3 months. So even if your entire team died in a plane crash, you would still rather contract a company that has a well oiled team in place, instead of hiring people and building your own.

Mind you, its entirely possible their schedule is slipping, but these job openings have nothing to do with it.

Maybe there was some trouble in paradise?

With respect to the initially announced close cooperation with OpenSilicon it makes absolutely no sense to hire these kind of engineers, neither for the development/implementation of the actual gen nor the next gen. They are not required for the pure system competence and these kind of tasks (especially the physical implementation) should be outsourced to a partner with an experienced implementation team for which “after tape-out is before tape-out”.

Maybe OpenSilicon just realized how high the Cointerra margins finally could be, tried to renegotiate and got too greedy? Took the design as hostage and said no tape-out before we agree on higher royalties!

Sorry, probably just some funny FUD!

I believe that would be extremely illegal

[DPoS]

I believe that would be extremely illegal

how long (and lost opportunity in this fast space) would it be to take them through legal action??

and without any product how are they paying for lawyers to even take the case?

you think justice is free?

[Carlton Banks]

they may consider their current offerings to be "next gen"

The actual job description mentions "Knowledge on latest technology node (FinFETs, 20nm, 16nm) is a plus".
Granted, thats not definitive, but common sense dictates this cant be for the current design. You wouldnt go through the process of hiring a new lead engineer at this late stage, that makes no sense whatsoever; With time this critical it could never yield a better result than continuing with the team you have. A qualified new lead engineer is not likely found and able to start working the next day, if you publish this job posting today, you probably wont have anyone working for you for another 3 months. So even if your entire team died in a plane crash, you would still rather contract a company that has a well oiled team in place, instead of hiring people and building your own.

Mind you, its entirely possible their schedule is slipping, but these job openings have nothing to do with it.

I thought this company had the most extensive industry connections of all the ASIC hardware manufacturers, though? That's definitely what they're major selling point was originally. In most other ways, what they presented was little different to the other players.

[DPoS]

hmm  no other company ever ditched an old gen and just said, hey look at this shiny new gen!!   let us just move your pre-order money to that... 

[monkee]

hmm  no other company ever ditched an old gen and just said, hey look at this shiny new gen!!   let us just move your pre-order money to that... 

BFL did, actually.  you could transfer the cost of an unshipped 60nm order into a monarch order

still, never buy anything from BFL though

[console_cowboy]

BFL did, actually.  you could transfer the cost of an unshipped 60nm order into a monarch order

still, never buy anything from BFL though

Thatsthejoke.gif

[cointerra]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrike1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

[Bargraphics]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

[aerobatic]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

the usual 70 day turn-around is for people who don't pay extra to the fab to expedite the process

[cointerra]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

the usual 70 day turn-around is for people who don't pay extra to the fab to expedite the process

Turn around is commonly closer to 60 days, and we are expediting the process in several different ways. Ever since mock tape out we have been streamlining every piece of the manufacturing process so that we can deliver at break neck speed as soon as we receive chips.

[wtfvanity]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

the usual 70 day turn-around is for people who don't pay extra to the fab to expedite the process

Turn around is commonly closer to 60 days, and we are expediting the process in several different ways. Ever since mock tape out we have been streamlining every piece of the manufacturing process so that we can deliver at break neck speed as soon as we receive chips.

Break neck like KNC that ships out crap or break neck like BFL's two weeks tm?

[ImI]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

the usual 70 day turn-around is for people who don't pay extra to the fab to expedite the process

Turn around is commonly closer to 60 days, and we are expediting the process in several different ways. Ever since mock tape out we have been streamlining every piece of the manufacturing process so that we can deliver at break neck speed as soon as we receive chips.

Break neck like KNC that ships out crap or break neck like BFL's two weeks tm?

KNC was shipping crap? LOL! I received my miner in the first week and was very pleased with the performance. So wtf are you talking about?!

[-Redacted-]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

They're having breast implants done?

[Puppet]

Turn around is commonly closer to 60 days

There are no 60 days left this year. So much for December delivery.

[bitblazing]

Tape OUT COMPLETED'!!!!

Way to go CT!!!!

http://cointerra.com/cointerra-open-silicon-announce-tape-goldstrike1-asic/

[ImI]

Turn around is commonly closer to 60 days

There are no 60 days left this year. So much for December delivery.

Read again.

[Bargraphics]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

They're having breast implants done?

I saw it Just don't feel like fixing it. But good one!

[Paladin69]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

the usual 70 day turn-around is for people who don't pay extra to the fab to expedite the process

Turn around is commonly closer to 60 days, and we are expediting the process in several different ways. Ever since mock tape out we have been streamlining every piece of the manufacturing process so that we can deliver at break neck speed as soon as we receive chips.

Isn't that risky?  It's like one guy wood carving the male end of a piece hoping it'll fit into the shape that this other guy is wood carving in a different building without the two seeing exactly what the other is doing.

If it doesn't go right, then a new tape-out must begin?

[Epoch]

Tape-out is fine, but doesn't really mean much beyond "things are progressing". They won't know that the chips actually work until they get them fabbed, packaged, and tested. Even if they do functionally work, they may not meet speed or power requirements. Anyone remember BFL?

I'm waiting for the announcement and proof that they have working prototypes hashing at X GH/s and using Y watts. If they can demonstrate a good product at a good price, I'll consider buying. Otherwise no.

[DPoS]

I'm waiting for the announcement and proof that they have working prototypes hashing at X GH/s and using Y watts. If they can demonstrate a good product at a good price, I'll consider buying. Otherwise no.

you know that is impossible.

if there is 100% working product it can only stay on the shelf with ASICminer prices, or sell out in seconds

that is why the gamble on pre-orders brings the price closer to normal ROI.   it is left up to you to drop your cost-basis as much as you can so you can profit against others doing the same

[DPoS]

Hello Forum,
We are proud to announce that we have now reached tape out for the GoldStrik1 ASIC. You can find more information in our press-release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11314884.htm and on http://cointerra.com

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

the usual 70 day turn-around is for people who don't pay extra to the fab to expedite the process

Turn around is commonly closer to 60 days, and we are expediting the process in several different ways. Ever since mock tape out we have been streamlining every piece of the manufacturing process so that we can deliver at break neck speed as soon as we receive chips.

your quote is wrong:

"In Bitcoin mining hardware, the factors that matter the most are the speed of hashing and the consumption of power. The CoinTerra GoldStrike1 based TerraMiner series is poised to be the leanest and most powerful Bitcoin mining line in the market"

the most important is speed to market & hashing...   power usage is such a small % that if you are happy to shave 50% of power costs (tiny part of equation) and give up 75% of btc production (very large part of equation) you are terrible at math or just 'selling your book' as they say

if diff hardly grew, then yes you can show gains from less power but that is madness in this reality

[Wesly]

I'm waiting for the announcement and proof that they have working prototypes hashing at X GH/s and using Y watts. If they can demonstrate a good product at a good price, I'll consider buying. Otherwise no.

you know that is impossible.

if there is 100% working product it can only stay on the shelf with ASICminer prices, or sell out in seconds

that is why the gamble on pre-orders brings the price closer to normal ROI.   it is left up to you to drop your cost-basis as much as you can so you can profit against others doing the same

That might have been true back in the Bitcoin ASIC Dark Ages just 2 short months ago when all you had are 3 wonderful choices between BFL (long delay while being verbally abusive), Avalon (long silent that caused mental abuse) or ASICMiner (Ultra High price that abused and raped your wallets).  But this will not be the case when CoinTerra start shipping in stock product next year.   With KnC continue to sell more of their Gen1 while working on Gen2, HashFast shipping next month and maybe we will even see BFL Monarch next year (Sep?).  There are much more and better choices of competent ASIC mining companies to choose from.  No one will be able to abuse their in stock monopoly like ASICMiner did when they have only BFL and Avalon to make them look good in comparison (lesser of the 3 evils).

[Wesly]

your quote is wrong:

"In Bitcoin mining hardware, the factors that matter the most are the speed of hashing and the consumption of power. The CoinTerra GoldStrike1 based TerraMiner series is poised to be the leanest and most powerful Bitcoin mining line in the market"

the most important is speed to market & hashing...   power usage is such a small % that if you are happy to shave 50% of power costs (tiny part of equation) and give up 75% of btc production (very large part of equation) you are terrible at math or just 'selling your book' as they say

if diff hardly grew, then yes you can show gains from less power but that is madness in this reality

I would say it is even simpler than that, speed and power usage are nothing if you can't put them into context along with the cost of purchase.  How much GH/BTC is the only formula anybody need to know to.

[DPoS]

I would say it is even simpler than that, speed and power usage are nothing if you can't put them into context along with the cost of purchase.  How much GH/BTC is the only formula anybody need to know to.

true, that boils it down as long as that shipping date doesn't slip after you do your calculations

There are much more and better choices of competent ASIC mining companies to choose from.  No one will be able to abuse their in stock monopoly like ASICMiner did when they have only BFL and Avalon to make them look good in comparison (lesser of the 3 evils).

It will be interesting to see how this rolls out, don't forget how big boys play like when Avalon shipped chips to that Swiss company instead of the group buys..  same can happen with HF & Cointerra or even KnC if the price is right

One funny thing with HF's MPP is that they should just ship more chips up front since everyone will know a ballpark ROI once they get to actually shipping miners.  They can make a nice correction then since it will cost the same to them then as it does months later when they do their calculations up to 400% yadda yadda.  If it is capped at 400% what is the true gain of seeing if they somehow DON'T have to ship up to 400% on the MPP?

All that MPP stuff is a total gimmick.. if they gave more upfront, that would scare away more buyers of later batches that it wont help as much but see diff climb even more, but they hope this MPP makes the current customers feel they aren't that screwed and will get some carrot on a stick later

[Epoch]

I'm waiting for the announcement and proof that they have working prototypes hashing at X GH/s and using Y watts. If they can demonstrate a good product at a good price, I'll consider buying. Otherwise no.

you know that is impossible.

if there is 100% working product it can only stay on the shelf with ASICminer prices, or sell out in seconds

that is why the gamble on pre-orders brings the price closer to normal ROI.   it is left up to you to drop your cost-basis as much as you can so you can profit against others doing the same

My point was that Cointerra hasn't shown they have a working chip, much less a working system. So the risk of failure remains very real.

KNC, using a different example, *does* have a working product so the risk of a failed design is gone; the only thing left to consider before making a purchasing decision is price and delivery. BitFury and the BFL 65nm line are also in this category. Cointerra and HashFast are not there yet.

Sure, I like what I've seen of the Cointerra system, but until it's out of the vaporware stage I don't plan to do anything other than watch. My choice; YMMV.

[DPoS]

Sure, I like what I've seen of the Cointerra system, but until it's out of the vaporware stage I don't plan to do anything other than watch. My choice; YMMV.

I completely believe that Cointerra are satisfied with their customers taking all the risk and if they 'get it right' so be it..   their main design focus has always been the business model not the specs

[Korbman]

I completely believe that Cointerra are satisfied with their customers taking all the risk and if they 'get it right' so be it..

I may be missing something, but how is that different from any of the other preorder models vendors touted? Aside from ASICMiner (as far as I remember), every other developer sold a 'place in line' regardless of whether their tech panned out or not.

[aerobatic]

Sure, I like what I've seen of the Cointerra system, but until it's out of the vaporware stage I don't plan to do anything other than watch. My choice; YMMV.

I completely believe that Cointerra are satisfied with their customers taking all the risk and if they 'get it right' so be it..   their main design focus has always been the business model not the specs

Agree with Korbman... theres no difference between Cointerras use of pre-orders and any other companies use of pre-orders.  The only companies that can afford not to need pre-orders are the ones who didn't do 28nm silicon, which has very high NRE cost and requires taking pre-orders to get a big enough cash pile together to fund the NREs to enter production.

And of the chips that aren't 28nm, the only good one is BitFury... and that was painstakingly designed by hand in full custom.  and was very lucky it worked... it could've easily not!  And it ran at best, at half its intended speed.  And its supposedly difficult to keep running and requires a lot of hands on maintenance.

Anyway, going back to Cointerras model... if there was a mature investor market, then an asic company could raise finance from private investors and fund the multi-million production cost of making high performance bitcoin mining asics... but since there isn't such an appetite for investment from private investors, the only model that can raise the cash required is the pre-order model... effectively crowdsourcing the funds required to enter production.   As stated many times before, if the pre-order model wasn't done, and the asic companies did have a way of funding their multimillion dollar production of asics, do you think they would sell them as cheaply as they do right now...  when they could mine with them instead ?  (or sell them for a lot, as in-stock boxes, like avalon/asicminer did?)

The pre-order system requires that said asic company needs to establish its credentials and provide its specs and target delivery date... and then raise cash from its customers via pre-orders to crowd-source the funds needed to go into production (some estimated it was between $5-7m for a 28nm asic system).  In exchange the customers get the asics for a better price, and get them earlier than they would've otherwise got.   And its a free market, with many asic providers so customers have complete choice of who they're going to back.

Dont like the model?  then don't buy.  or wait til you can buy from stock, but expect to pay more per GH for an in-stock miner than a pre-order miner.  Or why not avoid any risk entirely and buy gigahashes from someone who's selling them hassle-free in the form of mining contracts (like cloudhashing or cex.io).   there you're paying $10-20-30 per GH for something that if you buy direct from a pre-order asic company might only be $3/gh plus 50% more in hosting costs that you pay yourself if you host it at home or pay someone else to host in a professional datacenter.

[monkee]

Sure, I like what I've seen of the Cointerra system, but until it's out of the vaporware stage I don't plan to do anything other than watch. My choice; YMMV.

I completely believe that Cointerra are satisfied with their customers taking all the risk and if they 'get it right' so be it..   their main design focus has always been the business model not the specs

Agree with Korbman... theres no difference between Cointerras use of pre-orders and any other companies use of pre-orders.  The only companies that can afford not to need pre-orders are the ones who didn't do 28nm silicon, which has very high NRE cost and requires taking pre-orders to get a big enough cash pile together to fund the NREs to enter production.

And of the chips that aren't 28nm, the only good one is BitFury... and that was painstakingly designed by hand in full custom.  and was very lucky it worked... it could've easily not!  And it ran at best, at half its intended speed.  And its supposedly difficult to keep running and requires a lot of hands on maintenance.

Anyway, going back to Cointerras model... if there was a mature investor market, then an asic company could raise finance from private investors and fund the multi-million production cost of making high performance bitcoin mining asics... but since there isn't such an appetite for investment from private investors, the only model that can raise the cash required is the pre-order model... effectively crowdsourcing the funds required to enter production.   As stated many times before, if the pre-order model wasn't done, and the asic companies did have a way of funding their multimillion dollar production of asics, do you think they would sell them as cheaply as they do right now...  when they could mine with them instead ?  (or sell them for a lot, as in-stock boxes, like avalon/asicminer did?)

The pre-order system requires that said asic company needs to establish its credentials and provide its specs and target delivery date... and then raise cash from its customers via pre-orders to crowd-source the funds needed to go into production (some estimated it was between $5-7m for a 28nm asic system).  In exchange the customers get the asics for a better price, and get them earlier than they would've otherwise got.   And its a free market, with many asic providers so customers have complete choice of who they're going to back.

Dont like the model?  then don't buy.  or wait til you can buy from stock, but expect to pay more per GH for an in-stock miner than a pre-order miner.  Or why not avoid any risk entirely and buy gigahashes from someone who's selling them hassle-free in the form of mining contracts (like cloudhashing or cex.io).   there you're paying $10-20-30 per GH for something that if you buy direct from a pre-order asic company might only be $3/gh plus 50% more in hosting costs that you pay yourself if you host it at home or pay someone else to host in a professional datacenter.

umm, yeah ok.  except that cointerra has repeatedly stated that they did NOT use customer money for NRE and that they DID have private funding. 

[aerobatic]

Sure, I like what I've seen of the Cointerra system, but until it's out of the vaporware stage I don't plan to do anything other than watch. My choice; YMMV.

I completely believe that Cointerra are satisfied with their customers taking all the risk and if they 'get it right' so be it..   their main design focus has always been the business model not the specs

Agree with Korbman... theres no difference between Cointerras use of pre-orders and any other companies use of pre-orders.  The only companies that can afford not to need pre-orders are the ones who didn't do 28nm silicon, which has very high NRE cost and requires taking pre-orders to get a big enough cash pile together to fund the NREs to enter production.

And of the chips that aren't 28nm, the only good one is BitFury... and that was painstakingly designed by hand in full custom.  and was very lucky it worked... it could've easily not!  And it ran at best, at half its intended speed.  And its supposedly difficult to keep running and requires a lot of hands on maintenance.

Anyway, going back to Cointerras model... if there was a mature investor market, then an asic company could raise finance from private investors and fund the multi-million production cost of making high performance bitcoin mining asics... but since there isn't such an appetite for investment from private investors, the only model that can raise the cash required is the pre-order model... effectively crowdsourcing the funds required to enter production.   As stated many times before, if the pre-order model wasn't done, and the asic companies did have a way of funding their multimillion dollar production of asics, do you think they would sell them as cheaply as they do right now...  when they could mine with them instead ?  (or sell them for a lot, as in-stock boxes, like avalon/asicminer did?)

The pre-order system requires that said asic company needs to establish its credentials and provide its specs and target delivery date... and then raise cash from its customers via pre-orders to crowd-source the funds needed to go into production (some estimated it was between $5-7m for a 28nm asic system).  In exchange the customers get the asics for a better price, and get them earlier than they would've otherwise got.   And its a free market, with many asic providers so customers have complete choice of who they're going to back.

Dont like the model?  then don't buy.  or wait til you can buy from stock, but expect to pay more per GH for an in-stock miner than a pre-order miner.  Or why not avoid any risk entirely and buy gigahashes from someone who's selling them hassle-free in the form of mining contracts (like cloudhashing or cex.io).   there you're paying $10-20-30 per GH for something that if you buy direct from a pre-order asic company might only be $3/gh plus 50% more in hosting costs that you pay yourself if you host it at home or pay someone else to host in a professional datacenter.

umm, yeah ok.  except that cointerra has repeatedly stated that they did NOT use customer money for NRE and that they DID have private funding.  

since when have they said that?  no recent asic mining company - as far as I'm aware - has ever entered mass scale production without taking customer funds in the form of pre-orders.   (and don't say bitfury because they only make the chips, not boxes and boards... )

cointerra said they raised $1.5m, which covers the engineer cost of designing the asic.  but in order to go into production they would've paid the fab several million, plus their partners would require a million or two... plus they need to order parts to build the boxes... so, the total cash requirement to enter production is $5-7m...  and they would've needed to take customer pre-orders before production could start.

[DPoS]

my point was guys like bitfury and KNC are obsessed with proving their tech..  cointerra seems obsessed with proving their business model

the proof will be in the pudding

[aerobatic]

my point was guys like bitfury and KNC are obsessed with proving their tech..  cointerra seems obsessed with proving their business model

the proof will be in the pudding

Your point hasn't been well made. BitFury is silent and wants to prove nothing except sell lots of chips through resellers and third party board suppliers. And it is doing very well. Knc is the same (they just want to sell to happy customers). Neither company is trying to prove tech. They're trying to make sales like most companies. Business is business. How is Cointerra any different than any of these other companies.  They are all trying to find customers and sell them Products and have them want to be happy and come back for more.  There's nothing bleeding edge about cointerras business model and you seem a little confused about what point you're trying to make.

And you think cointerra's not trying to prove they have tech too?  the company that claims to have the most powerful bitcoin mining asic ever?  the company that has ex-intel, ex-nvidia and ex-samsung people designing bitcoin asics?   the company that is using state of the art liquid cooling?  you think they're not trying to prove they have tech?

[DPoS]

Neither company is trying to prove tech. They're trying to make sales like most companies. Business is business.

you not seeing the difference will have you picking the wrong horse

where's cointerra's pudding?   talk when you can serve ok?

If cointerra didnt spend all year with that "we will own 40% of the network by end of 2014" nonsense campaign maybe they would of been a bit more ahead on schedule... let's see what their plan B will turn into

[aerobatic]

Neither company is trying to prove tech. They're trying to make sales like most companies. Business is business.

you not seeing the difference will have you picking the wrong horse

where's cointerra's pudding?   talk when you can serve ok?

If cointerra didnt spend all last year with that "we will own 40% of the network by end of 2014" nonsense campaign maybe they would of been a bit more ahead on schedule... let's see what their plan B will turn into

actually, you're wrong.. I've picked almost all the horses so i am nearly certain to have picked a winner and I'm pretty pragmatic about the pros and cons of each of the horses.  I'm a customer of bfl (alas), and knc (yeayy), and hashfast, and cointerra, and even bitfury...!   and i was also an investor in asicminer (now sold.. at a nice profit).  the only major bitcoin asic company I've not bought from is avalon.

you can't fault cointerra for trying to raise private money and build their own mine.   everyone and their dog has tried to do that as well and not anyone, with one exception has succeeded in doing that as there isn't enough private money sloshing around to invest in bitcoin mining asics.

... but when the private investors weren't around to invest the total needed ($6-7m) then the model quickly switched to a pre-order model like everyone else has done.  one day there will be enough private investors to fund the creation of private mines.. but that day isn't today (apart from a company out of stanford university called 21e6 llc, which did raise $5m of private money to make a private mine, but so far at least, no one's seen the mine).

but you are right.. you do have a point.  cointerra were certainly delayed by trying to raise private money that way.. and had they not done that they would've been ready a lot sooner and would be shipping by now, so the effort to raise private money before pivoting and offering pre-orders certainly slowed them down... they may not have been out sooner than KnC but they would've definitely been out by now, had they skipped the attempt to raise private money.  i still think thats an irrelevance.

-- Jez

[DPoS]

true, if you bet on all the horses you 'win'

not sure you been around enough engineers though to notice that some spend 90% of their time on their craft and 10% promoting it and the others do the reverse

[aerobatic]

true, if you bet on all the horses you 'win'

not sure you been around enough engineers though to notice that some spend 90% of their time on their craft and 10% promoting it and the others do the reverse

I'm sure thats true, but the bitcoin asic world is so small that almost all the engineers making bitcoin asics are working flat out since you have to be pretty dedicated to be in the bitcoin space.  its such a fast moving space there isn't any room for coasting.

btw, although not directly relevant to bitcoin mining... my background was mostly in computer games, but also we spun off companies that designed chips.  although i don't do it anymore, i have worked very closely with chip designers.  One of our teams designed perhaps the world's first 3d graphics processor (a kind of GPU called the Super FX chip for Nintendo).  Another of our teams designed the ARC, a microprocessor that competed years ago with ARM (and lost that particular battle when arm became standard inside every gsm cellphone).. ARC's now owned by Synopsis... - one of the leading silicon ip companies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_FX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_International
https://www.synopsys.com/IP/PROCESSORIP/ARCPROCESSORS/Pages/default.aspx

[DPoS]

Those were good times.   I used Amiga's and remember SGI machines back then

here's a good read

http://www.techspot.com/article/650-history-of-the-gpu/

[aerobatic]

Those were good times.   I used Amiga's and remember SGI machines back then

here's a good read

http://www.techspot.com/article/650-history-of-the-gpu/

that was a good read.. but they managed to leave off our contributions (damn them!)... so it was a very pc biassed article, and ignored the Super FX chip (which sold millions of 3d chips in 93, but was on game systems and not pcs)...  and they left off BRender, our 3d library that was used in several games of the era... they only mentioned rendermorphics cos they sold out to microsoft... but otherwise even they would've been forgotten.  in short, it was quite a biassed article that was very pc centric...

i fondly remember the amiga days.. my first 3d game was on the amiga... StarGlider... in the mid 80s..  and i even got a tiny namecheck in one of the amiga manuals...

http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/amiga/books/pdf/Amiga_Hardware_Reference_Manual_(1989).zip

[monkee]

Sure, I like what I've seen of the Cointerra system, but until it's out of the vaporware stage I don't plan to do anything other than watch. My choice; YMMV.

I completely believe that Cointerra are satisfied with their customers taking all the risk and if they 'get it right' so be it..   their main design focus has always been the business model not the specs

Agree with Korbman... theres no difference between Cointerras use of pre-orders and any other companies use of pre-orders.  The only companies that can afford not to need pre-orders are the ones who didn't do 28nm silicon, which has very high NRE cost and requires taking pre-orders to get a big enough cash pile together to fund the NREs to enter production.

And of the chips that aren't 28nm, the only good one is BitFury... and that was painstakingly designed by hand in full custom.  and was very lucky it worked... it could've easily not!  And it ran at best, at half its intended speed.  And its supposedly difficult to keep running and requires a lot of hands on maintenance.

Anyway, going back to Cointerras model... if there was a mature investor market, then an asic company could raise finance from private investors and fund the multi-million production cost of making high performance bitcoin mining asics... but since there isn't such an appetite for investment from private investors, the only model that can raise the cash required is the pre-order model... effectively crowdsourcing the funds required to enter production.   As stated many times before, if the pre-order model wasn't done, and the asic companies did have a way of funding their multimillion dollar production of asics, do you think they would sell them as cheaply as they do right now...  when they could mine with them instead ?  (or sell them for a lot, as in-stock boxes, like avalon/asicminer did?)

The pre-order system requires that said asic company needs to establish its credentials and provide its specs and target delivery date... and then raise cash from its customers via pre-orders to crowd-source the funds needed to go into production (some estimated it was between $5-7m for a 28nm asic system).  In exchange the customers get the asics for a better price, and get them earlier than they would've otherwise got.   And its a free market, with many asic providers so customers have complete choice of who they're going to back.

Dont like the model?  then don't buy.  or wait til you can buy from stock, but expect to pay more per GH for an in-stock miner than a pre-order miner.  Or why not avoid any risk entirely and buy gigahashes from someone who's selling them hassle-free in the form of mining contracts (like cloudhashing or cex.io).   there you're paying $10-20-30 per GH for something that if you buy direct from a pre-order asic company might only be $3/gh plus 50% more in hosting costs that you pay yourself if you host it at home or pay someone else to host in a professional datacenter.

umm, yeah ok.  except that cointerra has repeatedly stated that they did NOT use customer money for NRE and that they DID have private funding.  

since when have they said that?  no recent asic mining company - as far as I'm aware - has ever entered mass scale production without taking customer funds in the form of pre-orders.   (and don't say bitfury because they only make the chips, not boxes and boards... )

cointerra said they raised $1.5m, which covers the engineer cost of designing the asic.  but in order to go into production they would've paid the fab several million, plus their partners would require a million or two... plus they need to order parts to build the boxes... so, the total cash requirement to enter production is $5-7m...  and they would've needed to take customer pre-orders before production could start.

They have been saying it all along, as far as I know.  I've seen it several times.  One is below in the interview with CoinTerra’s CEO, Ravi Iyengar:

Q: What level of pre-orders are estimated before CoinTerra is able to ramp up production?  It has been listed in the media that a number of pre-orders are needed before final manufacturing can take place.

A: When we started looking for investment, it took two months to raise $1.5m from both Bitcoin users and the tech industry – at this point in time there is no need to ask for more investment.  In terms of pre-orders, within 24hrs of our website going live we had 150 pre-orders.  Our production is not hampered by sales in any way.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7246/the-rush-to-bitcoin-asics-ravi-iyengar-launches-cointerra

[aerobatic]

They have been saying it all along, as far as I know.  I've seen it several times.  One is below in the interview with CoinTerra’s CEO, Ravi Iyengar:

Q: What level of pre-orders are estimated before CoinTerra is able to ramp up production?  It has been listed in the media that a number of pre-orders are needed before final manufacturing can take place.

A: When we started looking for investment, it took two months to raise $1.5m from both Bitcoin users and the tech industry – at this point in time there is no need to ask for more investment.  In terms of pre-orders, within 24hrs of our website going live we had 150 pre-orders.  Our production is not hampered by sales in any way.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7246/the-rush-to-bitcoin-asics-ravi-iyengar-launches-cointerra

thanks... i see where the confusion is..  you're right..  its misleading...!

although  the question itself is more of an issue than cointerra's answer.  if it was asked exactly like this in his interview, cointerra probably should've corrected the misconception.    what may have happened is that the question itself may have been edited after it was asked and became slightly different than the question they asked him... but anyway, ravi's answer pretty much  matches my understanding of what happened... namely that they raised $1.5m from investors, which funded 'development' (designing the chip).  And then the product was announced, and preorders started, which allowed them to go into production without requiring additional investment - which is the key takeaway from ravi's answer.   and this practice of designing the chip, then taking pre-orders, which raises the cash to go into production jus no different than every single bitcoin mining asic company has done... from avalon, to bfl, to kncminer, to hashfast, to bit mine etc...   and makes cointerra no different than any of the others.

originally cointerra was trying to raise $6m and go into production (which would've been a different business model without pre-orders and probably without selling mining hardware at retail).. and instead, they raised $1.5, and did pre-orders to sell direct to customers.. so yes, the company pivoted from its original funding model.

its the question thats misleading and if it was asked it exactly like this i think he probably should've gone into more detail to correct the misconception...  so yea, as they've quoted it, its confused messaging.

although its no secret how much it costs to go into production of a 28nm asic, so everyone knows it can't be done for $1.5m or anyone and everyone would've been doing it.

-- jez

[Bogart]

I've picked almost all the horses so i am nearly certain to have picked a winner and I'm pretty pragmatic about the pros and cons of each of the horses.  I'm a customer of bfl (alas), and knc (yeayy), and hashfast, and cointerra, and even bitfury...!   and i was also an investor in asicminer (now sold.. at a nice profit).  the only major bitcoin asic company I've not bought from is avalon.

Your picks are different from mine.

For the next-gen yet-to-ship miners I did not pick BFL Monarch (duh), nor HashFast, nor Cointerra.

I did pick bitmine.ch/CoinCraft and BlackArrow/Prospero.

Time will tell how good my picks were.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips   tits, that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

FTFY

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

They are all trying to find customers and sell them Products and have them want to be happy and come back for more. 

all trying to have happy customers?

You're joshing, right?

[Kaega]

They are all trying to find customers and sell them Products and have them want to be happy and come back for more. 

all trying to have happy customers?

You're joshing, right?

LOL

[monkee]

They have been saying it all along, as far as I know.  I've seen it several times.  One is below in the interview with CoinTerra’s CEO, Ravi Iyengar:

Q: What level of pre-orders are estimated before CoinTerra is able to ramp up production?  It has been listed in the media that a number of pre-orders are needed before final manufacturing can take place.

A: When we started looking for investment, it took two months to raise $1.5m from both Bitcoin users and the tech industry – at this point in time there is no need to ask for more investment.  In terms of pre-orders, within 24hrs of our website going live we had 150 pre-orders.  Our production is not hampered by sales in any way.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7246/the-rush-to-bitcoin-asics-ravi-iyengar-launches-cointerra

thanks... i see where the confusion is..  you're right..  its misleading...!

although  the question itself is more of an issue than cointerra's answer.  if it was asked exactly like this in his interview, cointerra probably should've corrected the misconception.    what may have happened is that the question itself may have been edited after it was asked and became slightly different than the question they asked him... but anyway, ravi's answer pretty much  matches my understanding of what happened... namely that they raised $1.5m from investors, which funded 'development' (designing the chip).  And then the product was announced, and preorders started, which allowed them to go into production without requiring additional investment - which is the key takeaway from ravi's answer.   and this practice of designing the chip, then taking pre-orders, which raises the cash to go into production jus no different than every single bitcoin mining asic company has done... from avalon, to bfl, to kncminer, to hashfast, to bit mine etc...   and makes cointerra no different than any of the others.

originally cointerra was trying to raise $6m and go into production (which would've been a different business model without pre-orders and probably without selling mining hardware at retail).. and instead, they raised $1.5, and did pre-orders to sell direct to customers.. so yes, the company pivoted from its original funding model.

its the question thats misleading and if it was asked it exactly like this i think he probably should've gone into more detail to correct the misconception...  so yea, as they've quoted it, its confused messaging.

although its no secret how much it costs to go into production of a 28nm asic, so everyone knows it can't be done for $1.5m or anyone and everyone would've been doing it.

-- jez

yes, once i found the quote, i wasn't sure who was right...  you really have to parse words carefully in ASIC world!

[ladi4ever]

They are committing fraud against people, took the money, now they do not answer phone calls, emails, and you cannot update their forum either it's disabled, very dishonest company. People so mad. Paid for orders since november they haven't updated their orders, still "ON-Hold" for a month now. And what's worst they are mining with those hardware before they send to clients for 30 days for each order, so they are getting rich with people's money...

Beware they are a fraud...

Cointerra, a well-funded startup of highly experienced ASIC designers, is pleased to announce that we are developing a high performance, low power and low cost 28nm ASIC which is expected to arrive in Q4 2013.

To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

[aerobatic]

They are committing fraud against people, took the money, now they do not answer phone calls, emails, and you cannot update their forum either it's disabled, very dishonest company. People so mad. Paid for orders since november they haven't updated their orders, still "ON-Hold" for a month now. And what's worst they are mining with those hardware before they send to clients for 30 days for each order, so they are getting rich with people's money...

Beware they are a fraud...

Ladi -

you're not very good at this trolling business are you?   Before you start to troll, you need to read up on your subject.

The reality is that you dont realise that these guys are still waiting for their silicon to come back from fabrication  - having taped out on Nov 7th - and most of the other trolls (Icebreaker for instance) are trying to say that their silicon will be late and that they won't get it at the end of december like they're hoping.. whereas YOU, of course, are of the insane belief that they've already received their silicon a month ago, and that they've been mining with it, and that they are somehow fraudulent.

Ladi.. get real... take off your tinfoil hat.. and stop accusing them of mining with your hardware.   We all assure you that if cointerra had their hardware, they would be screaming it from the rooftops.  They would've put out a youtube of it working, and they would be taking lots of orders at much higher prices than they're currently charging...  so you can be absolutely sure that they are still in pre-order mode !

I suspect you haven't actually ordered any hardware from them and are just pretending to be a customer... but, if you are actually a customer, why not write to cointerra, clearly, expressing your order details, name, email address etc... and I'm sure they will write back.   they said they have a bit of a backlog and if they don't write to you, say so here.. but don't start calling them a fraud when you seem to be a bit mixed up and may have confused them with someone else.  

But the way you write, the silly accusations you make, the fact that your account has only made three posts... doesn't make you look like a customer nor even a real person.

[ABitcoinBrain]

I hope cointerra is a scam cause then my knc's will keep pumping out coins !!!!

[maursader]

I hope cointerra is a scam cause then my knc's will keep pumping out coins !!!!

You're just begging karma to come along and short out your miner aren't you. Cheeky little guy.

[iCEBREAKER]

Ladi -

you're not very good at this trolling business are you?   Before you start to troll, you need to read up on your subject.

The reality is that you dont realise that these guys are still waiting for their silicon to come back from fabrication  - having taped out on Nov 7th - and most of the other trolls (Icebreaker for instance) are trying to say that their silicon will be late and that they won't get it at the end of december like they're hoping..

Wow.  Such White Knight fail.  Poor Sir Jez.  Many embarrassment.

We can read.  Better than you can.  That's why we were right about Cointerra's December fiasco and you were wrong.  As usual.   


Guess what Brave Sir Jez?

Cointerra's silicon will be late!

Guess what else Brave Sir Jez?

They won't get it at the end of December like they're hoping!


That sting of public humiliation is your reward for calling those who knew better than you "trolls" (your logical fallacies are: strawman and ad hominem).

Maybe shut up, or at least learn the diff between 'having a different opinion than Brave Sir Jez' and actually trolling?

Nah, you're not capable.  White Knighting for poor, picked-on Cointerra is too important to you.   

How dare those mean cyber-bullies mock Cointerra for simply failing to mention their failure until the last minute!  Harumph!

[aerobatic]

quit it with the brave sir jez stuff.  you really are a lowlife.  i don't go out calling 'cowardly troll Ralph' all the time now, do i?

-- Jez