Cointerra Mining ASIC coming soon

[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.