Cointerra Mining ASIC coming soon

[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.