CoinTerra announces its first ASIC - Hash-Rate greater than 500 GH/s

[Syke]

One thing which may hurt but HF and CT is end of Dec is a flaking time of year.

As is January for Chinese New Year. This is a very bad time of year to try to launch new electronics.

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[DeathAndTaxes]

its clear that any of the other asic companies could stumble at any time during their production process.

I guess my point wasn't that CT could have a major delay obviously a major delay now kills any chance of an on time delivery.  I was just pointing out even with perfect execution they may be limited by the schedule.  We have no idea what CT contract with TSMC GF is.  Maybe TSMC GF is saying wafers in 10 weeks so there doesn't need to be a slip they just never were going to be faster than that.  That wouldn't be particularly unusual but due to the tapeout delay that puts it mid Dec and maybe their assembly house doesn't have the staff and scheduling the week before Christmas to produce 10,000 (or however many they sold) boards.   So I don't think it is a foregone conclusion that they need another stumble to miss their deadlines.  The tapeout stumble may have already done that and it will just play out in agonizing slow motion over the next month.

KncMiner - you can only hold them up as an example of a company that did get everything right.  they executed almost flawlessly.  they delivered within days of when they said they would.. and had everything ready to go... the chips, the software, the hardware, the boxes, the logistics... and even the hosting (a few days late but still done).

The last orders were more like two weeks late not a few days but still I agree they have done better than just about anyone else except maybe Bitfury.

[aerobatic]

its clear that any of the other asic companies could stumble at any time during their production process.

I guess my point wasn't that CT could have a major delay obviously a major delay now kills any chance of an on time delivery.  I was just pointing out even with perfect execution they may be limited by the schedule.  We have no idea what CT contract with TSMC is.  Maybe TSMC is saying wafers in 10 weeks.  That wouldn't be particularly unusual but due to the tapeout delay that puts it mid Dec and maybe their assembly house doesn't have the staff and scheduling the week before Christmas to produce 10,000 (or however many they sold) boards.   So I don't think it is a foregone conclusion that they need to stumble to miss their deadlines.  The tapeout stumble may have already done that and it will just play out in slow motion.

knc and hf are with tsmc, ct and bm are with gf.  lotsa acronyms ;-)

[Dabs]

So, if I buy a CoinTerra 4 miner and pay using fiat, that's okay? (Or I can pay in bitcoin, bought using fiat at today's rate, so my basis is still fiat.)

Or would it be a better idea to buy bitcoins now using my fiat and just hold? See, mining continues, but holding bitcoins keep the bitcoins as is, the value just changes. I just need to mine a little bit more bitcoins than I would have bought and hold to make it worthwhile to buy a CoinTerra4 miner.

[aerobatic]

So, if I buy a CoinTerra 4 miner and pay using fiat, that's okay? (Or I can pay in bitcoin, bought using fiat at today's rate, so my basis is still fiat.)

Or would it be a better idea to buy bitcoins now using my fiat and just hold? See, mining continues, but holding bitcoins keep the bitcoins as is, the value just changes. I just need to mine a little bit more bitcoins than I would have bought and hold to make it worthwhile to buy a CoinTerra4 miner.

although theres not a huge difference, I've personally bought all my mining gear with fiat because then i can measure the resulting roi in fiat and feel happier with the decision (bitcoin price rises help achieve roi) as the variables for trying to buy in bitcoin and measure roi in bitcoin could be frustrating with the network difficulty rising so fast.  i have also been buying bitcoins directly, as a hedge.  some would say thats the best exposure, but if you want to mine as well and be part of the bitcoin ecosystem, then buying mining gear that will be low cost per gigahash and low power for long-term usage, is the way to go.

-- Jez

[aerobatic]

Key word is "may", CT is already 30+ days behind tapeout.  Did their original Dec timeline have 30 days of slack?  Were they able to secure a 45 day rocket run like KNC or are they looking more like getting raw silicon back in 70 days plus another say 20 for packaging and another 10 for assembly and volume shipping (KNC didn't really get any shipping volume until 4th or 5th day).  So I am not 100% convinced that they absolutely will make Dec even if they do manage to avoid a major delay.  Dec even with no delay might be predicated on an early Oct tapeout. 

i think the short answer is Yes - Cointerra announced a quite vague December date for their first batch (i think they said late dec) and presumably they gave themselves the whole of december as their margin for things to be delayed and still meet their timescales... probably wise, whereas some others gave the earliest possible date as their target date giving them no room for inevitable slippage outside their control.

they had paid a lot extra (super rocket run at glofo) to expedite the december batch, which is a small batch versus the january one thats much cheaper to produce (no expedite fees for silicon nor rush shipped parts) thus the jan customers got a much better deal than the december customers in terms of price - at the expense of delivery date - but also the jan customers have a lower risk of slippage than the dec ones - and I'm pretty sure many december customers switched out their orders into january ones to take advantage of the extra cost savings ($3/gh in jan versus $7/gh in dec).  for the given delivery dates both prices were competitive (i still don't see anything else in dec or jan at anywhere near those prices) but the jan ones for most people were the 'better deal'.  (I've got a small order in the dec batch and a much larger order in jan to take advantage of the significantly better price per gh)

[DeathAndTaxes]

i think the short answer is Yes - Cointerra announced a quite vague December date for their first batch (i think they said late dec) and presumably they gave themselves the whole of december as their margin for things to be delayed and still meet their timescales... probably wise, whereas some others gave the earliest possible date as their target date giving them no room for inevitable slippage outside their control.

So Cointerra gave a vague delivery date and you know they chose a conservative timeline with lots of room for slack and errors.
Other companies gave a vague delivery date and they chose an aggressive timeline with no room for slack and errors.

Cointerra is different why?  You want them to be?

they had paid a lot extra (super rocket run at glofo) to expedite the december batch

Cointerra has announced they paid a premium for a rocket run or this is an assumption?
Usually the pricing and timeline of fabrication is subject to NDA so I would be surprised if they announced that.

[aerobatic]

i think the short answer is Yes - Cointerra announced a quite vague December date for their first batch (i think they said late dec) and presumably they gave themselves the whole of december as their margin for things to be delayed and still meet their timescales... probably wise, whereas some others gave the earliest possible date as their target date giving them no room for inevitable slippage outside their control.

So Cointerra gave a vague delivery date and you know they chose a conservative timeline with lots of room for slack and errors.
Other companies gave a vague delivery date and they chose an aggressive timeline with no room for slack and errors.

Cointerra is different why?  You want them to be?

they had paid a lot extra (super rocket run at glofo) to expedite the december batch

Cointerra has announced they paid a premium for a rocket run or this is an assumption?
Usually the pricing and timeline of fabrication is subject to NDA so I would be surprised if they announced that.

i don't recall if they announced it, but they told their customers (including me).  but thats not unusual.. most of the recent asic vendors will have paid for a rocket run or super rock run, or whatever the other names for it are.  there's no way to get silicon faster than 60 days unless you do pay extra... and the more you pay, the faster it is.

-- Jez

[Ytterbium]

The components on a PC motherboard do the same things as the components on an ASIC board.  In fact, the ASIC board does even less.  The only difference is the power requirements, but you can split that up into multiple smaller pieces. "500-1000 times faster at hashing" doesn't mean 500-1000 times more actual electricity.

thats simply not exactly true now is it?   making out that the only difference is the power requirements is making light of a huge issue.  with great power requirements comes great heat and thus great cooling requirements, and great power supply requirements.

 the components on a pc board are to support the intel processor and in general, it runs at a very low wattage most of the time, and is very peaky.  i.e.: it only draws LOTS of power when doing something very taxing.. which is not very often....   whereas the components on a mining rig have to run at full pelt, all of the time, 24/7.  thats a very different demand were making of them.

All the components in a PC are absolutely designed to run flat out 24/7, as they will if you have to render a video or do something else processor intensive for a long period of time.

[Biffa]

The components on a PC motherboard do the same things as the components on an ASIC board.  In fact, the ASIC board does even less.  The only difference is the power requirements, but you can split that up into multiple smaller pieces. "500-1000 times faster at hashing" doesn't mean 500-1000 times more actual electricity.

thats simply not exactly true now is it?   making out that the only difference is the power requirements is making light of a huge issue.  with great power requirements comes great heat and thus great cooling requirements, and great power supply requirements.

 the components on a pc board are to support the intel processor and in general, it runs at a very low wattage most of the time, and is very peaky.  i.e.: it only draws LOTS of power when doing something very taxing.. which is not very often....   whereas the components on a mining rig have to run at full pelt, all of the time, 24/7.  thats a very different demand were making of them.

All the components in a PC are absolutely designed to run flat out 24/7, as they will if you have to render a video or do something else processor intensive for a long period of time.

Damn straight, heres my 64 thread quad Intel rig.

Code:

top - 17:52:56 up 10 days,  4:44,  1 user,  load average: 64.04, 64.03, 64.05
Tasks: 425 total,   1 running, 424 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.0%us, 10.4%sy, 89.6%ni,  0.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:  32913112k total,  4126464k used, 28786648k free,   108276k buffers
Swap:   356348k total,        0k used,   356348k free,   693244k cached

[Puppet]

Actually, PC cooling is not designed to cope with maximum theoretical load. Its designed to cope with application loads. There is a substantial difference, and thats what TDP is for (or worse, ACP if you are called AMD). The maximum power consumption of almost all CPUs and GPUs is above TDP, but no real world applications will sustain this power draw and your system usually doesnt melt even when running a thermal virus (think furmark) because the CPU/GPU will throttle if need be.

A well designed bitcoin asic would act much like a thermal virus, running as close to maximum power draw as possible, yet throttling a bitcoin asic is about the last thing you would want to do, except when there is cooling failure.

That said, per watt, cooling a bitcoin asic is in all likelihood, easier than cooling a highend cpu or gpu, because the thermal density of hotspots is substantially lower. A typical desktop cpu will have hotspots consuming 80-90% of the chip's TDP in an area no bigger than ~5% of the die, think needle tip.

While bitcoin asics overall may have a comparable "tdp" per mm², the power consumption will be much more homogeneous across the entire die and hotspots will have a far lower thermal density than CPUs.

[aerobatic]

Actually, PC cooling is not designed to cope with maximum theoretical load. Its designed to cope with application loads. There is a substantial difference, and thats what TDP is for (or worse, ACP if you are called AMD). The maximum power consumption of almost all CPUs and GPUs is above TDP, but no real world applications will sustain this power draw and your system usually doesnt melt even when running a thermal virus (think furmark) because the CPU/GPU will throttle if need be.

A well designed bitcoin asic would act much like a thermal virus, running as close to maximum power draw as possible, yet throttling a bitcoin asic is about the last thing you would want to do, except when there is cooling failure.

That said, per watt, cooling a bitcoin asic is in all likelihood, easier than cooling a highend cpu or gpu, because the thermal density of hotspots is substantially lower. A typical desktop cpu will have hotspots consuming 80-90% of the chip's TDP in an area no bigger than ~5% of the die, think needle tip.

While bitcoin asics overall may have a comparable "tdp" per mm², the power consumption will be much more homogeneous across the entire die and hotspots will have a far lower thermal density than CPUs.

i suspect bitcoin asics.. particularly those from cointerra and hashfast, will be amongst the highest wattage per mm that you would consider.. since they're both designed to be clocked at near the max... and scale up or down depending on thermals.   they're both probably designed to have a TDP of 250+ watts !

[GandalfG]

Topic is stretched so much and there are plenty of entries other than the main subject. Can anyone be tempted to do a short summary?

• What is the status of the chip production?
• Expected date of delivery based on your experience?
• Threats, risks at the time completion?

[aerobatic]

Topic is stretched so much and there are plenty of entries other than the main subject. Can anyone be tempted to do a short summary?

• What is the status of the chip production?
• Expected date of delivery based on your experience?
• Threats, risks at the time completion?

Status..   Cointerra announced they've taped out (a month later than planned).  They're still saying they're on time for arrival of chips in Dec (which is almost unbelievably fast).   they say they're on time for their promised delivery dates and that their schedule isn't impacted by the delay (which presumably means they've paid a heck of a lot of expedite fees to their fab, and that whatever slack they had in their schedule is probably now used up).

Expected date.  They said they sold out of december (small) and january (big) batches.  most customers are in the january batch.  presumably when they get their chips back from the fab, if yield goes better than expected they might have some extra from those batches to sell but they probably don't know yet til they arrive...   - yields for bitcoin chips should in theory be better than regular asics since there's a lot of repeated cores in a bitcoin mining chip and if one of the cores has a defect the others may still work so yields may be much better than expected...  - meanwhile they're now selling a feb batch.   since the dec batch was sold as a late dec batch, and the jan batch was sold as a mid jan batch... i think even before the late tape-out, many of their december customers had voluntarily switched into the january batch to take advantage of the significant lower price point in jan ($3/gh).

Threats, risks...   well... that depends on how well you think they will execute on their production, as the main risk has now been eliminated which is they've taped out, which means they've had enough funds to pay the fab and all their partners quite a few million bucks...  the remaining risks are production and schedule led.  Of the two competitors, one - KncMiner, executed flawlessly and got chips back when they thought they would, and stuffed the chips on boards and shipped within days of when they said they would...  and the other competitor - hashfast - was on an aggressive schedule... sold everyone october systems (at an october price) and has now delayed two months due to unforeseen production problems so is now planning to deliver in december.  says the chip were on time but the substrates caused them a delay.  quite why their substrates were delayed, no one really knows.   there are a few other competitors like BitFury with an excellent 55nm chip (but not professional grade systems)... and there's some newcomers like BitMine, AMT and Black Arrow.. who may also be in the running.  Black Arrow's delivery is a bit too far away.. they're promising feb but haven't taped out.. and are selling bitfury based systems to try and raise funds for their tape-out... which I've no idea if that strategy will work... they've got to sell a lot of bitfurys in a very competitive market...

you can be pretty damn sure that all the newer asic companies making chips will be calling their partners and telling them whatever happened to hashfast better not happen to them... so I'm quite sure they will be triple checking their substrates for flaws, for a start!   When one company has a major disaster like that, all the others can watch from the sidelines and if they're any good, they will learn and try not to make the same mistakes.

[bobsag3]

Topic is stretched so much and there are plenty of entries other than the main subject. Can anyone be tempted to do a short summary?

• What is the status of the chip production?
• Expected date of delivery based on your experience?
• Threats, risks at the time completion?

Status..   Cointerra announced they've taped out (a month later than planned).  They're still saying they're on time for arrival of chips in Dec (which is almost unbelievably fast).   they say they're on time for their promised delivery dates and that their schedule isn't impacted by the delay (which presumably means they've paid a heck of a lot of expedite fees to their fab, and that whatever slack they had in their schedule is probably now used up).

Expected date.  They said they sold out of december (small) and january (big) batches.  most customers are in the january batch.  presumably when they get their chips back from the fab, if yield goes better than expected they might have some extra from those batches to sell but they probably don't know yet til they arrive...   - yields for bitcoin chips should in theory be better than regular asics since there's a lot of repeated cores in a bitcoin mining chip and if one of the cores has a defect the others may still work so yields may be much better than expected...  - meanwhile they're now selling a feb batch.   since the dec batch was sold as a late dec batch, and the jan batch was sold as a mid jan batch... i think even before the late tape-out, many of their december customers had voluntarily switched into the january batch to take advantage of the significant lower price point in jan ($3/gh).

Threats, risks...   well... that depends on how well you think they will execute on their production, as the main risk has now been eliminated which is they've taped out, which means they've had enough funds to pay the fab and all their partners quite a few million bucks...  the remaining risks are production and schedule led.  Of the two competitors, one - KncMiner, executed flawlessly and got chips back when they thought they would, and stuffed the chips on boards and shipped within days of when they said they would...  and the other competitor - hashfast - was on an aggressive schedule... sold everyone october systems (at an october price) and has now delayed two months due to unforeseen production problems so is now planning to deliver in december.  says the chip were on time but the substrates caused them a delay.  quite why their substrates were delayed, no one really knows.   there are a few other competitors like BitFury with an excellent 55nm chip (but not professional grade systems)... and there's some newcomers like BitMine, AMT and Black Arrow.. who may also be in the running.  Black Arrow's delivery is a bit too far away.. they're promising feb but haven't taped out.. and are selling bitfury based systems to try and raise funds for their tape-out... which I've no idea if that strategy will work... they've got to sell a lot of bitfurys in a very competitive market...

you can be pretty damn sure that all the newer asic companies making chips will be calling their partners and telling them whatever happened to hashfast better not happen to them... so I'm quite sure they will be triple checking their substrates for flaws, for a start!   When one company has a major disaster like that, all the others can watch from the sidelines and if they're any good, they will learn and try not to make the same mistakes.

Good points- but just a small correction- they made a bitfury design becasue I paid them, and They wanted to get extra if I was paying for some anyways

[Puppet]

i suspect bitcoin asics.. particularly those from cointerra and hashfast, will be amongst the highest wattage per mm that you would consider.. since they're both designed to be clocked at near the max... and scale up or down depending on thermals.   they're both probably designed to have a TDP of 250+ watts !

Dont know CT provided specs, but IIRC, hashfast uses 4 ~80mm² dies per chip. ~65W per 80mm² die is pretty low thermal density compared to many cpu's and gpu's, and thats even ignoring the hotspot issue.

Now I do wonder if this is because these chips arent nearly as well optimized as, say x86 chips, or if its just because of the workload, but as it is, cooling those chips is "simple" compared to the highend x86 world.

[GandalfG]

Topic is stretched so much and there are plenty of entries other than the main subject. Can anyone be tempted to do a short summary?

• What is the status of the chip production?
• Expected date of delivery based on your experience?
• Threats, risks at the time completion?

Status..  

Expected date.  .

Threats, risks...  

you can be pretty damn sure that all the newer asic companies making chips will be calling their partners and telling them whatever happened to hashfast better not happen to them... so I'm quite sure they will be triple checking their substrates for flaws, for a start!   When one company has a major disaster like that, all the others can watch from the sidelines and if they're any good, they will learn and try not to make the same mistakes.

Thx aerobatic for nice summary. I'm pretty sure all competitors after first laugh form others mistake/fail go to table and double check  own project
About competition.
Yes, bitfury is admittedly a bit unstable, but still sells a lot of Gh at a price comparable to the KNC.
Avalon sellout all next gen chip in few days  How is it possible Payments in BTC only.
There are other player like Chinese BTCGarden who  still produce cheap equipment and deploy many Th http://www.btcgarden.com//figures.jsp
All together it consists of ascending difficulty. Starting in January will be hard.

[aerobatic]

i suspect bitcoin asics.. particularly those from cointerra and hashfast, will be amongst the highest wattage per mm that you would consider.. since they're both designed to be clocked at near the max... and scale up or down depending on thermals.   they're both probably designed to have a TDP of 250+ watts !

Dont know CT provided specs, but IIRC, hashfast uses 4 ~80mm² dies per chip. ~65W per 80mm² die is pretty low thermal density compared to many cpu's and gpu's, and thats even ignoring the hotspot issue.

Now I do wonder if this is because these chips arent nearly as well optimized as, say x86 chips, or if its just because of the workload, but as it is, cooling those chips is "simple" compared to the highend x86 world.

so far, we know performance and power specs are a claimed >500 GH/s per chip at 0.6 W/GH...  ergo, each chip will consume at least 300 watts of power.  they haven't stated the die size publicly (though i believe its similar)

hashfast has announced 324mm2 running at 400 GH/s... which - as you say - would consume around 260 watts at 0.65W/GH... though its been designed to overclock til it hits max temp (90? 100?)...   if it didn't need any additional voltage, a linear scaling would be a similar wattage to the cointerra chip, i.e. 300 watts at 500 GH.. but since its nominal speed is 400 GH it might be safe to assume it might need to be over-volted to reach 500 GH... so lets 'guess' it might draw 350 watts at 500 GH assuming its possible.

both hashfast and cointerra utilise liquid cooling... so their cooling performance could be pretty much similar.   the cooling airflows on the two boxes are slightly different but not drastically (hf have 3 smaller radiators, ct have two larger radiators)

[DeathAndTaxes]

CT gives you the die size indirectly.  Claimed 1.5 GH/mm2.

Still I think Puppet's point was that in a CPU die cooling is more of a challenge.  While the die on average may only be 5W/cm2 in certain spots under certain conditions there can be localized heat flux of 10x that say 50W/cm2.  A SHA processor, any SHA processor is going to be more uniform in heat distribution.

[aerobatic]

CT gives you the die size indirectly.  Claimed 1.5 GH/mm2.

Still I think Puppet's point was that in a CPU die cooling is more of a challenge.  While the die on average may only be 5W/cm2 in certain spots under certain conditions there can be localized heat flux of 10x that say 50W/cm2.  A SHA processor, any SHA processor is going to be more uniform in heat distribution.

I'm still not sure how relevant that is, as the heat dissipates through the entire die, and via the package and board, into the cooling system... so its the total heat generated thats important and I'm not sure how relevant the spot power is... though maybe I'm missing something.

anyway, we talk in averages over the 'package' that needs to be 'cooled'... and an intel chip has a TDP of 125 Watts, which pretty much means that the entire package, at most, will generate 125 Watts of power (aka Heat) output, at its maximum usage...   whereas these bitcoin mining chips (both hashfasts and cointerras) will generate 300 watts of power, ALL OF THE TIME.   And if we overclock them, which I'm pretty sure we will all do, they will no doubt hit 350 or maybe even more watts per chip !   A bitcoin mining chip will use a LOT more power, and require much better cooling, than a regular intel chip.

even the heavily over clocked and over-volted intel chips that have been tweaked by enthusiasts, probably don't draw 350 watts of power, 24/7/365 !   thats my point.

i also think its questionable whether there's any parts of an intel chip that will toggle faster, in a denser layout than a hashing core... as almost all of the core, toggles almost every cycle.. thus how does it get any more power consumptive than that?