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

[jiefangqian]

hope it is not Alydian

[VolanicEruptor]

ahh shit.. preorder for sale.. anyone?   

[Easy2Mine]

November 5th, 2013 – Austin, TX – CoinTerra®,  (www.cointerra.com) the performance and value leader in ASIC Bitcoin mining solutions is happy to announce that we are now offering TerraMiner® II and IV premium hosting through a partnership with exclusive hosting referral service TerraMine Hosting® (www.terraminehosting.com).

Domain Name: TERRAMINEHOSTING.COM
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Registrant Name: Ravi Iyengar
Registrant Organization:
Name Server: SETH.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: VERA.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM


You trust this guy?
You can tell from his face that he will stab his own mother.

[RoadStress]

November 5th, 2013 – Austin, TX – CoinTerra®,  (www.cointerra.com) the performance and value leader in ASIC Bitcoin mining solutions is happy to announce that we are now offering TerraMiner® II and IV premium hosting through a partnership with exclusive hosting referral service TerraMine Hosting® (www.terraminehosting.com).

Domain Name: TERRAMINEHOSTING.COM
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Registrant Name: Ravi Iyengar
Registrant Organization:
Name Server: SETH.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: VERA.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM

You trust this guy?
You can tell from his face that he will stab his own mother.

What's up with all the ASIC vendors selling hosting instead of miners and/or bare chips? And yes MOAR boxes with fans because that's what drives the sales upward!!!

[ralree]

Tapeout news coming...

[bitblazing]

Tapeout news is coming!

[dhenson]

Tapeout news is coming?

[iCEBREAKER]

Tapeout news is coming?

Imminent^TM

_{in four weeks}

[jiefangqian]

oh ye

[fractal02]

Humm...

Now they only sell the 2 TH/s miner...February batch...

[Paladin69]

Humm...

Now they only sell the 2 TH/s miner...February batch...

February is ages away in difficulty changes.  It sounds like such a long ways out.  You need 2TH right now to generate what Day1 KnC customers were generating just one month ago.  2TH for $6K in February is crap.

Highway robbery.

[CoinHoarder]

Cointerra doesn't understand economics of Bicoin mining. That was apparent when they came out with the Terraminer for December delivery priced at $14,000. Granted, they brought down the price a little bit after they realized no one would buy it for that price. They were still overpriced at 12.5k.

The fact that they only have the February shipping date Terraminer for sale right now is not a good sign. It seems like maybe that's the earliest they think they could ship. They are already a month behind schedule on tape out. It's not looking good. I'm glad I passed on Cointerra.

[VolanicEruptor]

I do believe its extremely unethical to change that shipping date to february without telling us why.  Is it the same batch?  Is it a different batch?  We may never know.. very unprofessional

I'm also worried about how expensive it would be to have them host our machines.  Does this mean the costs would be higher if I do it myself?     $400/month seems outrageous

[DeathAndTaxes]

Cointerra doesn't understand economics of Bicoin mining. That was apparent when they came out with the Terraminer for December delivery priced at $14,000. Granted, they brought down the price a little bit after they realized no one would buy it for that price. They were still overpriced at 12.5k.

The fact that they only have the February shipping date Terraminer for sale right now is not a good sign. It seems like maybe that's the earliest they think they could ship. They are already a month behind schedule on tape out. It's not looking good. I'm glad I passed on Cointerra.

Or they sold out of dec and jan?

These guys might just have a clue about production rates?

If they taped out a month ago that would seem probable.  However having not taped yet, Dec becomes highly unlikely (I would say impossible but like cracking a Bitcoin private key I guess it is possible) and even Jan is questionable.  

If we assume they pay for a high cost low volume "rocket run" you are still looking at 30-45 days from tapeout before wafers are fabricated.  That assumes no delays or complications at the foundry.  The foundry will pad their windows with another 2-3 weeks in the contract so they can juggle around orders to keep the fab at 100% capacity.  Remember that fab cost the company a couple billion and the value of the wafers it produces falls with Moore's law.  Downtime is not an option and if necessary they can (and routinely do) bump small orders to reoptimize their operation.

So say Cointerra taped out today, wafers might be done in early to late Dec.  Add in 7-10 days for wafer transport, cutting, packaging, and testing and you are looking at late Dec, early Jan before they have chips.  Remember a wafer isn't a chip so fabrication taking 45 days doesn't mean on the 45th day you have a chip ready to solder to a board.  You have a giant wafer which needs to be cut, tested, packaged, and shipped.  Even if they are amazing and have all their ducks in a row give it a week for all PCB assembly, production, testing, and shipping.  That puts shipping starting in early to mid Jan (and I am being optimistic).  At this point (with tapeout not done) there is no slack in the schedule.  It isn't like budgeting 8 weeks for chips but it doesn't matter if you are 5 weeks late starting because you can get chips in 3 weeks.  Any delay starts pushing you into Feb range.  Without tapeout done there is no way they can be further along in the schedule.  Packaging can't happen until you have wafers, wafers can't start until tapeout is done.

I almost bought in early Oct but the lack of a tapeout announcement concerned me (not bragging I bought from three companies and none have arrived yet).  Even with a tapeout on Oct 1st, a Dec delivery would be pushing the limit. Now consider that we are 38 days past that point and the tapeout isn't done.

[Paladin69]

This is the timetable according to BFL after a tape-out.

We've been in development for approximately six months.  We're now in the final stage of the process which is wafer start at the foundry.  However, we aren't shipping anytime soon.  This is a Pre-Order product, so if you're uncomfortable waiting an indeterminate length of time for the final phase, do NOT pre-order this product.

With that in mind, our current schedule is on track for shippments to begin towards end of year.  

Here are the timeline milestones:

   Tapeout (Initialization of wafer production)
    Foundry production takes 10 weeks
    Bumping, Slicing & BGA packaging takes approximately 2 weeks
    Initial shipments begin and ramp up to full capacity over the following 3 weeks

Since this is our 2nd generation ASIC chip, we're largely free of risk from the pitfalls normally associated with a new chip design.  Testing systems, Bumping masks, Substrates & under fill engineering are all carryovers from our proven design so they're complete and ready for high volume production once the wafers are ready.  The importance of this can't be overstated.

Is this accurate or are they just trying to scare away competition and customers that go with the competition?

How long did it take KnC & BitFury to ship product starting from tape-out to start the process over?

Is it also possible that HashFast's chips aren't working and they have to go back to the drawing board for another tape-out?

[Puppet]

BFL's schedule is more or less realistic (if executed by someone else ).
Wafer production can be accelerated if you pay for it. BFL themselves claim to do that for monarch, reducing the time to 25 days (according to them).
Cointerra is also rumoured to have paid for this for their first batch, no idea about HF, but its irrelevant since their wafers are already done.

2 weeks for packaging seems very long to me, unless they send the wafers by slow boat from Germany to Asia and get the packaged chips back to the US. The actual packaging process itself is almost instantaneous.

As for the FUD about their experience. I really have to laugh at that.
Here is my interpretation: "We fucked up the first tape out attempt because we didnt have a clue and we had never done full custom asic design. We learned a few new words in the process, like "refraction". Then we fucked up our packaging choice because we fucked up our power consumption estimates and we just ordered the cheapest possible packaging. Even when we selected the correct package type appropriate for the power consumption, we still managed to fuck up the underfill. And once we finally got the chip to work, we had all sorts of issues with the PCB, cooling, firmware. It took a year longer than expected, but now we are the experts because we made every mistake there is to make in this industry".

Makes me chuckle. As KnC and many others proved, if you know what you are doing, none of those are hurdles one expects to bump in to. Bumping in to all of them just proves BFL hired completely incompetent engineers or design house.

Is it also possible that HashFast's chips aren't working and they have to go back to the drawing board for another tape-out?

Thats always possible, but unlikely, and nothing suggests this is this case, and unless they meanwhile solved the substrate sourcing issue, they wouldnt even know yet.
FWIW, even BFL didnt need a respin to get their asic working.

[DeathAndTaxes]

This is the timetable according to BFL after a tape-out.

<snip>

Is this accurate or are they just trying to scare away competition and customers that go with the competition?

There is no one exact timeline but it is roughly accurate.  I really (based on past experiences) doubt BFL will be able to meet their own timeline but the timeline is realistic (maybe a little optimistic but not impossible) for a competent company.

[RoadStress]

Cointerra doesn't understand economics of Bicoin mining. That was apparent when they came out with the Terraminer for December delivery priced at $14,000. Granted, they brought down the price a little bit after they realized no one would buy it for that price. They were still overpriced at 12.5k.

The fact that they only have the February shipping date Terraminer for sale right now is not a good sign. It seems like maybe that's the earliest they think they could ship. They are already a month behind schedule on tape out. It's not looking good. I'm glad I passed on Cointerra.

Or they sold out of dec and jan?

These guys might just have a clue about production rates?

If they taped out a month ago that would seem probable.  However having not taped yet, Dec becomes highly unlikely (I would say impossible but like cracking a Bitcoin private key I guess it is possible) and even Jan is questionable.  

If we assume they pay for a high cost low volume "rocket run" you are still looking at 30-45 days from tapeout before wafers are fabricated.  That assumes no delays or complications at the foundry.  The foundry will pad their windows with another 2-3 weeks in the contract so they can juggle around orders to keep the fab at 100% capacity.  Remember that fab cost the company a couple billion and the value of the wafers it produces falls with Moore's law.  Downtime is not an option and if necessary they can (and routinely do) bump small orders to reoptimize their operation.

So say Cointerra taped out today, wafers might be done in early to late Dec.  Add in 7-10 days for wafer transport, cutting, packaging, and testing and you are looking at late Dec, early Jan before they have chips.  Remember a wafer isn't a chip so fabrication taking 45 days doesn't mean on the 45th day you have a chip ready to solder to a board.  You have a giant wafer which needs to be cut, tested, packaged, and shipped.  Even if they are amazing and have all their ducks in a row give it a week for all PCB assembly, production, testing, and shipping.  That puts shipping starting in early to mid Jan (and I am being optimistic).  At this point (with tapeout not done) there is no slack in the schedule.  It isn't like budgeting 8 weeks for chips but it doesn't matter if you are 5 weeks late starting because you can get chips in 3 weeks.  Any delay starts pushing you into Feb range.  Without tapeout done there is no way they can be further along in the schedule.  Packaging can't happen until you have wafers, wafers can't start until tapeout is done.

I almost bought in early Oct but the lack of a tapeout announcement concerned me (not bragging I bought from three companies and none have arrived yet).  Even with a tapeout on Oct 1st, a Dec delivery would be pushing the limit. Now consider that we are 38 days past that point and the tapeout isn't done.

I was ready for a purchase too, but thankfully you not replying to my PM about this made me reconsider

[DeathAndTaxes]

I was ready for a purchase too, but thankfully you not replying to my PM about this made me reconsider

Sorry nothing personal I get a LOT of PMs a day and some days I don't get to them all then they get buried and I forget about them.

I would point out everything is based on probable timelines and the fact that I (just my opinion) find it highly unlikely that IF Cointerra already taped out weeks ago they would just remain silent.  Press releases are cheap and a confirmed tapeout would spur MORE sales.  I don't think Cointerra is a "scam", I don't think made up a website to run off with the money but I do believe (for whatever reason) they haven't completed the tapeout YET.  Most likely they will and most likely they will eventually ship but one can count on shipping being at least 60 (being optimistic again) days from tapeout.  You can't push the tapeout back 30, 40, 50, 60 days without shipping also being pushed back.  I got nothing against Cointerra, I may buy their product in the future (once they have shown they can deliver) and if the price is right.

[iCEBREAKER]

How do we know that they have not yet "taped out" ?

They announced the mock tape-out and their sales would benefit from the certainty provided by the real one.

We don't know for sure.  But presumption is negative, so we presume that have not until they tell us otherwise.