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

[aerobatic]

 I can see approximately 250-300 units. That's about 1/3 of the December order queue that we can (sort of) confirm physically exist. They pushed the button to start production sometime last week, so perhaps the last December orders will have to wait another week or two. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but that's a pretty good worst-case guess given the image.

where did you get the picture from?  

[edit.. ah, ok, its on ct's web site.. sorry!]

[another edit:   you also need to take account that they have more than one factory making the boxes]

[Endlessa]

If you're upset with your own investment decision, then welcome to the world of buying pre-orders for custom mining hardware. You have to be lucky or judge carefully to make a good call, if so many people weren't making quick decisions then there wouldn't be so much wailing and bawling in these threads. You can see the wailing and bawling for yourselves, why put yourself through that? The only choice you have is to accept any loss quickly with dignity, or drag it out for as long as possible with the accompanying misery and frustration.

Pre-orders leave the customer vulnerable to being cheated.  That doesn't justify cheating the customer.

Do you spend a lot of time talking to rape victims about what they were wearing when they were attacked?

lol rape victims don't willingly submit themselves to the process.

[aerobatic]

I only wish the reduced rate had come with better than anticipated power usage instead of the reverse.

If wishes were horses...

Unfortunately the power consumption and performance are coupled together.  Cointerra targeted a very high clock rate, and designing boards for that is not easy.  I expect they will be able to improve on the board design and capture both their original target performance and substantially improve upon the power consumption.  But that is going to take time, and it makes no sense to hold off on shipping a functional design to gain 20% when difficulty goes up by that much every 10 days.

I still see them as the most professional organization in the market today.  Organizations are tested when things don't go to plan.  What Cointerra does in the next few weeks will define their reputation forever.  Andy Grove saved Intel's reputation by making the tough decision and recalling the CPUs with FDIV defects.  Ravi is going to have to make a similar decision here.

i know this is quite simple, but if we consider the four big things in their box...  there's some things they can tweak and some that they simply can't...

1.  the asics.

2.  the boards.

3.  the cooling system

4.  the power supplies.


so, if we look at each thing in turn...

1... the asics.   these aren't going to change.  they are what they are.  it costs millions and too much time to change them so lets assume thats never going to happen.
   but we've heard ct say they ran faster in the lab when they gave them more power, and that they expect that with board and software tweaks they will go faster in the production boxes... so i think we're good on the asic front.

2.  the boards.  they said they're doing a full board redesign to improve power conversion efficiency.   ergo, the power consumption at the wall probably won't increase by much, but the power delivery to the asics will increase when they can improve conversion efficiency... thus the asics could potentially go faster with little to no impact on the rest of the stats.    thus if they hit 2 TH with 2KW... it will then have reasonable power consumption in the same ballpark as their peers.  no asic except an under clocked bitfury gets less than 1W/GH, and under clocking anything isn't commercially justified, which is why no one does that.

3.  the cooling system.  this seems very rugged and powerful. I'm not expecting they need to do anything to improve the cooling system (except perhaps make the fans temp sensitive in the future to reduce noise).  though recognising that this system draws 2 KW, so it has 2 KW of heat to exhaust.  no getting around that.  A 400 GH babyjet or 600 GH jupiter is gonna be quieter cos its got a fraction of the wattage (and thus heat) to exhaust.

4.  the power supplies.  the ones they're using are quite compact.  I'm not aware of any other similarly sized power-supplies (1100 watts in a 1U server psu, twice - is  lot of power in a small space)... thus if you want to feed the asics any more power than these can muster, you will have to forgo the internal power supplies and do what knc does and use external atx psus.

[aerobatic]

Damn, your boss is going to give you a bonus for that one.  Which one are you in that picture?  

clearly, since i don't live in the usa and do not work for any bitcoin company at all, not cointerra, not hashfast, not knc... not anyone!

... so i'm not in the cointerra picture!   actually, there is one picture of me at cointerra, when Jimmy and I visited last month and held a prototype box.  you can see photos of our trip report...  Jimmy & i placed an order jointly for the jan batch.

online poker and computer games is my background and takes most of my time...   i have other sidelines including property development (in London!).. and of course, bitcoin mining is a new sideline for me.. a paid hobby.  becoming more than a hobby, actually.. but still, not my day job.

http://www.pkr.com/en/about-pkr/who-we-are/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jez_San

are my funds safe and secure?

will you be eating lobsters for lunch when the federal government seizes your domain and puts a hold on your international banking accounts?

PKR has never operated in the USA. The Feds have no beef with us.  And yes, your money is safe.  We use triple aaa rated banks to hold customer funds.  And of course they're ring fenced.  If something unexpectedly bad happened and the company died tomorrow, the customer funds would still be safe and sound.  The way it should be with any legitimate company.

Btw. I don't eat seafood.  A big hunk of hot dead cow would be a better choice..

who audits your accounts?

what independent governing body can see that player funds are not mixed with operating funds? Are player funds held in escrow? trust? or just regular bank accounts?

we're way off topic.  suggest you ask your questions directly in the pkr forums if you want to take this any further as this has nothing to do with bitcoin (let alone cointerra)

as for who licenses pkr...   it holds gaming licenses in the UK, Alderney, France, Italy, Denmark and a few other places.   Each one has different rules and we follow them all.  its actually difficult to have one company that follows so many different rules, and this takes up a lot of our time.  all the executives hold licenses as well.  and shareholders too (like me).  each person individually investigated and licensed. 

http://www.pkr.com/en/support/licensing-and-integrity/licensing-and-regulation/

[testerx]

I'm Batch 2 and I just got screwed by the compensation. Cointerra seems more like " CONterra"
For this to be fair it has to be just as Dec orders we should be offered a TerraMiner II from a later batch like April or May, since we are getting -20% less Hashing and 20% more power usage.  

They didn't really compensate the December batches more than you, if anything December units are the worst off because they cost $14,000 which is $2000 more than two January units and we don't even get the second unit until March.  The people least screwed are probably the January units lol

[Entropy-uc]

I only wish the reduced rate had come with better than anticipated power usage instead of the reverse.

If wishes were horses...

Unfortunately the power consumption and performance are coupled together.  Cointerra targeted a very high clock rate, and designing boards for that is not easy.  I expect they will be able to improve on the board design and capture both their original target performance and substantially improve upon the power consumption.  But that is going to take time, and it makes no sense to hold off on shipping a functional design to gain 20% when difficulty goes up by that much every 10 days.

I still see them as the most professional organization in the market today.  Organizations are tested when things don't go to plan.  What Cointerra does in the next few weeks will define their reputation forever.  Andy Grove saved Intel's reputation by making the tough decision and recalling the CPUs with FDIV defects.  Ravi is going to have to make a similar decision here.

...

Way too many words to repeat what I said in a single sentence.


 I expect they will be able to improve on the board design and capture both their original target performance and substantially improve upon the power consumption.

[plato14]

i think all January batch customers should just get refunds, i don't think theyre going to be on time,  why not just fuck them over and flood them with refund requests.  Either that or sue for misleading customers.

[Supercomputing]

Cointerra is the best Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer out there; and the name calling is completely unjustified and unnecessary. It is obvious by now that they are aware of how their delays and hardware performance issues will affected some of their customers. And they are taking action to improve relations with their current and future customers.

So Congratulations to Cointerra for their accomplishment in bringing the best Bitcoin mining hardware to the market in terms of value and engineering. I am always happy to see other fellow engineers push the limits and accomplish great things.

I will be waiting for Cointerra's next generation hardware - the 14nm 3D-structured designed ASICs. Now that would be something worth investing thousands of BTCs in.

[aerobatic]

i think all January batch customers should just get refunds, i don't think theyre going to be on time,  why not just fuck them over and flood them with refund requests.  Either that or sue for misleading customers.

plato14 -

people make rational decisions based on their own self-interests.

asking for a refund, when you can't buy anything better, cheaper, nor faster... is what we call cutting off your nose to spite your face.    customers don't do things like cancel their order, just to fuck with the manufacturer.   especially when the manufacturer won't be affected and the customer loses out.   thats not useful nor well thought out advice.

cancelling and asking for a refund probably won't hurt cointerra either.  the boxes could easily be resold.  they're still the lowest cost $/gh of anything available.

so...  I'm not advising to cancel (my own personal opinion is to take delivery and there's upside potential if they improve performance with tweaks over time).

... BUT, despite the fact i don't think its a good idea... (shameless self promotion admitted here), if anyone is actually seriously considering cancelling their january cointerra order, please pm me as i would like to see if we can work out a deal to buy your miner(s).  price depends on many factors.. like where you are in the line, and how many you've got on order, but it will most likely be more than you paid for it (in dollar terms of course)

[bitcoinermax]

has anyone got their shipping tracking # yet?

not yet...  I'm still hoping for the next week or two.  I'm also hoping for my hashfast 'sierra' order to be delivered in a similar time.  i just received a baby jet today, so the rest may be being built as we speak...  the race is on!

Hi aerobatic

Since u seem to have bought the whole gamut of ASICs - KNC, HF, CT etc, it will be interesting to hear your views about how they compare, once you have both the HF and CT machines delivered and are then able to compare all of the performances side by side. I hope you will continue to stay neutral in your commentary as that's what makes your posts worth reading, tho I seem to have detected of late a bit of CT favouritism?

[plato14]

i think all January batch customers should just get refunds, i don't think theyre going to be on time,  why not just fuck them over and flood them with refund requests.  Either that or sue for misleading customers.

plato14 -

people make rational decisions based on their own self-interests.

asking for a refund, when you can't buy anything better, cheaper, nor faster... is what we call cutting off your nose to spite your face.    customers don't do things like cancel their order, just to fuck with the manufacturer.   especially when the manufacturer won't be affected and the customer loses out.   thats not useful or well thought out advice.

cancelling and asking for a refund probably won't hurt cointerra either.  the boxes could easily be resold.  they're still the lowest cost $/gh of anything available.

so...  I'm not advising to cancel (my own personal opinion is to take delivery and there's upside potential if they improve performance with tweaks over time).

... BUT, despite the fact i don't think its a good idea... (shameless self promotion admitted here), if anyone is actually seriously considering cancelling their january cointerra order, please pm me as i would like to see if we can work out a deal to buy your miner(s).  price depends on many factors.. like where you are in the line, and how many you've got on order, but it will most likely be more than you paid for it (in dollar terms of course)

Well if they never deliver then refunding and getting your money now would be the best bet, maybe front run another price spike.  What is rational about trusting  a company that has lied to their customers already, and screwed them all over in the process?  You're putting your trust in a company that has already duped you, i don't understand why anyone would trust that they would deliver now.  Ill sell you five early batch january for 110 biticoin, thats a 50% discount on what i got them for.  LMK

[aerobatic]

i think all January batch customers should just get refunds, i don't think theyre going to be on time,  why not just fuck them over and flood them with refund requests.  Either that or sue for misleading customers.

plato14 -

people make rational decisions based on their own self-interests.

asking for a refund, when you can't buy anything better, cheaper, nor faster... is what we call cutting off your nose to spite your face.    customers don't do things like cancel their order, just to fuck with the manufacturer.   especially when the manufacturer won't be affected and the customer loses out.   thats not useful or well thought out advice.

cancelling and asking for a refund probably won't hurt cointerra either.  the boxes could easily be resold.  they're still the lowest cost $/gh of anything available.

so...  I'm not advising to cancel (my own personal opinion is to take delivery and there's upside potential if they improve performance with tweaks over time).

... BUT, despite the fact i don't think its a good idea... (shameless self promotion admitted here), if anyone is actually seriously considering cancelling their january cointerra order, please pm me as i would like to see if we can work out a deal to buy your miner(s).  price depends on many factors.. like where you are in the line, and how many you've got on order, but it will most likely be more than you paid for it (in dollar terms of course)

Well if they never deliver then refunding and getting your money now would be the best bet, maybe front run another price spike.  What is rational about trusting  a company that has lied to their customers already, and screwed them all over in the process?  You're putting your trust in a company that has already duped you, i don't understand why anyone would trust that they would deliver now.  Ill sell you five early batch january for 110 biticoin, thats a 50% discount on what i got them for.  LMK

hey plato14

thats a difference of opinion... i don't think cointerra lied to us.  i think they were optimistic and then couldn't deliver exactly what they promised (and are still expecting to get there over time).  big difference.  i do not think they set out to deceive.. and i don't think they're trying to deceive now.  but i appreciate your difference of opinion and you are welcome to think differently to me.

as i said, i will buy any jan systems in dollar prices...   the retail price of the boxes was $6000 and i will pay more than that for any boxes that anyone wants to sell.   but i appreciate and commiserate if you paid in bitcoins and they went up since you paid.  that is, alas the nature of bitcoins.  its always going to happen.    but thats not my problem and there may be people who paid in dollars who would be happy to sell for a dollar profit.  i get it that you won't want to, and thats fine.  (i bought mine in dollars, btw)

take care

-- Jez

[bitcoinermax]

Sorry your car is missing 20% of its engine... we'll give you a discount on your next one!

And it's more Gas than advertised......

How late is the feb batch going to be??

OK.. please dont shoot me.  im just playing devils advocate here.. and using your car analogy... to show you from cointerra's point of view.

youve ordered a sports car that was advertised as going at 200 MPH and consume 20 MPG and youve paid them $6,000 up front for it.

Now, theyve come back and told you that theyre sorry, that the car that they built will go 170 MPH, and consume 24 MPG and with further tweaks in the future it may go faster.

Theyve told you you can have a choice...

do you still want your sports car delivered even though it goes a little slower.. at 170 MPH and consumes 24 MPG?  or would you prefer a refund?

Do you think a car company would allow you to take your car... but because it doesnt go 200 MPH and only goes 170 MPH do you think they will offer you a 15% refund?  (i dont think so).   theyre offering you your only two choices... 1.  take it as is and hope they continue to tweak it... or 2.  have a refund.

The cost of building the car was the same so its not like they can afford to refund you anything.  if you choose to take a refund they will sell the car to someone else.

dont shoot me.. im just explaining it in the way that theyre seeing it.. and using your car analogy works well.

I think the key difference versus your car analogy above is that people bought the product on a price/GH basis... A more accurate analogy would therefore be if someone running a fleet of buses was sold a 80 seater bus with a promised fuel economy but the bus delivered in the end only seats 60 and is a lot less fuel efficient. So the changes in spec are clearly going to affect the bus operator's profitability and it isnt what he paid for. Having said that, I think CT's choice to deliver earlier rather than having customers wait while they redesign their boards (like HF) is a good decision that a lot of the community prefer. Taking the bus analogy further, I am not sure it is fair to tell customers that the cost to the bus maker of the 60 seater vs the 80 seater is the same, (ditto re the reduced fuel efficiency) as this isnt relevant to the end user / bus operator and it should be the bus manufacturer's responsibility to deliver what they had offered

Edited final sentence... (Re fuel efficiency)

[Syke]

I think the key difference versus your car analogy above is that people bought the product on a price/GH basis... A more accurate analogy would therefore be if someone running a fleet of buses was sold a 80 seater bus with a promised fuel economy but the bus delivered in the end only seats 60 and is a lot less fuel efficient. So the changes in spec are clearly going to affect the bus operator's profitability and it isnt what he paid for.

Good one. Here's another.

CT was hired to build a Formula One race car that is promised to reach over 200 mph. Instead, they deliver a car that can only reach 160 mph. Sure, it's a fast car compared to a Yugo, but the lost profits from not being able to win races is staggering.

[matthewh3]

i think all January batch customers should just get refunds, i don't think theyre going to be on time,  why not just fuck them over and flood them with refund requests.  Either that or sue for misleading customers.

plato14 -

people make rational decisions based on their own self-interests.

asking for a refund, when you can't buy anything better, cheaper, nor faster... is what we call cutting off your nose to spite your face.    customers don't do things like cancel their order, just to fuck with the manufacturer.   especially when the manufacturer won't be affected and the customer loses out.   thats not useful or well thought out advice.

cancelling and asking for a refund probably won't hurt cointerra either.  the boxes could easily be resold.  they're still the lowest cost $/gh of anything available.

so...  I'm not advising to cancel (my own personal opinion is to take delivery and there's upside potential if they improve performance with tweaks over time).

... BUT, despite the fact i don't think its a good idea... (shameless self promotion admitted here), if anyone is actually seriously considering cancelling their january cointerra order, please pm me as i would like to see if we can work out a deal to buy your miner(s).  price depends on many factors.. like where you are in the line, and how many you've got on order, but it will most likely be more than you paid for it (in dollar terms of course)

Well if they never deliver then refunding and getting your money now would be the best bet, maybe front run another price spike.  What is rational about trusting  a company that has lied to their customers already, and screwed them all over in the process?  You're putting your trust in a company that has already duped you, i don't understand why anyone would trust that they would deliver now.  Ill sell you five early batch january for 110 biticoin, thats a 50% discount on what i got them for.  LMK

hey plato14

thats a difference of opinion... i don't think cointerra lied to us.  i think they were optimistic and then couldn't deliver exactly what they promised (and are still expecting to get there over time).  big difference.  i do not think they set out to deceive.. and i don't think they're trying to deceive now.  but i appreciate your difference of opinion and you are welcome to think differently to me.

as i said, i will buy any jan systems in dollar prices...   the retail price of the boxes was $6000 and i will pay more than that for any boxes that anyone wants to sell.   but i appreciate and commiserate if you paid in bitcoins and they went up since you paid.  that is, alas the nature of bitcoins.  its always going to happen.    but thats not my problem and there may be people who paid in dollars who would be happy to sell for a dollar profit.  i get it that you won't want to, and thats fine.  (i bought mine in dollars, btw)

take care

-- Jez

For the record we'll have a few boxes for $7K'ish too if there's any going 

[aerobatic]

has anyone got their shipping tracking # yet?

not yet...  I'm still hoping for the next week or two.  I'm also hoping for my hashfast 'sierra' order to be delivered in a similar time.  i just received a baby jet today, so the rest may be being built as we speak...  the race is on!

Hi aerobatic

Since u seem to have bought the whole gamut of ASICs - KNC, HF, CT etc, it will be interesting to hear your views about how they compare, once you have both the HF and CT machines delivered and are then able to compare all of the performances side by side. I hope you will continue to stay neutral in your commentary as that's what makes your posts worth reading, tho I seem to have detected of late a bit of CT favouritism?

my first and only babyjet just arrived today.  its unboxed, but i'm jet lagged (just got back from bitcoin conf in miami) so i know it sounds crazy to delay a day but i will have it setup tomorrow. it wasn't supplied in a 'plug and play' state.  i.e., the raspberry pi isn't inside the box, its a separate box and you have to get it working yourself.   i was disappointed it wasn't open box and plug it in.   i can give you my views on getting it working tomorrow i hope.  also, in the next moth i will hopefully receive some sierras.  be good to compare those with the terraminers as they're more closely matched.

if I'm biassed i will try to declare it.   I'm genuinely ordering and operating a bunch of different manufacturers' hardware and plan to keep doing that for the foreseeable future.  i have a similar number of systems arriving soon from both hf and ct.  the hf ones cost me more, and the ct ones should in theory be more powerful.  we shall see when i get both and will try them out.

[aerobatic]

I think the key difference versus your car analogy above is that people bought the product on a price/GH basis... A more accurate analogy would therefore be if someone running a fleet of buses was sold a 80 seater bus with a promised fuel economy but the bus delivered in the end only seats 60 and is a lot less fuel efficient. So the changes in spec are clearly going to affect the bus operator's profitability and it isnt what he paid for.

Good one. Here's another.

CT was hired to build a Formula One race car that is promised to reach over 200 mph. Instead, they deliver a car that can only reach 160 mph. Sure, it's a fast car compared to a Yugo, but the lost profits from not being able to win races is staggering.

a week or so ago it was hashing for the first time at 1.5 th.  now a customer has one that hashes at 1.7 th.   I'm hoping by the time they ship a few more (and i got mine) that they've tweaked it a little further...

[DustyRah]

 I can see approximately 250-300 units. That's about 1/3 of the December order queue that we can (sort of) confirm physically exist. They pushed the button to start production sometime last week, so perhaps the last December orders will have to wait another week or two. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but that's a pretty good worst-case guess given the image.

where did you get the picture from? 

[edit.. ah, ok, its on ct's web site.. sorry!]

[another edit:   you also need to take account that they have more than one factory making the boxes]

OMFG, if only I could plug those babies in for just 24 hours I would be so $$$$$

[DustyRah]

i think all January batch customers should just get refunds, i don't think theyre going to be on time,  why not just fuck them over and flood them with refund requests.  Either that or sue for misleading customers.

They are offering refunds and not only a full refund but also a 5% coupon for future purchase. So if anyone is NOT happy, just get your full refund and FO!

[donnysimonton]

I recommend that everybody get a refund, so I can get mine sooner.