Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s

[FlappySocks]

ooh shiny stuff 

[blackarrow]

Bitcoin Miners progress update – 26 March 2014

1.We progressed to The Minion’s 3rd substrate which has been approved and sent to manufacturing
2.The package house has received the minion probe cart wafer.
3.Global Foundries has confirmed the wafer out date. The date is currently 5 days later than their prediction however they are seeking to catch up by optimising the rest of the process.
4.The final version of the X3 hashboard and X1 backplane has been sent to the PCB factory for prototyping
5.The final version of X1 hashboard will arrive this week on Friday.
6.The development team are still optimising the control board. The initial testing is positive: (booting sequence for Linux, network protocols and WiFi connections are ok). The team will focus now debugging the LCD. Testing for the touchscreen should start soon.
7.The modifications to the current setup is dictated by the testing and the quality controls reporting by our teams and suppliers. We concluded the last update to X3 backplane and the case design due to moving the X3 PSU on the left hand side for better heat dissipation.
8.We have received 2 types of PSUs for X3 from 2 vendors, we are testing them.
9.We have started mass production of the heatsinks and X1 power supplies
10.We have received the mounting screw with springs for the heatsinks. After a thorough review the spring technical specifications are not satisfactory. We continue to upgrade the design accordingly and we expect the samples to be ready in 10 days.
11.We approved the design for X3 case and we are in process of negotiating the time frame with our short-listed suppliers.
12.We should complete the final specifications for the fans by the end of this week.
13.We had a demanding schedule in visiting all our suppliers for quality checks and for tracking the agreed aggressive deadlines
14.We are in the final negotiations with our manufacturing partner for power chips. We are seeking a reliable supply of the power chips.
15.We finalised the search for the new facility which will help increasing the power for Rent-A-Minion service. We’re planning to start setting it up as early as next week.
16.The team working on the Scrypt chip continue their busy schedule. They had some new addition to the team to help with the increasing workload.
17.We received a lot of enquiries regarding the LTC chip. The Management decided to focus on delivering the Bitcoin miners currently scheduled and postpone the LTC pre-orders until they have time available to deal with customer support issues that usually arise upon launch of a new complex product.

[ChuckBuck]

Thanks for the update BlackArrow.  Word to the wise, focus on getting the Bitcoin miner out the door on time, and less mentions of the Scrypt Miner.

Once you've shipped out the X-1's and X-3's, you can make your announcement of the new Scrypt miner, but please don't set it up as a pre-order.  Accept orders for it only when you have the new miners ready to ship.

The pre-order model is dead.

[nosferatujeff]

Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

[zurg]

Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Positive ROI on what terms, USD or BTC, whatever currency they paid in?
I am thinking this could turn into big mess quickly.

[bobsag3]

Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Positive ROI on what terms, USD or BTC, whatever currency they paid in?
I am thinking this could turn into big mess quickly.

Seeing as it was BA that made this promise, I'm sure they'll have no problem figuring that particular question out.

Zurg raises a good point, but one that may be a little premature.  I am more interested in whether or not we will see an updated plan for the compensation packages.  It seems like there is enough money to acquire a new facility to house extra prospero's for the rent a minion program from the first run of chips, why are these units being used to make BA money instead of compensating us?

Let me correct this before it gets out of hand- They are building the additional rent-a-minion facility FOR the compensation plan, not in addition.

[nexus99]

Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Instead of a bit of BTC from some cloud hashing deal I'd rather just have the equivalent back in BTC immediately.

[bennybong]

Can someone differentiate between "probe cart wafer" and "working wafer"?

I think he meant probe card wafer. Looks like it's an initial wafer produced for testing with a 'wafer prober'

A wafer prober is a machine used to test integrated circuits. For electrical testing a set of microscopic contacts or probes called a probe card are held in place whilst the wafer, vacuum-mounted on a wafer chuck, is moved into electrical contact. When a die (or array of dice) have been electrically tested the prober moves the wafer to the next die (or array) and the next test can start. The wafer prober is usually responsible for loading and unloading the wafers from their carrier (or cassette) and is equipped with automatic pattern recognition optics capable of aligning the wafer with sufficient accuracy to ensure accurate registration between the contact pads on the wafer and the tips of the probes.

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

[bennybong]

Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering why "probe cart wafer" wasn't giving me any results on google.

It's an important step in the fab process. But looks like this is the first physical testing of the die... They could find something wrong here I guess!

[tempestb]

Considering all the company's that go silent forever when things are in production, I want to thank Black Arrow for posting these updates.  Maybe the miner won't cash out and PG will come in here and post some stuff about Matt being a slave trader from Mongolia, but regardless... I appreciate the news about what is happening.

[necro_nemesis]

Considering all the company's that go silent forever when things are in production, I want to thank Black Arrow for posting these updates.  Maybe the miner won't cash out and PG will come in here and post some stuff about Matt being a slave trader from Mongolia, but regardless... I appreciate the news about what is happening.

Excellent observation. They should at the very least be commended for putting their flame suit on and advising people, good or bad of what's happening on the development side.

[TechByPC]

Excellent observation. They should at the very least be commended for putting their flame suit on and advising people, good or bad of what's happening on the development side.

Sadly, in an age where people think it is exceptional and newsworthy for someone to have turned in a lost backpack with cash in it, I guess you are right.

[necro_nemesis]

Excellent observation. They should at the very least be commended for putting their flame suit on and advising people, good or bad of what's happening on the development side.

Sadly, in an age where people think it is exceptional and newsworthy for someone to have turned in a lost backpack with cash in it, I guess you are right.

Agree but with the overwhelming number of manufacturers running with backpack and cash in hand it's great to see something that half ass meets reasonable expectations.

[sirsmokesalot]

What is the extra cost of slapping another chip into each x-1 or doubling the hash of each miner since technically none are actually made? I guess that adds extra costs to power but the ant miners are really crapping all over the x-1, at .893 btc for 180ghs stock @ 570 a btc that puts us at 510 a machine, or 255 bucks for 90 ghs. Why on earth would anyone order 100 ghs machine so far off from now for the current price? I ordered 7, when they were a good deal. I recall some type of promise.. "Black Arrow promises to do its best to offer lower retail price than its competitors and guarantees that in the eventuality of a price decrease before shipment, all preorders will benefit of a proportional increase in hashing power. For this reason the customers who have been with us from the beginning will always receive the best deals."

Double the hash of the machines you are building please, that seems the fairest of all compensation plans.

[redmonski]

Thanks for the update BlackArrow.  Word to the wise, focus on getting the Bitcoin miner out the door on time, and less mentions of the Scrypt Miner.

Once you've shipped out the X-1's and X-3's, you can make your announcement of the new Scrypt miner, but please don't set it up as a pre-order.  Accept orders for it only when you have the new miners ready to ship.

The pre-order model is dead.

+1 to this! Don't go the pre-order route.

[wmmail07]

blackarrow

You post from 21 March 2014......

Bitcoin Miners progress update – 21 March 2014

14. We got the BTC refund document back from our solicitors. We are updating few legal and we should be able to release this as early as tomorrow.

When you return us our money?

[Puppet]

It's an important step in the fab process. But looks like this is the first physical testing of the die... They could find something wrong here I guess!

They dont have any dies or wafers to test yet. A probe card was delivered to their package house, all that means is that the package house can prepare for receiving the first wafer.

[raskul]

Is shipping by approximately five weeks from now still a realistic goal?

depends how you look at it. I have 170GH here and i'm now mining alt SHA coins - and dumping them. I'm making more BTC selling them early, than if I were to mine BTC (which I now only do via cloudhashing).

ADD: but remember, BA haven't yet given us the "we are having some stability issues" theme yet. that's still to come 

[bennybong]

blackarrow

You post from 21 March 2014......

Bitcoin Miners progress update – 21 March 2014

14. We got the BTC refund document back from our solicitors. We are updating few legal and we should be able to release this as early as tomorrow.

When you return us our money?

This.

Is shipping by approximately five weeks from now still a realistic goal?

No.

[TechByPC]

Depending on how much BTC you initially spent for it, it may be worth it to request your refund now and invest it in an antminer before the difficulty explodes when/if BFL and BA start shipping. Requesting additional hashpower in the existing footprint would require a redesign and probably set them back additional months. You'd be better off asking for them to double your order and let them continue working toward the existing design.

I'm refunded except for my very first X1 order directly from BA which I will wait out because the exchange rate was better at the time and I think it will still be able to eventually return more BTC than it cost, assuming it ships before July.