First commercial ASIC miner specifications and pre-launch

[JoelKatz]

You must not know that it is possible to reverse engineer a pcb board only from a picture, and even a complex one. Determined people could definitely do that. All of the VHDL & Verilog code has been written partially by us and partially by the team we work with.

So what? What makes your project different and valuable (assuming you're telling the truth) is one and only one thing -- you actually have an ASIC. The design of the circuit board is incredibly minimal. The design of the software is incredibly minimal. Even the design of the ASIC itself is only of moderate value because the hard work has already been done -- the community already has a 'one double-hash per clock' design for an ASIC/FPGA miner. The one thing the community does not have is an actual physical ASIC and the final ASIC design (which would largely be specific to the particular process technology and vendor chosen anyway).

A competitor who stole your software and PCB design would reduce their project effort by maybe 2%. Maybe. Someone who is fronting over a million dollars to get an ASIC out wouldn't even bother to do that because it's not worth the copyright headache for a project that is completely legal and requires significant investment.

[1713945443]

1713945443

[1713945443]

1713945443

[sirky]

Since they were online like an hour ago, but haven't posted since last night, that probably isn't a good sign either.

Considering the ease in which this could be cleared up, I really can't come to any conclusion other than that this is a scam.

If more info ends up coming forward, I will gladly revisit this statement though.

[themike5000]

Since they were online like an hour ago, but haven't posted since last night, that probably isn't a good sign either.

Considering the ease in which this could be cleared up, I really can't come to any conclusion other than that this is a scam.

If more info ends up coming forward, I will gladly revisit this statement though.

Skepticism is great, but give them a chance to prove thmeselves. They took our initial concerns into consideration and lowered the upfront payment and changed the payment method from a wire payment to Paypal.  Not to say that Paypal is perfect for this transaction, but its a huge step up from a bank transfer.

[sirky]

Just look at this post, and tell me if it makes any sense at all: http://asicminer.net/?p=43

I have no idea what he is saying, but all I can conclude is that they think there is a somewhat effective attack on SHA256???

And not only that, if it doesn't find a solution in some time it releases the block on a mining pool and starts on a new block?!?!? What are the miners doing in the meantime??? Working on a stale block??? Plus you cannot pull a block from thin air.

At worst, this is a complete scam. At best, these guys have no idea how the protocol works... or something is seriously being lost in translation.

[JoelKatz]

That post is confused and meaningless. It was either posted by someone who doesn't understand the fundamentals of how mining works or it's the result of a serious language barrier. To me, and this is just my opinion, it reads like the kind of confused impressive-sounding text you often see in investment scams such as "run an engine on water" or "100 mile per hour car" scams.

"the whole hash space is scanned at very fast rates and at random multiple ranges, multiple times"

That could potentially mean that it tries all possible nonces for each of many arbitrary coinbases. (Being very charitable.)


"If within a given n period of time the solution is not found, and the bitcoin bounty not awarded, the block will be shared on a mining pool."
"Biggest part of the cluster power will continue to download and work on new blocks, repeating the first operations, while the remaining power will be used to continue the mining pool effort"

That could mean that it's partitionable between pooled and solo mining. (Being very charitable.)

[whenhowwho]

Related? http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26973.0 more specifically

im working on it. I think I should take a few days to learn mandarin but i have time while waiting for funding

Anyways I'm actually in China on vacation right now with nothing to do. I think I can fit in a trip to Guangzhou before I leave. Unless this is too secret for me to view of course.

Completely unrelated but thanks for asking

[Tiniebras]

The difficult bit is... I so want this to be true....

[sirky]

The difficult bit is... I so want this to be true....

I do too! And in my mind it seems like these guys know what they are talking about when it comes to the hardware side of things, so they could technically have had the expertise to make it happen (though I am the opposite of an expert on this stuff, so it wouldn't take much to make me think that).

[asicminer]

We will not send hardware unit for testing, sorry. Tomorrow we will publish some blurred pictures of the ASIC board and screenshots of tools we developed. We hope that will be enough for people to understand this is a serious project.
As per the technical information requested, our asic has 45K logical gates and gathers 500 Mhash\sec at 120MHz and one cycle per full-hash. Honestly the feedback from the community has discouraged us a bit about taking the risk to invest money in this venture. But today we got some emails from people interested in financing the whole operation for using the machines as a bitcoin mining cluster. We will keep you updated.

[asicminer]

Right, and JoelKatz is only asking to verify information that he *already* knows and which is entirely public at this point.

That's not quite true. I would be asking them questions whose answer I know within a range but don't know for sure.

If there is anything about this asic machine that is truly a secret, it probably doesn't need to be disclosed in the exchange. He is merely asking to confirm that this group has the relevant know-how to manufacture such a machine (or even build a prototype).

That is essentially correct. There are certain thing you have to do in the process of designing, building, and testing an ASIC. The questions I would ask would be things they would definitely know. An example question might be "how many gates or equivalent does the ASIC have?" Or "what is the die size?"

Now, I don't know how many gates their ASIC has, but I can calculate how many it would have based on other information (such as the number of hashes and the clock speed). I can then check my gate count against theirs. Similarly, I can calculate the die size based on other information and check its consistency.

Those are very rough approximations really, i think you are well aware of this.

The value of their project is almost entirely in the fact that they have (assuming they're telling the truth) actually made masks and spun up a production process. The design is not secret -- we all know how it would be done. That is assuming their design is based on the FPGA miner. My first question would be to ensure we're on the same page as far as what I'm assuming about their design.

We used fpga miner as a starting base to develop our design. When we said it is 'compact' we meant it fits into 45K gates.

[openrune]

hello asicminer
we would like to know if your offer is avalable for a 19" rack
with rj45 connector ?

[asicminer]

hello asicminer
we would like to know if your offer is avalable for a 19" rack
with rj45 connector ?

Hi,

Sorry, i don't get what you are really asking me, do you want a 19" rack of multiple machines? by the way, why the rj45 connector?

Thanks

[openrune]

well yes how many machines fits to a 19" rack, and gonna be there a way to access the machine by ip or just usb?

[asicminer]

well yes how many machines fits to a 19" rack, and gonna be there a way to access the machine by ip or just usb

Well you mean access the workstation that controls the machines. I don't really know how many machines takes to fit a full 19" rack.
We will publish size specifications along with some pictures during today or tomorrow.

[Dargo]

Right, and JoelKatz is only asking to verify information that he *already* knows and which is entirely public at this point.

That's not quite true. I would be asking them questions whose answer I know within a range but don't know for sure.

If there is anything about this asic machine that is truly a secret, it probably doesn't need to be disclosed in the exchange. He is merely asking to confirm that this group has the relevant know-how to manufacture such a machine (or even build a prototype).

That is essentially correct. There are certain thing you have to do in the process of designing, building, and testing an ASIC. The questions I would ask would be things they would definitely know. An example question might be "how many gates or equivalent does the ASIC have?" Or "what is the die size?"

Now, I don't know how many gates their ASIC has, but I can calculate how many it would have based on other information (such as the number of hashes and the clock speed). I can then check my gate count against theirs. Similarly, I can calculate the die size based on other information and check its consistency.

Those are very rough approximations really, i think you are well aware of this.

OK, but I think the general point remains - that it would be easy to have an exchange with JoelKatz that would help verify the credibility of your claims, even if you can't answer every question, or have to answer some questions vaguely.

[asicminer]

Right, and JoelKatz is only asking to verify information that he *already* knows and which is entirely public at this point.

That's not quite true. I would be asking them questions whose answer I know within a range but don't know for sure.

If there is anything about this asic machine that is truly a secret, it probably doesn't need to be disclosed in the exchange. He is merely asking to confirm that this group has the relevant know-how to manufacture such a machine (or even build a prototype).

That is essentially correct. There are certain thing you have to do in the process of designing, building, and testing an ASIC. The questions I would ask would be things they would definitely know. An example question might be "how many gates or equivalent does the ASIC have?" Or "what is the die size?"

Now, I don't know how many gates their ASIC has, but I can calculate how many it would have based on other information (such as the number of hashes and the clock speed). I can then check my gate count against theirs. Similarly, I can calculate the die size based on other information and check its consistency.

Those are very rough approximations really, i think you are well aware of this.

OK, but I think the general point remains - that it would be easy to have an exchange with JoelKatz that would help verify the credibility of your claims, even if you can't answer every question, or have to answer some questions vaguely.

Well yes, i even already answered a question. But we won't reveal much.

[Dargo]

We will not send hardware unit for testing, sorry. Tomorrow we will publish some blurred pictures of the ASIC board and screenshots of tools we developed. We hope that will be enough for people to understand this is a serious project.
As per the technical information requested, our asic has 45K logical gates and gathers 500 Mhash\sec at 120MHz and one cycle per full-hash. Honestly the feedback from the community has discouraged us a bit about taking the risk to invest money in this venture. But today we got some emails from people interested in financing the whole operation for using the machines as a bitcoin mining cluster. We will keep you updated.

Well, you should go with whatever decision makes the most sense for your venture. But I find it very surprising that someone would offer you financing without wanting an even higher level of verification than we are asking for. And since you are so discouraged by our requests for more information, I would think that you will be similarly discouraged when these people offering to finance you ask for verification that this operation isn't a hoax. For what its worth, your efforts in this thread to address questions, and some of the changes made to your web page, do build a little more credibility IMO, but not enough yet to pull the trigger. Overall, the feedback you are getting is not dismissive, we just want more information. So I don't you should be discouraged; it was just unrealistic to think you could put up a web page with some sketchy information and have the orders flood in.  

[asicminer]

We will not send hardware unit for testing, sorry. Tomorrow we will publish some blurred pictures of the ASIC board and screenshots of tools we developed. We hope that will be enough for people to understand this is a serious project.
As per the technical information requested, our asic has 45K logical gates and gathers 500 Mhash\sec at 120MHz and one cycle per full-hash. Honestly the feedback from the community has discouraged us a bit about taking the risk to invest money in this venture. But today we got some emails from people interested in financing the whole operation for using the machines as a bitcoin mining cluster. We will keep you updated.

Well, you should go with whatever decision makes the most sense for your venture. But I find it very surprising that someone would offer you financing without wanting an even higher level of verification than we are asking for. And since you are so discouraged by our requests for more information, I would think that you will be similarly discouraged when these people offering to finance you ask for verification that this operation isn't a hoax. For what its worth, your efforts in this thread to address questions, and some of the changes made to your web page, do build a little more credibility IMO, but not enough yet to pull the trigger. Overall, the feedback you are getting is not dismissive, we just want more information. So I don't you should be discouraged; it was just unrealistic to think you could put up a web page with some sketchy information and have the orders flood in.  

We received an offer from some chinese entrepreneurs. The fact that we manufacture in Guangzhou is not safe for us. Trade secret in China is non-existent, as well as respect for intellectual property. We will not reveal further details about the offers we receive. We did not expect orders to flood in but at least we did expect that the community would take this seriously.

[tysat]

We did not expect orders to flood in but at least we did expect that the community would take this seriously.

It's hard to take this seriously when you release so little information, and won't do anything with a 3rd party to somewhat verify that your claims are true.  Usually when things are too good to be true, they are... so everyone is being cautious.

[sirky]

We will not send hardware unit for testing, sorry. Tomorrow we will publish some blurred pictures of the ASIC board and screenshots of tools we developed. We hope that will be enough for people to understand this is a serious project.
As per the technical information requested, our asic has 45K logical gates and gathers 500 Mhash\sec at 120MHz and one cycle per full-hash. Honestly the feedback from the community has discouraged us a bit about taking the risk to invest money in this venture. But today we got some emails from people interested in financing the whole operation for using the machines as a bitcoin mining cluster. We will keep you updated.

Well, you should go with whatever decision makes the most sense for your venture. But I find it very surprising that someone would offer you financing without wanting an even higher level of verification than we are asking for. And since you are so discouraged by our requests for more information, I would think that you will be similarly discouraged when these people offering to finance you ask for verification that this operation isn't a hoax. For what its worth, your efforts in this thread to address questions, and some of the changes made to your web page, do build a little more credibility IMO, but not enough yet to pull the trigger. Overall, the feedback you are getting is not dismissive, we just want more information. So I don't you should be discouraged; it was just unrealistic to think you could put up a web page with some sketchy information and have the orders flood in.  

We received an offer from some chinese entrepreneurs. The fact that we manufacture in Guangzhou is not safe for us. Trade secret in China is non-existent, as well as respect for intellectual property. We will not reveal further details about the offers we receive. We did not expect orders to flood in but at least we did expect that the community would take this seriously.

Well, the second any respected member of the community receives a working copy, the orders will flood in.