First commercial ASIC miner specifications and pre-launch

[mobodick]

Yeah, this looks identical, which means that the cpu is an ARM RISC design cpu and not an ASIC or FPGA.

It's incredible how much avoiding is done on the part of asicminer when any design has parts that can identify it without giving away important facts.
He could have, for instance, specified the ASIC part that he used.
Without the hashing algo it would be useless and any manufacturer would know of these processors anyway so nothing is lost.
And he's being secritive about a commonly used design, WTF?

I mean, why not show a blurred picture of the ASIC boards or the custom interconnects he talks about?

I'm still not convinced that this is not a scam, i'm afraid.

Some one posted the below GIF image in this post.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ixqrw/asic_miner_a_dedicated_bitcoin_mining_device/c27ifpv

[openrune]

Well finaly i got a confirmation Email that the 5 BTC was recived by ASICMINER.
So i gonna try this out, cause of the trouble here in the forum i just preordered one controller with one asic board.

Im ready to invest this money to proove it wrong or right. and as soon i get any usefull results i will post them here in the forum.

To the all the guys who dnt trust this situation, well we will know when the first devices are shipped and ppl try it out. Till then this discussion about scam or not is not realy usefull.

Like i said i give Asicminer a chance to proove his claims right. Otherwise we have allready an alternative with the Altera Cyclon IV chip

So if all this from china prooves wrong we from TENOBIS still will be able to provide the comunity at least an FPGA Miner with Swiss guarantee.

Regards

Openrune

P.S. We accept BTC

[Tereska]

how much did asic miner cost you with this configuration?
250 + 150 ? what about shipping, taxes etc?

All of us wating for your tests! maybe this isnt a scam

[magik]

I think this smells like scam, I can't find the google page right now, but some of that last press releases was pretty much lifted from a textbook talking about a SHA core implementation based on a Pilchard design - or mebe that was the Pilchard design.  Even the things like polling communication.  If it helps anyone, I was googling for Pilchard, and I ended up on a google books page, but after reading the section that came up, it literally was almost word for word the same as their latest news description.

On the other hand.  There are "ASIC"s out there that are literally just stripped down FPGAs.  For example, you can design something on a Xilinx FPGA, and then you once your design is set in stone, you can actually send it off to Xilinx to make "ASIC"s from that FPGA design.  It's basically just a FPGA without the FP ( Field Programmable Gate Array => Gate Array ).  And it's not as cheap as a real ASIC, but it's definitely cheaper than an FPGA - per unit price.  Xilinx also expects volumes in the thousands if not millions to even provide the service.  But I could see cheaper Chinese companies doing this type of thing.  So I don't think it's out of this world to think that it's not an "ASIC" in this term of the definition.

Now back again to the scam side.  480-500 MHash/s just sounds unfathomable for what I just described above.  To obtain these types of hash rates you would need either multiple SHA cores running in parallel ( AND pipelined, i just don't see enough cores getting packed in ), or one core running at extrememly fast clock rates.  I just don't see either of these happening in an FPGA type ASIC.  I would expect maybe something on the order of 100-300 MHash.  As said earlier, you can't really do much to optimize the math/logic that goes on in the alogirhtm.

I also find it funny that they think using some sort of external memory could possibly be faster than using the on-chip BRAMs.  Or if they are using the internal BRAMs, then how they could possibly think that doing something like this could get them anywhere near such an efficiency boost in terms of clocking.  The critical path in the SHA logic is not constant inputs - it's the adders - 32-bit adders that need to execute in one clock means you have a 32-bit carry chain to deal with, and I would likely assume that is going to be the critical path here - 32-bit adder carry chains with inputs that need to be xor'd.

From little information he has provided, IMO just seems fake and I hate to say it, but very chinese.  I love his reactions in that reddit thread - people criticize the legitimacy and retorts with "FINE MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T GIVE YOU ANY INFORMATION" - LO-fucking-L.  I don't know who is still interested in this vaporware, but it's definitely got me not interested - who wouldn't want to deal with someone like this?

I'm not even sure if photos/videos of this thing "working" will cut it at this point.  Maybe if it was a spur of the moment - someone asks for a pic/video of this thing running, and 5 minutes later these guys post a response because they actually have it running live.  But the way it is now, I'd expect any further "proof" to be highly constructed/photoshopped/faked.  How is he even supposed to "proove" he has one of these things up and running?  It's like an iphone jailbreak video - it's a freaking video, it's so easy to fake that shit - it's so easy to shoot it 100 times till you stop making a mistake.  It's like one of those japanese video magicians....

I don't know, but at least in my mind or someone prooves me wrong with some real solid proof - this just screams scammer to me.

Here are some questions I would ask and expect to be answered with out giving away the technical details of the implementation of the design.

What is the core clock rate of the chip?  How many SHA engines are running?  How many clocks for each core to produce a hash?  Are they fully pipelined?

[openrune]

What is the core clock rate of the chip?  How many SHA engines are running?  How many clocks for each core to produce a hash?  Are they fully pipelined?

@magik well i dnt take any position if scam or not till i have it here, as ASICMINER stated he will start to deliver august 6. delivery to switzerland usualy takes like 10 days from shenzhen or hongkong. Till then we all just guess around.

The specifications of the hardware or a video is in my oppinion not realy a way to proove, magik is right that today is everythign fakable. Like i allready wrote, it will prove it wrong or right if the stuff arives here and we are able to hook it to http://mine.tenobis.com. I will create there a new worker for the ASICMINER and you can monitor by yourself at the stats page http://mine.tenobis.com/stats.php how the hardware works.

I understand that ASICMINER is a bit discouraged from this discussion, but hey even slush had to proove himself in the beginning, aswell as the TENOBIS MINE. Im not sure but ASICSMINER sounds to me like a marketing man, and not like a Techie.

My position is that we will know when we have the hardware here, hooked up to the mine, where everyone can see the result by himself

Openrune

[Meatpile]

It doesn't look good at all. The "blurred prototype" is totaly stupid. Any engineer on earth knows they wouldn't be "scooped" or beaten to market if someone saw their pcb traces....

Also if it really is a custom made ASIC then the numbers on the front are indistinguishable, its just a serial number and a company, there is no reason to blur it.

ALSO you dont make prototype asics.... you do most of your testing and prototype in VHDL (a hardware programming language) and then spend $millions to have the chips made.

It is possible they are using the word ASIC improperly to just mean their own fpga solution? But if that is the case they are not very knowledgeable engineers.


All of the secret sauce is in the firmware.

The only reason to blur traces is because you didnt have any to begin with. It may just mean they are way behind schedule, but if not, it is clearly shady deception.

This is really shady sounding to me.

[nmat]

This asicminer charade makes for some damn entertaining drama! 

This. 

[newMeat1]

You're pissing away your money openrune. I can't believe somebody would actually fall for this, after everything that's been said against it! Answer me this: have you ever heard of a "re-programmable ASIC"? It's an oxymoron

I think it's time to ban asicminer or lock this thread or something. How about labeling asicminer as a scammer?

[Dargo]

Personally I'd like to keep the thread open, at least for entertainment value (munch munch). But it should probably be moved out of the Newbie section at the very least.

[Xephan]

I lived in Hong Kong for a number of years and have many technical friends still there.

I am extremely interested in this machine.

I am willing to pay you $4000 for a test machine in advance!


Here is my open offer to AsicMiner.

1) Money to be escrowed at HSBC in HK, I will pay escrow fees.
2) Machine to be shipped a mutually agreed upon independent tester
3) Terms of escrow call for release of funds to you upon verification of testing facility.


By setting these terms in escrow, if the machine test out from an independent testing facility, you get your money no matter what and I get a killer machine. I will also commit to ordering 9 more at the $2700 with same terms.

What say you.

I'd like to see what kind of excuse AsicMiner can come up with against this offer

Maybe you might just want to get your friend to check out his address too. I have a suspicion it's just one of those registered/virtual office addresses.

[Brian DeLoach]

We're currently about to close the sale of a whole first batch of devices to a private investor. We will be required not to duplicate the device for at least 3 years. Sorry guys. We will eventually refund all the people who sent the 5 btc within 48 hours.

source

That's the end of that, folks.

[grue]

Some one posted the below GIF image in this post.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ixqrw/asic_miner_a_dedicated_bitcoin_mining_device/c27ifpv

lol, problem, asci miner?

[openrune]

Well asicminer if you dnt plan to deliver i ask you for imediate refund

Thanks


Openrune

[randomguy7]

Lol best part:

Sorry guys. We will eventually refund all the people who sent the 5 btc within 48 hours.

[The00Dustin]

Lol best part:

Sorry guys. We will eventually refund all the people who sent the 5 btc within 48 hours.

He does say within 48 hours, heh.  That said, you can't just "refund" BTC, right?  I mean, the address they came from is a sending address, so a receiving address would have to be provided before the refund could be made, right?  Assuming I am, I like the response comment from the aforementioned source, as if the BTC were magically going to be sent back to mtred and end up mtred's or in someone else's account.

[randomguy7]

Lol best part:

Sorry guys. We will eventually refund all the people who sent the 5 btc within 48 hours.

He does say within 48 hours, heh.  That said, you can't just "refund" BTC, right?  I mean, the address they came from is a sending address, so a receiving address would have to be provided before the refund could be made, right?  Assuming I am, I like the response comment from the aforementioned source, as if the BTC were magically going to be sent back to mtred and end up mtred's or in someone else's account.

Ok, valid point.
The coins could indeed be sent back to the address they came from but it could be an eWallet address as well. The coins then wouldn't be received by the intended person.
I'm very curious about if the people how paid the 5 BTC are gonna get their coins back. But we'll see.

[Bert]

It could be totally true, there was a research paper from the Chinese University of Hong Kong about using Pilchard "RAM" boards for DES encryption in ECB mode back in 2004.
http://microsys6.engr.utk.edu/~bouldin/pilchard.pdf
http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~phwl/mt/public/archives/old/ceg5010/pilchard.pdf

[Desolator]

"Because the bitcoin community is concerned this might be a scam here and here, we decided to lower the amount required for order eligibility from 15 to 5 BTC"

That's such an unbelievable gap in logic there that I think it's actually a typo.  It should say:

"Because this is a scam, as pointed out here and here, we decided to lower the amount required for order eligibility from 15 to 5 BTC so people are more willing to fall for it"

ARM chips are not capable of that kind of calculations at those rates also btw.

[haydent]

I'm glad this thread is over... unfortunately this isn't

[Bloody Bell]

It could be totally true, there was a research paper from the Chinese University of Hong Kong about using Pilchard "RAM" boards for DES encryption in ECB mode back in 2004.
http://microsys6.engr.utk.edu/~bouldin/pilchard.pdf
http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~phwl/mt/public/archives/old/ceg5010/pilchard.pdf

And they probably wanted us to believe that this is the paper they used as inspiration:
http://www.ee.usyd.edu.au/people/philip.leong/UserFiles/File/papers/sha_fpl02.pdf

Problem is that this paper is pretty old, and the hardware they mention is outdated. If other people in this forum with much more modern FPGAs couldn't come up with a feasible implementation, there is no way that this could be competitive. This paper was written before GPGPUs became common.

And I couldn't find a more modern version of this Pilchard module.