Ken's statement about the software on the chip may be legitimate. I have come up with a theory on how Intellihash may work.
"We have had to modify the software in our chips to make it work with our new software." - Ken Slaughter
Intellihash(tm)
Intellihash is our new trademark for our new Bitcoin mining software which gives up to a 20% increase in hashing speed and has the possibility to increase the speed of our mining machines as the difficulty goes up. We have had to modify the software in our chips to make it work with our new software. The chips are going to be late; however, our new Intellihash software could be a game changer for the company.
Some background on eASIC's ASICs vs Other ASICs and FPGAs:
Q. What is different about eASIC’s technology compared to other Structured ASICs and FPGAs?
A. Competing Structured ASICs require numerous custom masks since both routing and logic are mask-customized. The expense of custom masks is high and grows exponentially with each new process node. By efficiently using a maskless lithography customization, eASIC’s Nextreme devices provide unprecedented benefits of quick and low cost product development together with a seamless path to volume production. Nextreme prototypes are identical to the high volume production devices, as they both share the same base wafers and the same data files are used for the Via customization. The only difference is in the manufacturing process - prototypes and low volume quantities are customized with Direct-Write eBeam equipment and high volume production devices are customized with a single Via-mask.
In an FPGA, both the routing and the logic are configurable. Configurable routing requires significant silicon overhead and in eASIC’s Structured ASIC the configurable routing is replaced with Via-mask routing. Therefore, Nextreme achieves over 200:1 area reduction in routing compared to FPGAs. This silicon efficiency translates into dramatically lower costs, higher performance and lower power consumption.
Q. How to customize eASIC’s Structured ASIC devices?
A. Two elements are required to implement a design on a Nextreme device: Via configuration for interconnect and logic customization or optionally, a bit-stream for programming the logic cells. Both the Via configuration and bit-stream files are generated with eASIC's proprietary EDA tools suite called eTools. The Via configuration file is provided by the customer to eASIC or to one of the sales representatives and is used to manufacture the custom devices.
OK, there are two versions of eASIC's Nextreme chip, the
SL and
VL. From eASIC:
Q. What is the difference between Nextreme VL and Nextreme SL?
A. Nextreme VL and Nextreme SL are identical 90nm Structured ASIC devices of the Nextreme family. The only difference is in the logic customization method. The Nextreme SL product, which uses Flash devices to load the bitsteam, is optimized for fast turnaround and flexibility allowing re-programmability of the logic cells, while Nextreme VL devices do not require any external configuration loading and therefore are instant on, eliminating inrush current and soft errors.
So, it is possible that what Ken was saying was that after playing around with the first eBeamed prototype (no mask), he and his team came up with Intellihash. This required the "software" or LUT to be altered for use with Intellihash, which then go to full production in the nextreme
VL - Via Programmed Logic (Fixed LUT). (This is more or less what Kleeck and Shaofis discussed)
Or...
Rather than use the nextreme
VL for final products, VMC could implement the nextreme
SL. This would allow for alterations to the SRAM Reprogrammable Logic (LUT) after the miners had been delivered. Thus, Intellihash could improve the performance of the miners as the difficulty increased since alterations to the logic could be made on the fly - an on-chip firmware upgrade. The routing cannot be altered but the logic can.
Please refer to this PDF for further information:
http://www.avnet-asic.com/sfiles/editor/Nextreme.pdf
