[ActiveMining] The Official Active Mining Discussion Thread [Self-Moderated]

[mainline]

...
Now please FO. We are grown ups and we can look after ourselves.

ROFL!!

[Flashman]

Shh shh shh,

If it all goes tits up and Ken vanishes to a yurt in Mongolia, we can sue the self appointed "Adult Supervision"  next for negligent parenting or something ...

[interJ]

Ken,

So, any update on getting shareholders verified and transferred?


I mean, it's only been: 95 days since transfers began https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=297543.msg3325554#msg3325554

59 days since the final transfers to AMC-tender (based on date given at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=297543.msg3492434#msg3492434)

52 days since public listing at crypto-trade (Dec 5th)

And mind you, these are just the hard dates. You knew of BF issues before October 23 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=297543.msg3325554#msg3325554, or 106 days). You would have had to been in contact with Neotrix before Dec 5th to get listed at CT in the first place, etc., etc.


I'm not going to get involved in arguing the legalese of selling Ukyo's shares: I'm more concerned with what the fuck you're doing listing them for trade before getting your shareholder's shares back in their hands - those same shareholders who are the reason you have the chance to be doing multimillion dollar business with eASIC in the first place.


Thanks.

[somestranger]

Where is the money? How has the money been used?

That is the only question that needs an answer really, and always conveniently ignored.

There is 54,000 USD in the dividend wallet - accounted for.
There was 106,000 USD stolen by Ukyo and now in theory tied up in his shares.
There are several Million dollars in company liquid assets - as stated in company financial release.

Now please FO. We are grown ups and we can look after ourselves.

Actually we don't know where the money is. How much did buying the 55nm IP cost? How much is it costing to upgrade the 28nm to a full custom (higher NRE cost ..?)? How much money is being refunded for preorders, and was the preorder money converted to BTC?

The financial reports have also been rather lacking as EskimoBob has pointed out several times.

[minerpart]

It will take a number of manufacturer/retailer/miners with a chip much smaller than 28nm (20nm isn't a big enough difference) and leccy at-least half the price (not gonna happen) in order to make ActM unprofitable...

Vince out.

Good work Vince, the mistake over $ and c is forgivable, they are not your native currency.

Now please read this:


NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang publicly questioned the economic viability of the whole 20 nm node, saying that its cost per transistor might never drop below that of 28 nm.

The 20 nm node is arguably the most difficult ever attempted for production, and just a description of the technical challenges would justify a small book.

Cost is paramount. NVIDIA’s Huang may well have been right: with its greatly increased costs, 20 nm may always be more expensive than 28 nm for the same number of transistors.

For SoCs with significant amounts of non-scaling circuitry, such as RF or other analog transistors, monolithic passive components, or electrostatic discharge protection structures, the gap will be larger than for dense logic-only SoCs. Quite simply, for an SoC to migrate to 20 nm, there will have to be some benefit—integration, performance, energy efficiency, or IP access—not available at 28 nm. Otherwise there will be no way to justify the added cost.


The Fine-Print Take Away

The ability to spend transistors to buy performance is absolutely vital to 20 nm SoCs for one simple reason: at the block level, 20 nm chips will not be much faster than their 28 nm equivalents. This is not immediately obvious from the publicity. TSMC, for example, claims that their 20 nm technology “…can provide 30 percent higher speed…than its 28 nm technology.” That is not the doubling we used to expect between process generations, but it is not trivial. Yet to achieve that speed on an entire block, rather than on a few critical paths, might require lavish use of low-Vt transistors with very significant leakage current, raising the issue of local-heating problems. Even without the thermal issues, the design might never close timing across all the many process, voltage, and temperature corners that 20 nm presents. Some engineers have suggested that taking power and variations into consideration, blocks simply ported to 20 nm may gain no speed at all.

http://www.altera.co.uk/technology/system-design/articles/2012/20nm-systems-era.html


So Vince, if we do create a market leading 28nm custom chip, one that can also utilise Intellishash, can we expect to retain the market-leading status for some time? This article would suggest that do you agree?

OK so if 28nm is the cap for sometime (2years forseeably??) the factor we need to asses is the size of the 28nm ASIC tech market and what portion of it we can take in terms of:
Self-mining
Chip sales
Retail miner sales

[minerpart]

Actually we don't know where the money is. How much did buying the 55nm IP cost? How much is it costing to upgrade the 28nm to a full custom (higher NRE cost ..?)? How much money is being refunded for preorders, and was the preorder money converted to BTC?

All of that I really don't care about - for two reasons:

1) Ken will make money from this project only after he had made 25-50 Million USD for shareholders - so I trust his judgement over money matters.

2) All of that info in  any other company would be confidential and commercially sensitive information. All of it, in any company.

These two things are facts. There are few facts about yes, but please recognise the facts that we do know.

[zumzero]

Perhaps we should ask Ken how frequently he intends on issuing financials and when we can expect the next one.  I'm no business man so wouldn't really know how often these reports should be published.  Are there any other companies in the bitcoin space who may have set a precedent?

Perhaps Asic Miner?  Who knows how frequently they issued financials? Had they already done so prior to hashing with their mining farm?  Had they done so during chip development?

What about other companies?  Who can we compare with in the world of Bitcoin?

What about companies outside of Bitcoin?  

To my knowledge Ken has issued financial statements twice last year and yet they cry moar!

[Minor Miner]

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang publicly questioned the economic viability of the whole 20 nm node, saying that its cost per transistor might never drop below that of 28 nm.

The 20 nm node is arguably the most difficult ever attempted for production, and just a description of the technical challenges would justify a small book.

Cost is paramount. NVIDIA’s Huang may well have been right: with its greatly increased costs, 20 nm may always be more expensive than 28 nm for the same number of transistors.

For SoCs with significant amounts of non-scaling circuitry, such as RF or other analog transistors, monolithic passive components, or electrostatic discharge protection structures, the gap will be larger than for dense logic-only SoCs. Quite simply, for an SoC to migrate to 20 nm, there will have to be some benefit—integration, performance, energy efficiency, or IP access—not available at 28 nm. Otherwise there will be no way to justify the added cost.

The Fine-Print Take Away

The ability to spend transistors to buy performance is absolutely vital to 20 nm SoCs for one simple reason: at the block level, 20 nm chips will not be much faster than their 28 nm equivalents. This is not immediately obvious from the publicity. TSMC, for example, claims that their 20 nm technology “…can provide 30 percent higher speed…than its 28 nm technology.” That is not the doubling we used to expect between process generations, but it is not trivial. Yet to achieve that speed on an entire block, rather than on a few critical paths, might require lavish use of low-Vt transistors with very significant leakage current, raising the issue of local-heating problems. Even without the thermal issues, the design might never close timing across all the many process, voltage, and temperature corners that 20 nm presents. Some engineers have suggested that taking power and variations into consideration, blocks simply ported to 20 nm may gain no speed at all.

http://www.altera.co.uk/technology/system-design/articles/2012/20nm-systems-era.html

You should probably post this for the KNC people that have pre-orders and huge money riding on 20NM coming in "april or may", if you think this is correct.   It would seem those people need to decide for themselves if 20NM is ever coming (considering 3600 X $10,000 worth of 20NM KNCs have been pre-sold)

[minerpart]

if you think this is correct.  

We are reading expert view here. I tend to take onboard their views on the viability of 20nm. If this article is broadly relevant and correct....well we should discuss it a little I think.

EDIT: I don't think the article suggests working 20nm is not possible to achieve. It suggests it will offer no benifits over 28nm technology.

[damiano]

Actually, the trolls are the reason I still have faith in this company. They put so much time and effort into trolling ActM, there just has to be a big potential for the company.

+1

It's so pathetic on the amount of time wasted.  

I'm almost embarrassed for them.

[stenkross]

Actually, the trolls are the reason I still have faith in this company. They put so much time and effort into trolling ActM, there just has to be a big potential for the company.

+1

It's so pathetic on the amount of time wasted.  

I'm almost embarrassed for them.

They are here to help dumb investors from throwing away their money on ActM.
Think of them as knights in shiny armor.

[minerpart]

It's so pathetic on the amount of time wasted.  

I'm almost embarrassed for them.

There are millions of dollars at stake in this for them. If they are the opposition (who else can they be) then ACtM will take a large share of their business away from them. This is business for them and they are acting like the sharks they are.  

[mainline]

...
All of that I really don't care about - for two reasons:

1) Ken will make money from this project only after he had made 25-50 Million USD for shareholders.
...

Lol no.  The whole Slaughter clan has been living off your coin.
Neither Ken nor his kinfolk are waiting for anything, they're paying themselves salaries from the coin you so generously gifted them.  When they feel that they're worth more, they ask Ken for a raise.  When the coin runs dry, Ken will float a third IPO, or issue moar sharez.

[Flashman]

Basically, transistor sizes aren't getting smaller but the interconnects are. BUT there are current leakage issues, so less "wiring" you have that leaks current the better. So slight drop in power consumption possible over 28nm... this can in turn lead to higher aggregate speeds, due to less heat dissipation, and power input problems... bearing in mind that 28nm hashing hardware HAS NOT reached the theoretical speed limits of the process due to heat and current issues... i.e. individual transistors can switch faster but not then they get overheated or starved of power.


Sort of an analogy...

Individual athlete might be able to lap the gym in 30 seconds, a few hundred athletes in the same gym will have an average lap time in the order of minutes due to getting in each others way, SHA hardware is like that, all the athletes trying to run at once, whereas a CPU might be a few hundred athletes, but letting them run laps in tag teams of 50.

[EduardoDeCastro]

...
1. manufacture their own full custom 28nm chips
...

There are three i can think of, though Active Mining is not one of them.
Active Mining doesn't manufacture 28nm chips.
Active Mining doesn't manufacture *ANY* chips.
The closest to chip manufacture Active Mining has gotten is Ken's promise to have 55nm chips sometime this spring.

But then he also promised to have 28nm chips sometime last year.
How'd that work out?

Eduardo out.

*Active Miners!  Your internet is broken.  Fix it so I won't have to post things twice!

[minerpart]

Basically, transistor sizes aren't getting smaller but the interconnects are. BUT there are current leakage issues, so less "wiring" you have that leaks current the better. So slight drop in power consumption possible over 28nm... this can in turn lead to higher aggregate speeds

Sure, and the below paragraph deals with the issue on non-scaling (not able to be reduced in the same ratio as the new smaller chip?) components. So there needs to be a boost in energy efficiency (or performance) to justify the increased FAB costs of 20nm. But the article also states:



'Cost is paramount. NVIDIA’s Huang may well have been right: with its greatly increased costs, 20 nm may always be more expensive than 28 nm for the same number of transistors. For SoCs with significant amounts of non-scaling circuitry, such as RF or other analog transistors, monolithic passive components, or electrostatic discharge protection structures, the gap will be larger than for dense logic-only SoCs. Quite simply, for an SoC to migrate to 20 nm, there will have to be some benefit—integration, performance, energy efficiency, or IP access—not available at 28 nm. Otherwise there will be no way to justify the added cost. '

and

'power presents another issue. The sum of static plus dynamic power is unlikely to be half what it was at 28 nm. But density is going up by a factor of two. Arithmetic says that power density—and hence local heating—will limit both layout and clock frequencies in some 20 nm blocks.'




So the technology is far from proven at this point? Would that be true to say. Sure you can Fab a 20nm chip but once you take into account greater manufacturing costs and the limiting factor of non-scalable component parts you may well be left with a chip that in MH/s/$ is the same as a top-end 28nm ASIC?


The pre-order 20nm KnC Neptune 2ndB is claimed to be 300.15 MH/s/$ and 0.7W/GH/s  which is close to double the power/cost performance of a Hashfast Babyjet +1B. That seems really unlikely from what this article has to say even if the difficulties of 20nm are overcome - 30% max theorhetical benifit?

[somestranger]

Actually we don't know where the money is. How much did buying the 55nm IP cost? How much is it costing to upgrade the 28nm to a full custom (higher NRE cost ..?)? How much money is being refunded for preorders, and was the preorder money converted to BTC?

All of that I really don't care about - for two reasons:

You are ignoring the original point which is that we don't know where the money is and should. Just because you don't care doesn't change that fact (since you like to speak of "facts" so much).

[JoTheKhan]

Actually we don't know where the money is. How much did buying the 55nm IP cost? How much is it costing to upgrade the 28nm to a full custom (higher NRE cost ..?)? How much money is being refunded for preorders, and was the preorder money converted to BTC?

All of that I really don't care about - for two reasons:

You are ignoring the original point which is that we don't know where the money is and should. Just because you don't care doesn't change that fact (since you like to speak of "facts" so much).

+1 I have suggested that the company hires an accountant or two and does an audit for its investors. Every company on the NASDAQ has to be audited. I think we should show some professionalism here and follow the precedent set (and set our own for new companies that come in to Bitcoin securities). If Ken is telling the truth then an audit can only help.

[minerpart]

You are ignoring the original point which is that we don't know where the money is

That is an impossibly naive and silly point. 'Where's the money'??

eASIC took 1Million for the NRE (as stipulated on CT)
Ken is far along into a 55nm chip - taped out. That project would cost money to progress - errr I think.
Ken has hired a project manager to work with eASIC
Ken has hired two engineers for the 55nm chip project

Ken has clearly stated ACtM still has Millions of USD in liquid assets.

So how much money do you want to be accounted for? Do you want to open up the ACtM balance sheet to the competition?

Have you seen KnC's accounts?
Have you seen HashFast's accounts?

[RickJamesBTC]

You keep posting these thing like you have some actual shares in the money ken brought in. Really, don't you understand how is works? Money is gone, it's not yours, and nothing you do can get it back. As the months pass, people keep making excuses for lack of transparency and failure to ship, but if you don't realize you have been ripped off, you're really missing something.