Alpha Technology Litecoin (Scrypt) ASIC Miner Order Batch 1 Now!

[luffy]

epic fail their decition to sent devices to customers directly from India!
i had already many problems with customs and avalon, no thank you!

[wilson1973]

I would tend to agree with you. As I see it I'd be taking the majority of the risk, there is nothing to say I don't receive a box of nails from offshore, yet how would I prove that if alpha-t haven't validated the contents!

I'd much prefer to see all items shipped to alpha-t , and checked and validated by them prior to dispatch.

[coin123123]

it cost like top gpu's rig at the moments BUT will be available only in half year.
in this half year hd8000 series will release and for same money you will be able to buy more khs and gpu can be sold unlike this.

[wilson1973]

Interesting how many of the next generation gpu's would you need to match the 25mh/s rate of the viper ... What's the power consumption for such a rig ?

[multibit]

This is bad news. I hope this is a scam or something. Don't want my rig to go obsolete like with BTC.

[littlewizard]

No worry. Because of large amount of GPU miner, there will soon be a powerful alt coin to resist such kind of ASIC for one or two years

[coin123123]

Scrypt ASIC Chip POC Prototype Video

You can view update on our website: https://alpha-t.net/news/scrypt-asic-poc-prototype-video/

The following video is an ASIC Chip prototype demonstration done on FPGA based ASIC prototyping board. The demonstration is by one of our engineers from our engineering partners in India, Dexcel Designs. The video demonstrates our ASIC design and core speeds working live. The ASIC design document this demonstration relates to can be found here:
https://alpha-t.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Scrypt_ASIC_Prototyping_Design_Document.pdf.

You may note that we had bettered hashing speed per core as compared to last time we published our results in our Prototyping Design Document.

As stated in the following video, our ASIC design POC has not been optimised for any specific FPGA, instead optimised for multi-core scalability with ASIC in mind. That's why it's important we show our core speed and number of cores we are targeting as per the final ASIC chip. Based on this design and global foundries process node, die sizes and the associated costs have been arrived at and we will be going ahead with the fabrication, post final back end verification.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69P2RHG2pIA

Our next update will be the official launch in which we will start taking orders for batch 1 along with instructions.

A note to all forum viewers, we will be further populating our FAQ section to answer all your questions. If you feel some of your questions are still unanswered please email us on info@alpha-t.net, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

So what are you showing in this video?

43 Khs

my skydrive mining faster than that

Seriously what the point of this video? to scare away costumers?

[Its About Sharing]

Scrypt ASIC Chip POC Prototype Video

You can view update on our website: https://alpha-t.net/news/scrypt-asic-poc-prototype-video/

The following video is an ASIC Chip prototype demonstration done on FPGA based ASIC prototyping board. The demonstration is by one of our engineers from our engineering partners in India, Dexcel Designs. The video demonstrates our ASIC design and core speeds working live. The ASIC design document this demonstration relates to can be found here:
https://alpha-t.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Scrypt_ASIC_Prototyping_Design_Document.pdf.

You may note that we had bettered hashing speed per core as compared to last time we published our results in our Prototyping Design Document.

As stated in the following video, our ASIC design POC has not been optimised for any specific FPGA, instead optimised for multi-core scalability with ASIC in mind. That's why it's important we show our core speed and number of cores we are targeting as per the final ASIC chip. Based on this design and global foundries process node, die sizes and the associated costs have been arrived at and we will be going ahead with the fabrication, post final back end verification.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69P2RHG2pIA

Our next update will be the official launch in which we will start taking orders for batch 1 along with instructions.

A note to all forum viewers, we will be further populating our FAQ section to answer all your questions. If you feel some of your questions are still unanswered please email us on info@alpha-t.net, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

So what are you showing in this video?

43 Khs

my skydrive mining faster than that

Seriously what the point of this video? to scare away costumers?

Did you read what you quoted? The answer is right there.

My problem are two things:
1 - These Scrypt ASIC miners are what, 2X better than current rigs and in 6 months time when they are shipped you could make that money back by buying a rig now. The nice thing is the lower energy. Nice rig to just support the network, from an energy perspective. Oh, and the difficulty is rising, in 6 months, oh boy...
2 - Shipping from India. They are essentially creating a can of worms with Customs. Instead of them taking a few large boxes, there will now be hundreds or thousands of boxes through the mail system, to many countries, etc. Would be much easier for the customer, more efficient, to ship from the UK, not India. Lots of problems can develop from here. Also customs fees, oh boy.

[wobbzz]

Does anyone with a good background in FPGA/chip design support Alpha's claims or think they are feasible? My spidey senses are tingling.

[djaychela]

Well, i did ask for a PoC video, and there it is!

I can't say I'm impressed though.  Yes, you'll get savings on power, but really looks like you'll get equivalent performance to a GPU setup, which as said above has some resale value if the altcoin market dies, and you'll be sinking a considerable amount into this rig.  I don't think the power savings would really add up to much; my (extremely modest) 750kH/sec rig uses 350W, so that's costing about £1 a day to run, with a capital outlay of maybe £450.  The extra £1000 cost of the alpha rig would run it for three years, one of which I reckon i'll get before they actually ship anything.

I'm not convinced that they will get a suitable chip built (with enough RAM) to allow it to hash fast enough at the right price, though.  The PoC video is obviously on an FPGA which doesn't really tell us much as it's chalk and cheese - it's like saying "hey, this computer can do A, so a different computer can also do A".  What I read in the PDFs didn't really convince me, as it looked to me like anyone could produce such a design given a bit of thought.  It's the excecution that is important, and I guess it is possible that a manufacturer could make an all-in-one with enough power and memory, but it seems unlikely at such a small scale.

Plus, the "ooh, we've got an FPGA dev kit"-ness of it smells fishy to me, but that's just me being a bit of a snob!

On the shipping front, sounds like a disaster.  I bought an OUYA, and that was a real PITA (damaged, slow, extra fees to pay, took ages to get sorted) and not even expensive.  Doing something similar with a £1500 item would be a nervy nightmare.

[kramble]

Does anyone with a good background in FPGA/chip design support Alpha's claims or think they are feasible? My spidey senses are tingling.

I have some background, but there are better experts than me on these forums.

128 cores, 1024kbit of RAM each core (TMTO=1, WTF!!). Its going to be a huge chip and the 28nm foundry node is not cheap. Feasible, probably, but I think their costing figures were pulled from the wrong direction (marketing rather than production). Also have a look at Dexcel's web site. Plenty of experience in FPGA. Not a thing mentioned about ASICs.

[Edited to amend 1024Mbit to 1024kbit, thanks "Its About Sharing" for pointing out the typo]

[Its About Sharing]

Does anyone with a good background in FPGA/chip design support Alpha's claims or think they are feasible? My spidey senses are tingling.

I have some background, but there are better experts than me on these forums.

128 cores, 1024Mbit of RAM each core (TMTO=1, WTF!!). Its going to be a huge chip and the 28nm foundry node is not cheap. Feasible, probably, but I think their costing figures were pulled from the wrong direction (marketing rather than production). Also have a look at Dexcel's web site. Plenty of experience in FPGA. Not a thing mentioned about ASICs.

Are you sure about those numbers? WOW. We are talking 131,072Mbit of ram for 128 cores!
Go on...

[kramble]

Are you sure about those numbers? WOW. We are talking 131,072Mbit of ram for 128 cores!
Go on...

From the OP (about half way down, 23/12 announcement)

ASIC Chip Specs

Process: 28nm/40nm HPP, 3.3v/1.8v
Internal Memory: >=128Mb SRAM
Gates: ~28M Gates
Clock Speed: > 600 Mhz Core Clock
Hashing Cores: >= 128
Chip Hash rate: > 350 Kh/s
Power Consumption: < 5w

The video confirms GlobalFoundries 28nm HPP process node. The NRE is going to be enormous (I'd like to hear an estimate from someone with insider knowledge, but I'm guessing in the range of several million dollars). So in order to make this pay, Alpha must be relying on sales of several thousand units.

BTW. The comment on TMTO=1 (LOOKUP_GAP) reflects their statement that each core will use 1024kBit of RAM. Now I don't know the details of their design, but I'd suggest a more appropriate value would be 4 or 8 in order to reduce the RAM footprint.

EDIT. LOL, I'll amend that to 1024kBit of RAM per core. Its still a lot though.

[greentea]

Can't tell if that video helped them or hurt them 

I guess I'll wait until a more reputable company comes out with one.

I was expecting a finished prototype, not a fraction of it.

[nightengale]

Can't tell if that video helped them or hurt them 

I guess I'll wait until a more reputable company comes out with one.

I was expecting a finished prototype, not a fraction of it.

Prototyping with ASICs really isn't how the game is played; my understanding is that this is more of a proof of concept. It isn't practical from a cost-perspective to produce a finished prototype.

[nastybit]

Can't tell if that video helped them or hurt them 

I guess I'll wait until a more reputable company comes out with one.

I was expecting a finished prototype, not a fraction of it.

Prototyping with ASICs really isn't how the game is played; my understanding is that this is more of a proof of concept. It isn't practical from a cost-perspective to produce a finished prototype.

The point is do not preorder anything so the prototype is not needed.
Once you have a full product ready to ship, then accept orders. Easy!
But I guess the point here is another, get as many preorder as possible, isn't it

[nightengale]

Can't tell if that video helped them or hurt them 

I guess I'll wait until a more reputable company comes out with one.

I was expecting a finished prototype, not a fraction of it.

Prototyping with ASICs really isn't how the game is played; my understanding is that this is more of a proof of concept. It isn't practical from a cost-perspective to produce a finished prototype.

The point is do not preorder anything so the prototype is not needed.
Once you have a full product ready to ship, then accept orders. Easy!
But I guess the point here is another, get as many preorder as possible, isn't it

So without preorders, they would need venture capital funding, and then if the miners are that lucrative, the venture capitalists would just keep them. Pre-orders are essentially crowdfunding, and if they produce a product, the fact that it wasn't funded by a small number of individuals helps keep the network distributed and healthy.

Without preorders... How do you propose they pay for NRE and all the other associated costs?

In a peachfuzz and rainbow world, yes, pre-orders would not exist. But we are in this world.

[patnor1011]

Can't tell if that video helped them or hurt them  

I guess I'll wait until a more reputable company comes out with one.

I was expecting a finished prototype, not a fraction of it.

Prototyping with ASICs really isn't how the game is played; my understanding is that this is more of a proof of concept. It isn't practical from a cost-perspective to produce a finished prototype.

The point is do not preorder anything so the prototype is not needed.
Once you have a full product ready to ship, then accept orders. Easy!
But I guess the point here is another, get as many preorder as possible, isn't it

So without preorders, they would need venture capital funding, and then if the miners are that lucrative, the venture capitalists would just keep them. Pre-orders are essentially crowdfunding, and if they produce a product, the fact that it wasn't funded by a small number of individuals helps keep the network distributed and healthy.

Without preorders... How do you propose they pay for NRE and all the other associated costs?

In a peachfuzz and rainbow world, yes, pre-orders would not exist. But we are in this world.

Pre-orders are not crowdfunding - you are totally wrong.

Without preorders... They should not even fucking start if their capital was enough for just renting domain, creating website and making few phone calls to India.
 
So in this world every Mohammad can wake up in the morning and say what the heck lets make scrypt asic. Set some website, mention few magic words on some forums and woohoo money are rolling in.
I am all in for supporting startup companies with new ideas. I just dont like them taking piss out of me. The thing which matter most is that from start they claimed to be UK company and maintained this until few days ago. It is a big difference if somebody ship several thousand $ worth merchandise from UK or India. Nothing racist here, just obvious facts which I do not need to mention.
They should state this fact from day one they started to accept payments not few days after that. This is unacceptable.

[CumpsD]

They should state this fact from day one they started to accept payments not few days after that. This is unacceptable.

Payments are not beeing accepted yet, no?

[jdh015232]

please please waste all your money people seriously? why do you think scrypt coins were made...to avoid what happened to bitcoin. with cex.io now..developers are thinking of changing the equation for mining to make asics obsolete...please spend all this time and money on something that your never going to see a roi, by the time you get a product, if you ever do, they will just change the equation again...these kinds of networks are not meant to be controlled by a few people...specialised hardware will keep getting shunned on in the future of these payment networks
but hey, go ahead and flip that coin!
if i was you id spend that money on ebay buying gpus NOW because theirs a ton of money to be made gpu mining still