FPGA Miner Design for Sale to Someone willing to Market It

[deslok]

and how much would those cost exactly?

[1714060004]

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[deslok]

That sounds right on the edge of being pratical in place of say a 5870 or 6990 depending on the cost of such a pcb but no way i can see that getting cut down to less than 400 dollars

[ElectricMucus]

afik this has todo with the much more useful dsp slices and the more efficient far routing (more so)  in the virtexes.

I seriously doubt the prices as well. On mouser they even offer them in large numbers with an insignificant discount.

high troll factor ITT.

[TeraMiner]

I am glad to see such enthusiasm for our price per performance. However, keep in mind that these are costs to manufacture. The selling price will certainly be higher, depending on the business model that we take. Please stop asking to buy one (or many!) as we only have a proof-of-concept, not an actual product for sale. I would also like to point out that you guys are WAY off on FPGA pricing. I have several direct quotes from FPGA vendors over the years that are far superior to your assumptions. You guys must be looking at pricing from distributors. You have to go direct to get good pricing. Anyway, the point of this post was to look for interested business partners who are willing to work with us to take it to market.

Just a little bit of background on us. We are seasoned designers with long job histories with companies like IBM, Altera and others. It is certainly healthy to doubt technologies that seem a bit beyond the curve of today's solutions. But sometimes the right details line up at the right time. As people contact us for more information, they will get to know who we are and see that we are completely up front. We'll start with a demonstration of the design on the development kit, review the code and resulting FPGA tool output for the target device. We'll share documentation, schedules and actual quotes for component pricing.

You could imagine some interesting go-to-market strategies like self-mining until the difficulty gets too high, then offering the board for sale, etc. We just need someone with the right background and amount of time to take this to market. We're good engineers but we're not ready to take on the full challenges of a new business at this time. I'm sure you can understand that.

[ElectricMucus]

Just a little bit of background on us. We are seasoned designers with long job histories with companies like IBM, Altera and others. It is certainly healthy to doubt technologies that seem a bit beyond the curve of today's solutions. But sometimes the right details line up at the right time. As people contact us for more information, they will get to know who we are and see that we are completely up front. We'll start with a demonstration of the design on the development kit, review the code and resulting FPGA tool output for the target device. We'll share documentation, schedules and actual quotes for component pricing.

Laughable.

Such people would just launch a site and mailing list, provide detailed information on a finished product instead of creating a thread in this forum and bragging about made up prices.

[TeraMiner]

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. We have a very promising proof-of-concept, not an actual product to sell. We're looking for a business partner who appreciates the potential the BitCoin market and will help us make a run at this. Do you think there is a better place to look for such a partner than the BitCoin forums? If so, please let me know and I'll check it out. Based on everyone's reaction, it looks like this would sell itself. Maybe we don't need to think so much about how to make a business out if and just go ahead and build it ourselves.

[ElectricMucus]

Based on everyone's reaction, it looks like this would sell itself.

No that means you need to troll harder.


Maybe ask these guys: http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/ 

[nmat]

People at LargeCoin might be interested.

[TeraMiner]

Yes, we've seen LargeCoin and they are one of the reasons why we have hesitated. That and the thought that the BitCoin market may dry up has us wondering if we should continue. Since we've already established that many people doubt the characteristics of our target product, let's change the discussion to one of business prospects.

Let's assume that we "magically" build a product as described in the first post and offer it for sale at a price that was maybe 2x the cost to build. What kind of market do you think there would be for such a product? Are we talking the sale of 10's, 100's or 1000's or boards?  Does anyone have an opinion on that? Please include some of your reasonings, too.

Thanks in advance.

[ElectricMucus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik

[Bossland]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik

comes near that target


I sent you a mail introducing myself. However its now sleep time.

[nmat]

Let's assume that we "magically" build a product as described in the first post and offer it for sale at a price that was maybe 2x the cost to build. What kind of market do you think there would be for such a product? Are we talking the sale of 10's, 100's or 1000's or boards?  Does anyone have an opinion on that? Please include some of your reasonings, too.

Thanks in advance.

All the "serious miners" would get a few of those. I can't tell you any exact numbers, but since the current hash rate is 12.25THash I would say that we are talking of a few 100's, at the very least.

But there is another problem: prices have been dropping for 3 months. It went from $20 to $4. We really need new investors in the market to keep the price from falling. If the price doesn't rise, people will not make hardware investments in mining because it won't be profitable.
On the other hand, if Bitcoin survives another year, the production will be halved to 25 BTC per block. Theoretically, that would a remove a huge selling force from the market.

Long term investments with Bitcoin are tricky. If you are considering putting effort and time into making this, you must understand that you are risking a lot. There are no guarantees of what will happen a year from now.


PS: Take this guy for example. That investment was what? $50000? He alone would get 25 high end boards if you were selling them in June.

[Syke]

Just a little bit of background on us. We are seasoned designers with long job histories with companies like IBM, Altera and others.

No, you're some anonymous person posting on an Internet forum. You have zero credibility.

[indio007]

THIS ^^^^

Atleast until this alleged history is demonstrated conclusively.

[defxor]

Let's assume that we "magically" build a product as described in the first post and offer it for sale at a price that was maybe 2x the cost to build. What kind of market do you think there would be for such a product? Are we talking the sale of 10's, 100's or 1000's or boards?  Does anyone have an opinion on that? Please include some of your reasonings, too.

I'd suggest contacting ztex who's already making and reselling a similar product:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40047.0

[markm]

Based on everyone's reaction, it looks like this would sell itself.

No that means you need to troll harder.


Maybe ask these guys: http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/ 

That so called unlimited detail sounds like fractal compression. I would've thought though if the fractal approach was going that well we'd hear about it from other sources too though.

-MarkM-

[P4man]

TeraMiner, why dont you just post a video of the board in action?
Sure you could fake the output, but an ordinary troll wouldnt bother.

As for how many youd sell; God knows. I dont think it would replace GPU mining overnight, GPU's are common as they serve other purposes, it that sense its also less risky as an investment.  You can buy and if needed, sell AMD gpu's with minimal loss of investement, Im not sure how much a market there is for second hand FPGA's if bitcoin comes crashing down.

Still, currenty the bitcoin network provides almost 15,000 GH/s. If youd manage to capture just 1% of that, you are looking at 100s of boards.

[Cluster2k]

Cost price: "High-End board achieves 3,000 MH/s @ 60W for $1,050"

That's about 1.5 bitcoins per day, or $7.20 minus the cost of electricity.  How much could such a board be sold for while ensuring a decent return for investors?  Maybe $2000.  That requires 9 months of hashing to pay back the purchase price, not including power and the PC the board would be connected to.  9 months before a single cent of profit is made.  Not too bad, but I can see why investors may be reluctant to put serious money into the project even if they believe the optimistic numbers.

The calculation of course is only based on current prices.  Some might say mine today and sell for a lot more than $4.80/btc next month or next year, but really no one knows how much a BTC may be worth.

[bulanula]

I call BS on these figures. If it looks too good to be true then it probably is 

[bcforum]

I did manage to get "large company" pricing on these parts because I do so much business with Xilinx.

And here's the problem. If you sell the design to someone else, they aren't going to get favorable pricing from Xilinx. Also, it is doubtful YOU can get favorable pricing from Xilinx as Teraminer, LLC.

Also, it sounds like you developed your product using resources from your primary employer.