1GH/s, 20w, $700 (was $500) — Butterflylabs, is it for real? (Part 2)

[rph]

you mean 1.5MH/$? yeah, it's extremely possible in the next 6-8week.  

Meaning $120 for a fully assembled/tested ~180MH/s 6s150 FPGA miner?  



-rph

[defxor]

I'm tired of trying to cater to the nutbag leanings that have absolutely no basis in reality in terms of time frames, business practices, or technical development.

The "Ignore user" feature is the best thing added to this forum in a long time. It makes even threads like these worth reading, since many - many - posts filled with complete drivel are silenced.

[siggy]

Off of the "is it a scam" topic...

I was looking around the website and the Drivers page appears to point all links back to itself.  Would it be possible to post some screenshots of the software so we can know/make suggestions on what features are supported?

I.e. ..

Does the front end software support fail-over pools?
What OS's are supported? just Windows 7?  what about XP?
Is there a realtime Mh/s readout?

I think the hardware requirements were already addressed as "if it can run a browser, thats good enough"

thanks,
Sigg

[rjk]

Off of the "is it a scam" topic...

I was looking around the website and the Drivers page appears to point all links back to itself.  Would it be possible to post some screenshots of the software so we can know/make suggestions on what features are supported?

I.e. ..

Does the front end software support fail-over pools?
What OS's are supported? just Windows 7?  what about XP?
Is there a realtime Mh/s readout?

I think the hardware requirements were already addressed as "if it can run a browser, thats good enough"

thanks,
Sigg

My understanding is that it is based on a modified Ufasoft core.

[makomk]

I made no such conclusion.  I said the hardware does what it's designed to do - namely process SHA 256 hashes.

My entire point is that the test doesn't actually prove that, you were aware of the reason why it doesn't prove that and published a test plan with precautions designed to prevent that specific method of cheating, and you came to the conclusion that it did anyway. That's kind of unfortunate. It wouldn't matter if you'd given people enough details to draw their own conclusionsin the first place - after all, it was just a preliminary test - but the information just wasn't available to us.

1) Setup a connection to process the data
2) Remote system process the data
3) Return / receive the processed nonces

All in the roughly exact same amount of time as it would take a box hashing 4.2 billion nones should take at a given hashrate.  I suppose they could have a giant GPU farm somewhere (Say a 4 GH/s farm as a conservative estimate) that is custom programmed to break up a single data block into multiple work units and farm all of those out to the multiple GPUs to hash, aggregate that data back (from a minimum of 5 separate GPUs) and return the results... but could they do it in under 6 seconds (and in some cases 4 seconds) over a wireless or cellular link?

You can get down to a few hundred milliseconds round-trip time over 3G with a fair wind and a bit of luck, or tens of milliseconds over wireless. Depends partly on how much BFL controlled the environment that the tests were carried out in. I don't even bother polling my toy mining FPGA for results more than a few times a second; doesn't really matter that much. (Also, it's convenient in an FPGA design to keep the nonce counter rolling continuously and not bother to reset it for new work units, so any delay is likely to be lost in the noise across two trials.)

But for my money, I'm going to say it would have been far harder and far more costly to FAKE the results than it would have been to actually bring a piece of hardware that does what it's designed to do.  Not to mention, after sinking all that time and money into faking it, they are still going to have to hand over a unit to me for isolated testing at some point.

In a way that's quite odd - even though it's entirely possible to build hardware that does what they claim, they've been putting off the isolated testing time and time again and we still haven't seen evidence that it can mine at all. Admittedly it'd be rather expensive to build the hardware and require unusual technical knowledge, and scammers have been known to cut corners before, but still.

[plastic.elastic]

There we go, I bolded the relevant part of the quote you just quoted.  Some people are never happy.

Personally I tend to think that the part just after that which you didn't bother to quote is kind of relevant too:

But in either case, I feel that the test we conducted showed a POC that adequately demonstrates that at least the hardware does what it's designed to do, if not at the speeds or power consumption stated at the moment.

Because it doesn't adequately demonstrate that after all - it doesn't even prove that the BitForce boards can calculate a single hash - and the only way we found out about this huge and unexpected flaw in the only third-party test so far was by accident. Bear in mind that for every day that passes more pre-order customers hit the 45 day limit after which Paypal won't give refunds if BFL don't deliver.

The hostility is unnecessary.  If you have a purchase and are uncomfortable, simply ask for a refund.  If you don't and you're just a third party jerk, then with all due respect, mind your own business.  The heated passion is juvenile and irresponsible.  Get a grip.

Regards,
BFL

Can someone explain WTF does this mean?

BFL, guess what honey?..... this isnt your private forum.

[xzion]

The hostility is unnecessary.  If you have a purchase and are uncomfortable, simply ask for a refund.  If you don't [have a purchase and are uncomfortable] and you're just a third party jerk, then with all due respect, mind your own business.  The heated passion is juvenile and irresponsible.  Get a grip.

Regards,
BFL

Can someone explain WTF does this mean?

BFL, guess what honey?..... this isnt your private forum.

thought it was implied.
Third party: a person or entity who is not involved in an interaction or relationship [of buying/selling BFL products].

[Inaba]

You can get down to a few hundred milliseconds round-trip time over 3G with a fair wind and a bit of luck, or tens of milliseconds over wireless. Depends partly on how much BFL controlled the environment that the tests were carried out in. I don't even bother polling my toy mining FPGA for results more than a few times a second; doesn't really matter that much. (Also, it's convenient in an FPGA design to keep the nonce counter rolling continuously and not bother to reset it for new work units, so any delay is likely to be lost in the noise across two trials.)

I know what wireless is available in the building we were in and I know the response times on those routers - they are way too congested to be of any value for that sort of thing.  For 3G, I agree, a few hundred ms, so you're looking at .5 seconds on a good day, probably longer on a bad one, so lets go with .5 round trip.  That leaves 3.5 seconds to hash ~4.2 billion nonces, which is (off the top of my head) about 1.3 (?) GH/s?  That means either a custom build FPGA rig hidden somewhere (expensive) or a multi GPU rig hidden somewhere with custom mining software able to split the data into partitioned nonce ranges (less expensive, more complex) - and all this would have to be done in LESS than 3.5 seconds, meaning they'd need I'd say at least double the hashrate to overcome the latency issues, so 2.6 GH/s.

Now, all that said, please tell me how likely it is that they have a big, complicated back end with custom backend code and custom front end clients to fool people into believing that the preliminary test of a product at least was able to conduct SHA256 hashes... or... wait for it ... they had a device capable of producing SHA256 hashes at the hashrates observed?  Mind you, they do not have this complicated back end to get people to believe in a product they are selling... only to fool people into believing there might be a product in the future.  And prior to people believing in this product they will have to produce a real product that does what it claims and let it "into the wild" to be raped and pillaged by yours truly to prove that it does what they say it does?

Now keep in mind that 3.5 seconds is under ideal conditions and where we were is decidedly not ideal conditions.  Additionally they were ready and willing to go to the datacenter which is essentially one giant faraday cage and would have prevented any sort of reliable (if any) data connection over wireless (either Wifi or 3G).

[Turbor]

Keep up your work with BFL ! I hope that you can come up with enough proof to silence some people here.

[BFL]

Keep up your work with BFL ! I hope that you can come up with enough proof to silence some people here.

Yes, that is the only way to do it. BFL playing more games or telling us to shut up is not going to be effective. Some of us where here 2-3 months ago before BFL "learned about bitcoin" saying this was BS. Your only semi-hard number now is your power usage, and that was 200% off of what you claimed. We will not shut up just cuz you demand it. BFL what a joke you are even if you can get half a product out there.... Grow the fuck up.

Goat...

Among other qualities, you are at least entertaining.  I'll give you that.

Regards,
BFL

[plastic.elastic]

The hostility is unnecessary.  If you have a purchase and are uncomfortable, simply ask for a refund.  If you don't [have a purchase and are uncomfortable] and you're just a third party jerk, then with all due respect, mind your own business.  The heated passion is juvenile and irresponsible.  Get a grip.

Regards,
BFL

Can someone explain WTF does this mean?

BFL, guess what honey?..... this isnt your private forum.

thought it was implied.
Third party: a person or entity who is not involved in an interaction or relationship [of buying/selling BFL products].

I love sheep like you. I can treat you like crap (hey if you're not buying gtfo) and you will still come back to my business.

BFL, i cant imagine how your after sale service is like... oh wait you dont give a rat because this is a con.
Btw, is that you Ninja Queen been posting all a long?

[plastic.elastic]

You can get down to a few hundred milliseconds round-trip time over 3G with a fair wind and a bit of luck, or tens of milliseconds over wireless. Depends partly on how much BFL controlled the environment that the tests were carried out in. I don't even bother polling my toy mining FPGA for results more than a few times a second; doesn't really matter that much. (Also, it's convenient in an FPGA design to keep the nonce counter rolling continuously and not bother to reset it for new work units, so any delay is likely to be lost in the noise across two trials.)

I know what wireless is available in the building we were in and I know the response times on those routers - they are way too congested to be of any value for that sort of thing.  For 3G, I agree, a few hundred ms, so you're looking at .5 seconds on a good day, probably longer on a bad one, so lets go with .5 round trip.  That leaves 3.5 seconds to hash ~4.2 billion nonces, which is (off the top of my head) about 1.3 (?) GH/s?  That means either a custom build FPGA rig hidden somewhere (expensive) or a multi GPU rig hidden somewhere with custom mining software able to split the data into partitioned nonce ranges (less expensive, more complex) - and all this would have to be done in LESS than 3.5 seconds, meaning they'd need I'd say at least double the hashrate to overcome the latency issues, so 2.6 GH/s.

Now, all that said, please tell me how likely it is that they have a big, complicated back end with custom backend code and custom front end clients to fool people into believing that the preliminary test of a product at least was able to conduct SHA256 hashes... or... wait for it ... they had a device capable of producing SHA256 hashes at the hashrates observed?  Mind you, they do not have this complicated back end to get people to believe in a product they are selling... only to fool people into believing there might be a product in the future.  And prior to people believing in this product they will have to produce a real product that does what it claims and let it "into the wild" to be raped and pillaged by yours truly to prove that it does what they say it does?

Now keep in mind that 3.5 seconds is under ideal conditions and where we were is decidedly not ideal conditions.  Additionally they were ready and willing to go to the datacenter which is essentially one giant faraday cage and would have prevented any sort of reliable (if any) data connection over wireless (either Wifi or 3G).

I know you've said you dont receive any discount  from them but seriously?

You dont have to defend their position. If you're truly as neutral as you said, you would just leave BFL to clarify all the craps about them. Its not your job. So far you havent gotten a test you promised earlier. DOES NOT matter what the reason is (you even defended their technical issue? ), you should just wait until the test and final report. So no you're not neutral here, what you believe is not what we ask/care.

Its their (BFL) own benefits to have you to test their product, not the other way around.

Suddenly this thread is full of your post explaining why you believe this is not a scam, or the product is real and production is under way.

So i'm asking again, what is your deal with them?

[CubedRoot]

Holy Hell these forums are the most cynical I have ever read.. 

BFL has said that his product was discovered before they were truly ready to announce it.  I take that as they were gearing up the marketing ready for their "go-live" just as soon as they had the hardware running like they wanted.  This is normal business practice, so there is no lag between the hardware readniess to ship and the marketing team promoting (the website in this case).
It appears some of us (like Chugalug, a Linux Users group in Chattanooga that I am part of) heard about it early and started the discussions with good intentions.   

I do think BFL has a product, and that it might meet expectations.  I have not pre-ordered any, simply for the fact of being short on cash (tuition due next week).  Theres no reason to bash Inaba since he has volunteered his time to test this thing out, and post reviews. You as a consumer vote on BFL's success with your dollar votes.  I can't wait to see what they come up with, and I am excited to see (hopefully) a new era in mining.

[nmat]

...

Could you please stop posting? I would like to read posts with concrete data and not posts saying that there isn't concrete data. We already have dozens of pages and one locked thread with that.

[ngzhang]

you mean 1.5MH/$? yeah, it's extremely possible in the next 6-8week.  

Meaning $120 for a fully assembled/tested ~180MH/s 6s150 FPGA miner?  



-rph

or a $1200 for a 1.8Gh/s miner 

[worldinacoin]

...

Could you please stop posting? I would like to read posts with concrete data and not posts saying that there isn't concrete data. We already have dozens of pages and one locked thread with that.

Exactly!  There are far more talks than actions.  Am getting bored reading the thread.

[freequant]

I noticed that many people here are totally lost about what has be told and done, told but not done, done but not told and neither told nor done regarding the third party testing of ButterflyLab BitForce Single product.
With all the stuff scattered over two lengthy threads and weeks of endless debate, it is geting so confusing that even Inaba seems to be lost about what he has said and done.

This is why I have written for you the little pocket guide of "ButterflyLabs 3rd party testing for Dummies".
Thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54169.0
All the quotations are taken from the "is it a scam" and "is it for real" threads (courtesy of BFL and Inaba).
The emphasis in bold and comments are from me.

I have tried to remain objective, but I am of course totally biaised , so do not base your opinion solely on my comments.
Please base your opinion on the facts, quotations, and linked messages.

This is a recommanded reading for :
- People waiting for their pre-order to be delivered
- Inaba, to help him sort out what he has said already
- Everyone else who wonders what the heck is going on with that ButterflyLabs testing nonsense.

[bulanula]

I noticed that many people here are totally lost about what has be told and done, told but not done, done but not told and neither told nor done regarding the third party testing of ButterflyLab BitForce Single product.
With all the stuff scattered over two lengthy threads and weeks of endless debate, it is geting so confusing that even Inaba seems to be lost about what he has said and done.

This is why I have written for you the little pocket guide of "ButterflyLabs 3rd party testing for Dummies".
Thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54169.0
All the quotations are taken from the "is it a scam" and "is it for real" threads (courtesy of BFL and Inaba).
The emphasis in bold and comments are from me.

I have tried to remain objective, but I am of course totally biaised , so do not base your opinion solely on my comments.
Please base your opinion on the facts, quotations, and linked messages.

This is a recommanded reading for :
- People waiting for their pre-order to be delivered
- Inaba, to help him sort out what he has said already
- Everyone else who wonders what the heck is going on with that ButterflyLabs testing nonsense.

Thank you ! Very useful resource for people. Is that demo going to come this weekend or not ( yet again ) ?

I think we should keep the off topic to a minimum on this thread and concentrate on the hard facts. Let's keep the "Inaba = BFL" conspiracy in another thread if we can.

[O_Shovah]

I noticed that many people here are totally lost about what has be told and done, told but not done, done but not told and neither told nor done regarding the third party testing of ButterflyLab BitForce Single product.
With all the stuff scattered over two lengthy threads and weeks of endless debate, it is geting so confusing that even Inaba seems to be lost about what he has said and done.

This is why I have written for you the little pocket guide of "ButterflyLabs 3rd party testing for Dummies".
Thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54169.0
All the quotations are taken from the "is it a scam" and "is it for real" threads (courtesy of BFL and Inaba).
The emphasis in bold and comments are from me.

I have tried to remain objective, but I am of course totally biaised , so do not base your opinion solely on my comments.
Please base your opinion on the facts, quotations, and linked messages.

This is a recommanded reading for :
- People waiting for their pre-order to be delivered
- Inaba, to help him sort out what he has said already
- Everyone else who wonders what the heck is going on with that ButterflyLabs testing nonsense.

Thank you ! Very useful resource for people. Is that demo going to come this weekend or not ( yet again ) ?

I think we should keep the off topic to a minimum on this thread and concentrate on the hard facts. Let's keep the "Inaba = BFL" conspiracy in another thread if we can.

Agreed.

I would prefere to let BFL do their job. They will present their product and specifications when it is ready for release.
Speculation about what might be or making them hurry won't improve neither the result, nor speed up the development.

Even if it would not meet the initial specs by a considerable margin it will be superior to most current alternative or at least competetive.

I also understand the current situation as they are tuning on an optimised release solution and will present it to us as soon as it is reasonable.

So maybe lets stay put for the moment and wait for some hard facts

[punningclan]

For the record, I believe that neither DeepBit nor Inaba are shills for BFL

And I can't imagine what deluded frame of mind is causing other people to think otherwise. It's insane.

I am waiting the see the next conspiracy theory..get your tin foil caps ready!

Interesting.
That's exactly the kind of things that everybody said when people started to question Bruce Wagner's relationship with MyBitcoin.

  No one in their right mind said that about BW. I saw some feeling bad for him, etc, as I did but that was about the extent of it...

LOL. I didn't witness xyz, so xyz didn't happen. Nice logical fallacy!
To hold a claim of the form "no one said xyz", you would need to have read thoroughly all the threads of bitcointalk and SA which you obviously didn't do otherwise you would know that when a few people started to whistle the blow about Bruce Wagner, the initial reaction from the community was that of amused denial.

You know how temptating it is for your average Joe to give in to a little "let's put our tin foil caps" sarcasm. People love that. They think that makes them look smart.

It depends on whether you wear a matching tie or not.