ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[DiabloD3]

They are at the stage of wafer-process, which is the last one before slicing and packaging, and is the most time-consuming. They have finished 13 layers out of the total 29, and there are 16 layers to go. The speed was originally very low (1-2 layers a week), and had become quicker in recent weeks.

Friedcat, any updates? What does "had become quicker" mean? I know, you can also just rely on info provided by the foundry, but is "had become quicker" really it?? Seems similar to Nefario's schedule of providing share holder lists

Anyway, so how I see it we have this very unpredictable foundry process which will hopefully be finalized in december. What happens after that? Can you give us an estimate of how long it will take after the foundry till you can start mining?

Typically at a fab you have multiple customers having their orders processed simultaneously. Some stages of the process do not require immediate processing after the previous stage, some stages can be processed in parallel.

Also, some customers pay for faster service and cut ahead of you in line.

As far as I can tell, Friedcat is basically saying his order is getting more processing time than it was previously because its nearing completion and there are no high priority jobs ahead of him.

[1715028246]

1715028246

[1715028246]

1715028246

[1715028246]

1715028246

[1715028246]

1715028246

[1715028246]

1715028246

[1715028246]

1715028246

[Mausini]

They are at the stage of wafer-process, which is the last one before slicing and packaging, and is the most time-consuming. They have finished 13 layers out of the total 29, and there are 16 layers to go. The speed was originally very low (1-2 layers a week), and had become quicker in recent weeks.

Friedcat, any updates? What does "had become quicker" mean? I know, you can also just rely on info provided by the foundry, but is "had become quicker" really it?? Seems similar to Nefario's schedule of providing share holder lists

Anyway, so how I see it we have this very unpredictable foundry process which will hopefully be finalized in december. What happens after that? Can you give us an estimate of how long it will take after the foundry till you can start mining?

Typically at a fab you have multiple customers having their orders processed simultaneously. Some stages of the process do not require immediate processing after the previous stage, some stages can be processed in parallel.

Also, some customers pay for faster service and cut ahead of you in line.

As far as I can tell, Friedcat is basically saying his order is getting more processing time than it was previously because its nearing completion and there are no high priority jobs ahead of him.

Thanks for your reply, but that's all speculation. Hard facts would help all of us to recover some confidence in this project. And btw friedcat said it's not even half completed (13 layers out of the total 29). Let's not even euphemize the litte solid info we have.

[DutchBrat]

They are at the stage of wafer-process, which is the last one before slicing and packaging, and is the most time-consuming. They have finished 13 layers out of the total 29, and there are 16 layers to go. The speed was originally very low (1-2 layers a week), and had become quicker in recent weeks.

Friedcat, any updates? What does "had become quicker" mean? I know, you can also just rely on info provided by the foundry, but is "had become quicker" really it?? Seems similar to Nefario's schedule of providing share holder lists

Anyway, so how I see it we have this very unpredictable foundry process which will hopefully be finalized in december. What happens after that? Can you give us an estimate of how long it will take after the foundry till you can start mining?

Typically at a fab you have multiple customers having their orders processed simultaneously. Some stages of the process do not require immediate processing after the previous stage, some stages can be processed in parallel.

Also, some customers pay for faster service and cut ahead of you in line.

As far as I can tell, Friedcat is basically saying his order is getting more processing time than it was previously because its nearing completion and there are no high priority jobs ahead of him.

Thanks for your reply, but that's all speculation. Hard facts would help all of us to recover some confidence in this project. And btw friedcat said it's not even half completed (13 layers out of the total 29). Let's not even euphemize the litte solid info we have.

What do you mean recover some confidence? The chips are at the foundry.... how fast or slow they are being produced says nothing about the confidence in the project....

[Mausini]

They are at the stage of wafer-process, which is the last one before slicing and packaging, and is the most time-consuming. They have finished 13 layers out of the total 29, and there are 16 layers to go. The speed was originally very low (1-2 layers a week), and had become quicker in recent weeks.

Friedcat, any updates? What does "had become quicker" mean? I know, you can also just rely on info provided by the foundry, but is "had become quicker" really it?? Seems similar to Nefario's schedule of providing share holder lists

Anyway, so how I see it we have this very unpredictable foundry process which will hopefully be finalized in december. What happens after that? Can you give us an estimate of how long it will take after the foundry till you can start mining?

Typically at a fab you have multiple customers having their orders processed simultaneously. Some stages of the process do not require immediate processing after the previous stage, some stages can be processed in parallel.

Also, some customers pay for faster service and cut ahead of you in line.

As far as I can tell, Friedcat is basically saying his order is getting more processing time than it was previously because its nearing completion and there are no high priority jobs ahead of him.

Thanks for your reply, but that's all speculation. Hard facts would help all of us to recover some confidence in this project. And btw friedcat said it's not even half completed (13 layers out of the total 29). Let's not even euphemize the litte solid info we have.

What do you mean recover some confidence? The chips are at the foundry.... how fast or slow they are being produced says nothing about the confidence in the project....

Ohhh yes, it does. At least my confidence in the project strongly depends on the expected return on investment. The longer it takes to produce the ASICs, the lower the ROI and hence my confidence. Everyone knows, earlier "non-optimistic" estimations have not been met. Sorry, if I offended you, but as shares cannot be traded anyway at the moment, I believe its ok to give my honest opinion here without stepping on anyones feet. And please dont get me wrong. I still think this is a great project and people are doing a great job.

[Gabit]

Ohhh yes, it does. At least my confidence in the project strongly depends on the expected return on investment. The longer it takes to produce the ASICs, the lower the ROI and hence my confidence. Everyone knows, earlier "non-optimistic" estimations have not been met. Sorry, if I offended you, but as shares cannot be traded anyway at the moment, I believe its ok to give my honest opinion here without stepping on anyones feet. And please dont get me wrong. I still think this is a great project and people are doing a great job.

You are too short sighted and impatient. The importance of losing this first and most profitable window of opportunity is insignificant to the long term ROI. If you are on this only for short term profit, I'm sure someone here will buy you out.

[friedcat]

Update

By the way... when asicminer has ordered 29 layers, that means 29 asics at the end right? So you run 29 asics shortly after you received it. But how many asics does bfl get with their first batch?

We will run about 6TH/s after we received them, and another 6TH/s about 2-4 weeks later. The accurate hashrate depends on the yield rate and how well we push our chips to their limits.

And is another batch already ordered at the foundry or do you wait until you tested the previous? I only mean when it takes months for one order to fulfill it would mean a long waiting time until more asics will come.

We would wait the testing of the previous batch to order the second. The second batch would be 50TH/s or more, depending on the status of their production line in the first season of 2013.

I wonder... with over thousand shares... can one become a member in the board? The next assetlists are overdue so it shouldnt take long until my claims are proven.

As decided at the IPO time, one 5,000 shares to be a board member.

I apologize if this has been answered; what steps will be taking place in China, and what will be done elsewhere after shipping and customs clearance? Specifically, I would like to know about packaging, assembly, and self-mining.

For the first generation of products, all steps have been taking place and will happen in China. This including chips production, PCB production, slicing & packaging, assembly, and deploying, in different places though. For example, while the production is in where the foundries are, we have more freedom to choose a place with very inexpensive power source to do self-mining.

Friedcat, any updates? What does "had become quicker" mean? I know, you can also just rely on info provided by the foundry, but is "had become quicker" really it?? Seems similar to Nefario's schedule of providing share holder lists

There are 12 layers left, which means that the last financial week we progressed for 4 layers.

[punin]

I assume this second batch of 50TH/s be distributed amongst the shareholders? What is the status with Nefario?

[DutchBrat]

I assume this second batch of 50TH/s be distributed amongst the shareholders? What is the status with Nefario?

According to the current business plan the 50 TH will be sold to customers

[lame.duck]

To me this asic foundry sounds very strange place. If I would have had to guess I would presume you are using some ASIC technology where you don't touch the silicon layers but just the metal layers which there usually is some number just below 10 of them. The number of typical silicon layers is also a little bit less than 10, but I would guess you are not customizing them? So I have hard time understanding why the total number of layers is more than 9.

You were right if the chip would be an GATE-Array which uses prefabricated transistors or even  gates, but since ASICMINER is a ful custom ASIC the transistors have  processed as well. Regarding the number of layers you are missing the point, there are not only metal layers but also  some insulating layers between them, and maybe even the etching masks count as layers (i am not sure about  it) or temporary masks to protect some lower structures.

[Mausini]

Ohhh yes, it does. At least my confidence in the project strongly depends on the expected return on investment. The longer it takes to produce the ASICs, the lower the ROI and hence my confidence. Everyone knows, earlier "non-optimistic" estimations have not been met. Sorry, if I offended you, but as shares cannot be traded anyway at the moment, I believe its ok to give my honest opinion here without stepping on anyones feet. And please dont get me wrong. I still think this is a great project and people are doing a great job.

You are too short sighted and impatient. The importance of losing this first and most profitable window of opportunity is insignificant to the long term ROI. If you are on this only for short term profit, I'm sure someone here will buy you out.

"You are too short sighted and impatient." How do you know?
"The importance of losing this first and most profitable window of opportunity is insignificant to the long term ROI" Thats a pretty bold, unsubstantiated statement. How do you know?

[VeeMiner]

I assume this second batch of 50TH/s be distributed amongst the shareholders? What is the status with Nefario?

I wonder this also

[DutchBrat]

Gigavps received an updated list and Nastmining received the 1st version of its list with 98.15% of the shares accounted for

So it seems Nefario has been busy today 

[hardcore-fs]

Gigavps received an updated list and Nastmining received the 1st version of its list with 98.15% of the shares accounted for

So it seems Nefario has been busy today 

LOL,
So funny to read this nonsense about "shares"... read up on China Law guys.

[Jutarul]

LOL,
So funny to read this nonsense about "shares"... read up on China Law guys.

Care to elaborate?

[HorseRider]

Gigavps received an updated list and Nastmining received the 1st version of its list with 98.15% of the shares accounted for

So it seems Nefario has been busy today  

LOL,
So funny to read this nonsense about "shares"... read up on China Law guys.

Go away from this thread, 52 years old Hong Kong troller. I'm a private equity practitioner in China and a board member of ASICMINER, we have researched the law far more deeper than your "read-up-on" troll. The legalization is totally practicable and are in our plan.

P.S. You Hong Kong guys know nothing about the mainland now, and that's why nearly Hong Kong accent now are treated as a sign of loser in the Mainland investment industry. We just know that you Hong Kong guys don't know.

[DiabloD3]

Gigavps received an updated list and Nastmining received the 1st version of its list with 98.15% of the shares accounted for

So it seems Nefario has been busy today  

LOL,
So funny to read this nonsense about "shares"... read up on China Law guys.

Go away from this thread, 52 years old Hong Kong troller. I'm a private equity practitioner in China and a board member of ASICMINER, we have researched the law far more deeper than your "read-up-on" troll. The legalization is totally practicable and are in our plan.

P.S. You Hong Kong guys know nothing about the mainland now, and that's why nearly Hong Kong accent now are treated as a sign of loser in the Mainland investment industry. We just know that you Hong Kong guys don't know.

I know what I forgot to get at the store! More popcorn! Shit!

[HorseRider]

I know what I forgot to get at the store! More popcorn  Shit!

don't eat too much popcorn.

[DutchBrat]

An update from the Avalon team with some remarks how ASICs are actually produced by TSMC and the likes

They have not much good to say about bASIC and BFL

This update is mainly to address the uncertainty that have been surrounding the ASIC scene recently due to the lackluster performance by our competitors. We will be walking you through our process of getting the ASIC fabricated. Unlike our competitors we are a in-house team and everyone is always on the same page.

Another update will address the actual status of our chips as we have obtained word from TSMC whom will offer us weekly updates on their website. All in all, see our arguments below regarding our competitors and wait for weekly updates directly from TSMC.
Anyhow, any of our numbers, estimates, and shipping date have not changed, just in case somebody got the wrong idea about this update.

First things first. the following Gallery is our contract with TSMC with pricing and other sensitive information removed. http://imgur.com/a/DnUNm


Some background information on ASIC production process, before tape out, 3 day before uploading GDS, we fill out a MT form with TSMC detailing the ASIC specific information so they may understand what we are doing. The gallery is here http://imgur.com/a/YOLez


to put simply, to create the physical ASIC goes something like this.

sign contract -> submit GDS for review -> mask making -> wafer making -> ship to packaging company -> packaging -> shipping.
Only then can the chips be in your hands or placed on PCB for finalization.

This whole process will take 30-50 days depending on the processor node technology used, mainly due to the increasing in layer number as you go down in processor size. for example, we have 29 layers, and since TSMC is one of the big companies in fabrication, each layer take 1.2 ( normal lot ) day per layer. in addition, accordingly to friedcat, their fab is producing 4 layers every week [odd, but I guess it is possible if fab is small].

This also means while you wait for the wafer(chips) fabrication you can not do anything else, it is usually around this time you make sure you have everything else ready.

a few things to note is,

1. while this wafer making process is going, you can't cancel it, or make adjustments, and if you wish to change anything, you will have to re-run this whole work flow all over again ( the large amount of the NRE upwards of 6 digits in USD is paid when you make the MASK). so anytime, BFL mention they are waiting for chips to come e.g. next week, but if they are still making adjustments, then this is physically impossible. In addition, fabrication company don't do chip packaging, if they are expecting the chips to arrive next week that means the production is already finished and they are probably in the chip packaging company (it is usually this time you find out if your chips work or not. which can also take some time since you'll have to test each of the chips for defects.)

2. the whole chip fabrication is very mathematically predictable based on the number of layers your ASIC has and the speed which the fabrication company can produce a layer. There is no such thing as a fabrication company giving a "fuzzy" date when it comes to when the chips will come from the assembly line. The only number that can vary is the shipping time from the fabrication company to the packaging company, but even that is no more than a few days of difference, depending on the shipping method.

3.a if bASIC made an MPW to start (which is the correct way to save money, but not time). the cost to get large amount of chips during this time is astronomical, however the average size is about 50. It is unheard of for somebody to only produce 2 chips to built a prototype and now no longer have any chips left over to build another prototype.

3.b. Even after testing MWP and everything is fine, it'll take the same amount of time to produce a new MASK ( cost and everything ) then make wafers, which will take another 30 - 50 days, which I suppose is consistent with bASIC's new mid-Jan shipping date, ( but this is optimistic estimate, the regular workflow is about 2 month)

3.c. what we think that happened is bASIC has licensed a SHA256 core, the IP company has already produced demo ASICs that utilizes this core, and did some math on how many core you can placed in the chip to obtain the 14GH/s estimated hashrate, while regular SHA256 and Bitcoin's blockchain hashing algorithm is not very different but it is not something you can compare via simulation without making an actual chip, and if they made an actual chip, even if it doesn't perform up to specifications you can still demonstrate it and be world first.

the conclusion is as follows.

1. If BFL really have chips coming, then they are not making any so-to-speak "clock buffer adjustments", either that or they don't have any chips coming and have not tape-out at all, it is also entirely possible that they have not make the MASK yet either. I guess we will find out on the week of the 11th, in this month hopefully.

2. we believe bASIC has no prototype, or have any chips. Also we at Avalon have also explored the possibility of licensing an IP core, but after some in-house comparison, none of the core on the market is superior to our own, thus we eliminated that option.

Questions, Comments are welcome.

[HorseRider]

So why not we have the same level of transparency.

[DutchBrat]

So why not we have the same level of transparency.

I think Friedcat keeps us well informed.... Avalon is basically stating the same as Friedcat did.... 30-50 days... it seems TSMC is moving a lot quicker with 1.2 Layers a day, but still ASICMINER should be mining well before any Avalon has been sent out, because we had a head start with production.

If the foundry keeps up 4 layers a week from now on, it means ASICMINEr should receive the chips just before Christmas, so we could theoretically (hopefully) have something online before the end of the year....hashing the first ASIC mined block ever