ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[ffernandex]

G.ASICMINER
If nothing unexpected happens, Ukyo will provide a shareholder list to Friedcat on Dec 1, for direct shares.

Hey, does anyone know what does this mean?

[apollojmr]

Anyone wanna go back to 2 days ago and sell me their shares for .23?? I cleaned house! LOL Thanks for panicking once again!  BTC

[Aajo]

I'm so looking forward to 15 GH/s USB sticks!

[apollojmr]

G.ASICMINER
If nothing unexpected happens, Ukyo will provide a shareholder list to Friedcat on Dec 1, for direct shares.

Hey, does anyone know what does this mean?

It was a full share ran by bitfunder who is now out of business. The people that were left with those are now full share owners and FC will hold their shares.

[freedomno1]

Update

PR & Communications
We understand that transparency and communication to shareholders and the public needs improvement. We are in the process of identifying a dedicated employee for this. We will issue bi-weekly reports for shareholders and improve response time for questions.

Next Gen Chips
The projected time of taping out of Gen3 is January 20. Power consumption target estimation is <0.2W per G on low power mode and <0.2$ per G on wafer cost. Please notice that the timeline is of course subject to change/adjust, and the estimation on power and cost is also based on software tool/simulation results.

Current Hardware Sales
The number of cubes left for sale/deployment is 9000. About 1/3 are ordered already. All older devices (USBs/new blades) are sold out.

G.ASICMINER
If nothing unexpected happens, Ukyo will provide a shareholder list to Friedcat on Dec 1, for direct shares.

Thanks for the update, I hope you find a good dedicated employee to pursue this task.
Looking forward to the New Year then

[limbaugh]

Anyone wanna go back to 2 days ago and sell me their shares for .23?? I cleaned house! LOL Thanks for panicking once again!  BTC

Please spare us announcing your superior trading skills. You snagged 2 @ .23. Hardly the trade of the century. Grow up you arrogant prick.

[SebastianJu]

Update

PR & Communications
We understand that transparency and communication to shareholders and the public needs improvement. We are in the process of identifying a dedicated employee for this. We will issue bi-weekly reports for shareholders and improve response time for questions.

Next Gen Chips
The projected time of taping out of Gen3 is January 20. Power consumption target estimation is <0.2W per G on low power mode and <0.2$ per G on wafer cost. Please notice that the timeline is of course subject to change/adjust, and the estimation on power and cost is also based on software tool/simulation results.

Current Hardware Sales
The number of cubes left for sale/deployment is 9000. About 1/3 are ordered already. All older devices (USBs/new blades) are sold out.

G.ASICMINER
If nothing unexpected happens, Ukyo will provide a shareholder list to Friedcat on Dec 1, for direct shares.

So my emailalert for friedcat posts went on and really... an update... Thanks!

Though interpreting this... The cubes are nearly sold all... so the next divs might be a bit higher because of the sales income but then there is nothing moving until mid february? I mean january the 20th tapeout. Producing miners take probably 2 more weeks, probably 3. Then we are mid february. Sounds to me like no hope for the shareprice. It will go down and down the next months lower than ever.
Can someone tell me im wrong? I dont remember of any plans in between. And the old gen1 tech soon wont be competeable anymore to be able to sell it with profit. Theres a limit to this.
And the plans i heard spoke about gen2 chips which arent followed through anymore. So is there anything?

It was mentioned in the interview along with the fact that Friedcat plans to prepare for a network of up to 1000ph/s (currently only a few ph/s).

No, that was an initial mis-translation. The corrected translation said that he was about to have sold/deployed a total of 1000ph/s - he wasn't describing plans for the future.

1. 1000T would be released around Nov 7th. These chips may be sold or deployed, depending on the situation then.

2. 2nd Gen chips have already been developed long time ago. But they were delayed to deploy considering the unsatisfactory performance.

3. 3rd Gen chips were also under development during that period. It is already developed now but still under test. It is expected to become a mature product in Feb 2014, which means its key indicators would be much better than those of its competitors. It is estimated that the network hashing power would be 1000p then, while Friedcat would deliver several hundred of it.


Original translation does confuse solo mining with total sales but still doesn't change the fact that FC is preparing to compete in a 1000 ph network.

Were were 1000 PH mentioned? The only thing i remember from the interview was that friedcat will have 1000TH deployed on nove 7th. But that only meant that he had sold this amount of hashpower from the start of asicminer till then.

[romerun]

right, by nov 7th, the chinese interview implies AM had released 1PH (sold/self mine). At this point all we know is there are 2/3 of 500TH in form of cube left to be deployed.

[MrTeal]

Though interpreting this... The cubes are nearly sold all... so the next divs might be a bit higher because of the sales income but then there is nothing moving until mid february? I mean january the 20th tapeout. Producing miners take probably 2 more weeks, probably 3. Then we are mid february. Sounds to me like no hope for the shareprice. It will go down and down the next months lower than ever.

I think you're being a little aggressive if you think it will be 2-3 weeks from tape-out to working miners.

[User705]

Anyone wanna go back to 2 days ago and sell me their shares for .23?? I cleaned house! LOL Thanks for panicking once again!  BTC

Please spare us announcing your superior trading skills. You snagged 2 @ .23. Hardly the trade of the century. Grow up you arrogant prick.

Price is still low if you think that AM will get back a big share of both mining and hardware sales.

[velacreations]

Please spare us announcing your superior trading skills. You snagged 2 @ .23. Hardly the trade of the century. Grow up you arrogant prick.

butt-hurt cause you couldn't push the price down long enough to get cheap shares, huh?

[SebastianJu]

Though interpreting this... The cubes are nearly sold all... so the next divs might be a bit higher because of the sales income but then there is nothing moving until mid february? I mean january the 20th tapeout. Producing miners take probably 2 more weeks, probably 3. Then we are mid february. Sounds to me like no hope for the shareprice. It will go down and down the next months lower than ever.

I think you're being a little aggressive if you think it will be 2-3 weeks from tape-out to working miners.

I wanted to go higher first but then i thought that friedcat most probably will know when the chips will be ready from the foundry so that he can order the timeframe at the assembler beforehand. No waiting for the place in queue. Of course the development of the miner has to be done beforehand too.

Though i think about it... doesnt tapeout mean thats the first chip too? In that case the miner design has to be tested first because otherwise it would be a too high risk to produce the miners without doing that... which means it can easily take way longer then...

What do you guys think when the divs from the cubes will come in?

I wish friedcat would have said a word about the divs he keeps. Is he still keeping?

[hlynur]

Update

PR & Communications
We understand that transparency and communication to shareholders and the public needs improvement. We are in the process of identifying a dedicated employee for this. We will issue bi-weekly reports for shareholders and improve response time for questions.

Next Gen Chips
The projected time of taping out of Gen3 is January 20. Power consumption target estimation is <0.2W per G on low power mode and <0.2$ per G on wafer cost. Please notice that the timeline is of course subject to change/adjust, and the estimation on power and cost is also based on software tool/simulation results.

Current Hardware Sales
The number of cubes left for sale/deployment is 9000. About 1/3 are ordered already. All older devices (USBs/new blades) are sold out.

G.ASICMINER
If nothing unexpected happens, Ukyo will provide a shareholder list to Friedcat on Dec 1, for direct shares.

thanks for the update friedcat
specs of gen 3 sound really good  

[jimmothy]

Does anyone know the specs of gen1 chips vs gen3? What I want to know is what we can expect the solomining hashrate to be if every current gen chip was swapped with 28nm.

[MrTeal]

Though interpreting this... The cubes are nearly sold all... so the next divs might be a bit higher because of the sales income but then there is nothing moving until mid february? I mean january the 20th tapeout. Producing miners take probably 2 more weeks, probably 3. Then we are mid february. Sounds to me like no hope for the shareprice. It will go down and down the next months lower than ever.

I think you're being a little aggressive if you think it will be 2-3 weeks from tape-out to working miners.

I wanted to go higher first but then i thought that friedcat most probably will know when the chips will be ready from the foundry so that he can order the timeframe at the assembler beforehand. No waiting for the place in queue. Of course the development of the miner has to be done beforehand too.

Though i think about it... doesnt tapeout mean thats the first chip too? In that case the miner design has to be tested first because otherwise it would be a too high risk to produce the miners without doing that... which means it can easily take way longer then...

What do you guys think when the divs from the cubes will come in?

I wish friedcat would have said a word about the divs he keeps. Is he still keeping?

No, tape-out means that they send the design to the foundry, who then start the process of turning raw silicon wafers into ASICs. They won't even have the wafers finished 3 weeks after tape-out, let alone have miners built.

[stripykitteh]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out

Ready to burn chips.

No, that's not right. Tape-out only means the design is finished. The design is sent 'on tape' (now it would be emailed I guess) to the foundry to make the masks. I believe making masks takes several weeks, though someone with IC manufacturing experience (Vycid?) may correct me on this. Making the masks is a big ticket item; you have to book out the specialized photolithography equipment for weeks to have the mask built, one layer at a time.

So if AM hit their target on tape-out (January 20) they won't have masks until late February at the earliest. Sample chips early March, chips in volume late March at the earliest. Allowing for slippage here and there it's probably more realistic to say April for chips in volume.

It's good that friedcat gave us an update, but the news isn't that startling, in my opinion. In fact, I sold on the news.

[SebastianJu]

Though interpreting this... The cubes are nearly sold all... so the next divs might be a bit higher because of the sales income but then there is nothing moving until mid february? I mean january the 20th tapeout. Producing miners take probably 2 more weeks, probably 3. Then we are mid february. Sounds to me like no hope for the shareprice. It will go down and down the next months lower than ever.

I think you're being a little aggressive if you think it will be 2-3 weeks from tape-out to working miners.

I wanted to go higher first but then i thought that friedcat most probably will know when the chips will be ready from the foundry so that he can order the timeframe at the assembler beforehand. No waiting for the place in queue. Of course the development of the miner has to be done beforehand too.

Though i think about it... doesnt tapeout mean thats the first chip too? In that case the miner design has to be tested first because otherwise it would be a too high risk to produce the miners without doing that... which means it can easily take way longer then...

What do you guys think when the divs from the cubes will come in?

I wish friedcat would have said a word about the divs he keeps. Is he still keeping?

No, tape-out means that they send the design to the foundry, who then start the process of turning raw silicon wafers into ASICs. They won't even have the wafers finished 3 weeks after tape-out, let alone have miners built.

Hm... somehow i thought taping out means its done then... i really would like to hear what friedcat plans for the meantime... i mean he has a datacentre with immersion cooling for what?

photolithography

I believe at 28nm you cant use photolithography anymore. It should be e-beam lithography then.

[Vycid]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out

Ready to burn chips.

No, that's not right. Tape-out only means the design is finished. The design is sent 'on tape' (now it would be emailed I guess) to the foundry to make the masks. I believe making masks takes several weeks, though someone with IC manufacturing experience (Vycid?) may correct me on this. Making the masks is a big ticket item; you have to book out the specialized photolithography equipment for weeks to have the mask built, one layer at a time.

So if AM hit their target on tape-out (January 20) they won't have masks until late February at the earliest. Sample chips early March, chips in volume late March at the earliest. Allowing for slippage here and there it's probably more realistic to say April for chips in volume.

It's good that friedcat gave us an update, but the news isn't that startling, in my opinion. In fact, I sold on the news.

This is a pretty sober analysis. Correct: there is a long lead time between tape out and chip delivery, especially at modern process nodes. The photomasks have not yet been made, although FC may already have paid for them.

photolithography

I believe at 28nm you cant use photolithography anymore. It should be e-beam lithography then.

You are wrong. These days we use immersion litho and double patterning, but e-beam is not cost effective for anything except samples and making the masks themselves.

[SebastianJu]

I believe at 28nm you cant use photolithography anymore. It should be e-beam lithography then.

You are wrong. These days we use immersion litho and double patterning, but e-beam is not cost effective for anything except samples and making the masks themselves.

Ah ok... the it was for the masks... at least thats part of taping out...

[KS]

More like ready In Two Weeks^(TM)

It could still take 10-20 weeks.

Or it could be never. Or all life on earth could be obliterated on News Years.

Seriously, Tapeout is a huge deal. It costs an unbelievable amount of money and effort to get there. It is possible FC could start reclaiming global hash percentages in March. A million years in the bitcoin universe to be sure. But obviously not something one can do in a few weeks. It takes a ton of planning and effort to be able to stand up in March and proclaim "we have 15% of the global hash" especially after everyone else has deployed the best that they have.

Seriously, Tape Out just means your chip is ready _in software_ and that's the code you send to the fab which then needs to process with the _other_ steps before even etching it on silicon.

It's an important milestone, but then having a full (working) mask is another and then your first run is yet another etc.