ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[Puppet]

It's not just about power efficiency.

In so far its not yet the case today, it will be next year. Power consumption will be by far the most important factor. Not only directly as opex, but its also driving PCB and system costs. Asics themselves are cheap; DC voltage regulation, cooling etc are comparatively quite expensive and those costs scale with power (in)efficiency.

Sure, competitors may have better power efficiency but what hash rate will those chips have? Look at Bitfury or Spondoolies 40nm ASICs and compare them to AMs gen 3. If those chips were overclocked to match the hash rate of AMs, what would happen to their power efficiency?

Per chip hashrate is meaningless. Particularly if you dont take in to account die size. Even if you do, it only affects silicon cost which is probably among the least important factors.

Here's what FC said on the issue:

So he says he doesnt know yet.

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[Mabsark]

It's not just about power efficiency.

In so far its not yet the case today, it will be next year. Power consumption will be by far the most important factor. Not only directly as opex, but its also driving PCB and system costs. Asics themselves are cheap; DC voltage regulation, cooling etc are comparatively quite expensive and those costs scale with power (in)efficiency.

Sure, competitors may have better power efficiency but what hash rate will those chips have? Look at Bitfury or Spondoolies 40nm ASICs and compare them to AMs gen 3. If those chips were overclocked to match the hash rate of AMs, what would happen to their power efficiency?

Per chip hashrate is meaningless. Particularly if you dont take in to account die size. Even if you do, it only affects silicon cost which is probably among the least important factors.

Here's what FC said on the issue:

So he says he doesnt know yet.

I'm not claiming it's about per chip hash rate, I'm claiming that there are a few factors which need to be considered, not just power efficiency. You need to consider the hash rate, the power efficiency, the cost and the volume of the miner too.

[MichaelBliss]

So he says he doesnt know yet.

The same way Spoondoolies don't know yet.   Except Friedcat is honest, and is telling you he doesn't know, and providing the best estimates he can.   

[Puppet]

I'm not claiming it's about per chip hash rate, and claiming that there are a few factors which need to be considered, not just power efficiency.

You're right; time to market is pretty darn important too.
oops.

You need to consider the hash rate, the power efficiency, the cost and the volume of the miner too.

Volume as in density, is mostly a non issue outside of collocation, which is a dead end anyway. Take a look at the largest mine. notice the shelve spacing here:

http://www.thecoinsman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/40-1X33zo7.jpg

or the rack spacing here:

http://www.thecoinsman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/39-GQF0zFa.jpg

They could easily cram 3 or 4x as many rigs in that warehouse, if it werent for power/cooling limitations.

As for "hashrate", its not a metric, its a variable that you can scale arbitrarily. What matters is hashrate/watt and hashrate/$ on a system level, but the latter is also highly dependent on power efficiency per chip, since much of the overall cost is in power delivery rather than the asics themselves.

[raskul]

3 Only if AM make profits,dividends is possible.

remember kids, don't shell out more than you can afford to lose 

[Puppet]

The same way Spoondoolies don't know yet.   Except Friedcat is honest, and is telling you he doesn't know, and providing the best estimates he can.   

Fair enough, but fact remains that BF and SP are aiming at 2-3x better power efficiency (and ~3 months earlier time to market). Whether they can pull it off, time will tell, but that goes for AM as well.

[trek27]

Before BTC rise to 10k, I expect to see many mining companies bankrupt.

Right, and many projects are already closed or quasi dead. Hopefully AM will survive.

[RoadStress]

Nonsense. Tubes went on sale on August 12 and chips were available months earlier. If AM would have just built miners instead of selling chips, Tubes would have been available a lot earlier.

Really? That is your excuse? If that's the case AM has a very bad team if they can sell chips and make some miners in the same time.

By the looks of it they haven't sold that many chips so that shouldn't be a good reason to delay miners so much.

[jimmothy]

The same way Spoondoolies don't know yet.   Except Friedcat is honest, and is telling you he doesn't know, and providing the best estimates he can.  

Fair enough, but fact remains that BF and SP are aiming at 2-3x better power efficiency (and ~3 months earlier time to market). Whether they can pull it off, time will tell, but that goes for AM as well.

Let me get this straight, Bitfurys estimate of 0.2 w/gh is 2-3 times better than AM's estimate of 0.22 w/gh? And where did you hear Spondoolies was aiming for 0.1w/gh this year? (not that it matters as they miss more targets than AM)

I'd also love to know how you know that SPtech and Bitfury will have hardware 3 months earlier when taping out 1 month later than AM.

[Puppet]

Let me get this straight, Bitfurys estimate of 0.2 w/gh is 2-3 times better than AM's estimate of 0.22 w/gh?

Yawn.

And where did you hear Spondoolies was aiming for 0.1w/gh this year? (not that it matters as they miss more targets than AM)

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/guy-corem-ceo-spondoolies-tech-speaks-miners-future-mining/

I'd also love to know how you know that SPtech and Bitfury will have hardware 3 months earlier when taping out 1 month later than AM.

Thats not rocket science. AM is doing a pilot run or MPW since they expect test chips in december. BF and SP wont.

[Anthony1985]

Finally some good news

[jjdub7]

Update

Development
The 28nm BE300 engineering batch tapeout was in September 16 with TSMC.
The power efficiency is 0.225W/G to 0.343W/G ranging from core voltage of 0.55V
to 0.70V. The two main mistakes made in BE200 were dedicatedly addressed and
avoided in the whole design stage so we do not expect surprise in frequency and
power consumption in real products.

14nm/16nm projects are at pre-evaluation and pre-design stage. It has to be done
in 2015 but the starting time of placing orders depends on overall gain vs (NRE/R&D/risks).

Led by Block Erupter Prisma, a series of efforts to reduce component-wise
cost and system-wise power efficiency were made.

Production
As known by OEM producers, several large batches of BE200 had problems with
popping chips affecting whole boards due to the misoperation from the packaging
company. It hindered afterwards chip sales and delayed the starting time of
Tube/Prisma sales. Later supply of BE200 has no such problem and filtering process
on old BE200 is also underway.

Because of the non-open-source status of Prisma and high cost of all other designs, BE200
sales were stopped. Rest BE200 chips will likely be consumed by Prisma and succeeding revises.

The mass production time of BE300 in terms of chip-out date is February to March, 2015.

Operation
As sales were seriously hindered by unexpected yield issue of BE200, we had missed many
dates with financing the big mining farm of our own. It is still hopeful that all good BE200
will be turned to hashrate before too late and we have liquid profits again before BE300, but
from the big picture, the missing of target on BE200, the mis-judgment on OEMs and later
yield/financing problem, limited our expansion and profit in this year. But luckily R&D on later
products is not much affected.

AM will continue to develop new products, expand its mining farms, deliver machines to miners,
as well as make money for shareholders.

There is no any foreseeable plan from AM side on force buy-back, dumping, or any
activities on the open stock market. There is no plan of privatization either. The management,
R&D, sales as well as marketing is being more and more separated and dedicated to professionals,
but the founders will continue to be heavily involved and drive AM in the more and more competitive
market. Scenarios of BE100 vs graphics card may never happen again, but we need catch
any opportunity on timing window of leads at either technology or deploying/financing resources
to win the last battle when mining is still an under-capitalized game.

So...we're issuing debt, essentially, with this AMhash fund.

[FUR11]

Has anyone posted the AMHash website to reddit? I mean it is a quite reasonably and trustworthy cloud mining service. The more people know about it, the more revenue AM is going to make. I've only seen a post in /r/BitcoinStocks

[MrTeal]

Let me get this straight, Bitfurys estimate of 0.2 w/gh is 2-3 times better than AM's estimate of 0.22 w/gh?

Yawn.

And where did you hear Spondoolies was aiming for 0.1w/gh this year? (not that it matters as they miss more targets than AM)

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/guy-corem-ceo-spondoolies-tech-speaks-miners-future-mining/

That seems to indicate they aren't going to be there with their next chip, unless something changes.

That is an excellent timetable. With the faster specs will heat be more of a problem?‏

Guy:  No‏, it’ll have the same package and thermal as the 2nd gen‏ but at a much higher hash-rate an much reduced cost ‏
It’s a design to compete and win in the 1,000 PH/s era (2015)‏ We want to be able to offer 0.2$/GHs solution to our customers with 0.1W/GHs. We are not there yet, but I’m confident in our team ability to achieve it‏ on 28nm.

If in October they haven't got the simulations to 0.1J/GH, I wouldn't be hopeful on them getting silicon by the end of the year at that level. If they can though, make props to them. That's 3.4x more efficient than their current chip on the same process node.

[GTR_JOEY]

Have any dividends been paid?... NO!

So quit getting all moist and patting each other on the ass cause nothing has changed

[rockxie]

Have any dividends been paid?... NO!

So quit getting all moist and patting each other on the ass cause nothing has changed

In fact, AM is trying to change, and some changes have been made, AMHash is a clear signal.

In the future we will see AM will make more positive changes.

[chairforce1]

Have any dividends been paid?... NO!

So quit getting all moist and patting each other on the ass cause nothing has changed

Infinite wisdom......................................................................... .....................in hindsight.

[freedomno1]

BE200 was supposed to be <0.2W/GHs because we planned that it has some large room of downvoltage. However most room was
eaten by the mistake we made in chip and package design.

For BE300 in theory it is possible to get lower than 0.225W/GH by stressing the voltage down below 0.55V, but we do not have
solid simulation data yet, so let's see after the test chips are out.

December 16 is to be expected for us to get the chips. Testing time varies at 3-10 days since we had much more preparation work already done this time.

This will be the most important 2 weeks in AM history. Great work getting us this far and keeping us on track for the future!

You mean looks at clock 6 Weeks
Till December that is although I don't blame you for mixing November and December when were in October  

[Puppet]

That seems to indicate they aren't going to be there with their next chip, unless something changes.

Not sure how you are reading it, but the "we're not there yet" of course doesnt have to apply to the specs of the new chip (that isnt there yet), but on the chip itself. Or it could be a reference to the price ($0.2/GH). Either way, just how many 28nm designs do you think they intend to make?

[Puppet]

In fact, AM is trying to change, and some changes have been made, AMHash is a clear signal.

Not a very good signal so far. 2 days in to the IPO, ~2.7% of the first 5PH have been sold.
Or 0.2% of the alleged 60PH inventory of chips,...

In the future we will see AM will make more positive changes.

Let me help; this product should help sell many more PH's very quickly:



An Asiminer wafer clock. You know you want one.