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Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? - page 4. (Read 123107 times)

legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1000
Yes, those numbers are from the 0 error rate firmware not the unstable higher hashrate firmware.

For the record, I think they should probably cancel that bet and refund it at this point, since it's such a cluster fuck Smiley
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
What will the final odds be I wonder?

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=141

If they don't close the bet soon, it will go to 10,000 BTC to 112.71 BTC.  What a waste.

I put 75 BTC on the bet while there were only small bets on each side -- giving the believers 5:1 odds.  Now that the test results are in, someone put about 120-150 BTC on the bet and they will be receiving a similar amount of the winnings as me.



Someone really needs to make a better betting site.

+1. 
hero member
Activity: 504
Merit: 500
ngzhang is advertising his boards as 360 MH, not 200. May be you were thinking of ztex ?
And ztex is advertising his boards at ~1.6$ per MH, not $1 per MH (100 unit order)
ztek offers lower price is the buyer provides all capital.  A licensed production run is $1.26 per MH (in 100 board runs) and $1.02 per MH (in 250 board runs).
May be I misread his post, but I think that "licensed production run" means "no assembly included", so the price will be higher to the end-user.

No I clarified w/ him via PM.  The price is an estimate (using component prices @ prices for assembly house he uses in Germany)

per the quoted text:
Quote
Estimated costs (including PCB, license fee, parts, assembly) based on the prices here in Germany (from official Xilinx Distributor) would be:

You would only pay a small fraction of that to him and he will give you 100/250 blank PCB, license to run 100/250 of them, and all necessary datafiles for assembly house to build the boards.

When I asked him why price is lower the answer was obvious (in hindsight).  He doesn't need to invest the capital, build a large number of boards upfront and take the risk/stress of trying to sell them all so he is willing to accept a lower profit and you also get the lower part/assembly costs of building 100/250 units at once.

   Aye, the only catch to that is good fuggin luck finding the LX150-N3 here in the US for $100 per chip. hell, even $120 per chip is unlikely. Best quote from Avnet is about $141 with a 6 week lead time from Xilinx. >.<
hero member
Activity: 686
Merit: 501
TokenUnion-Get Rewarded for Holding Crypto
What will the final odds be I wonder?

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=141

If they don't close the bet soon, it will go to 10,000 BTC to 112.71 BTC.  What a waste.

I put 75 BTC on the bet while there were only small bets on each side -- giving the believers 5:1 odds.  Now that the test results are in, someone put about 120-150 BTC on the bet and they will be receiving a similar amount of the winnings as me.



Someone really needs to make a better betting site.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Well stable, the BFL unit is > 4x the hashrate than ztek and more than double ngzhang. Power draw is also more than double ngzhang (Dunno what ztek power draw is).  Even allowing for a 10% efficiency decrease for "real world" scenario vs the test data, the numbers still hold.

Ztek, rph, and ngzhang's boards all have roughly the same power effciency ~20MH/W (+/-10%) which is mainly driven by the power demand of the FPGA.

It would seem this board has similar power efficiency?  I would just like to restate for my record it was way back on page 1 that I indicated that 50MH/W was implausible for a FPGA (45nm).  That is what lead to all the speculation of sASICS and the likelihood of scam given the costs involved w/ sASIC development, etc.

Just to clarify you were comparing the 0 error hashrate not the higher 50% error hashrate right?

Thanks for providing more ballpark details.  

What is somewhat alarming is not getting performance specs wrong. Shit happens but how does a company get the claimed wattage that wrong.  I mean if you are using FPGA x it's power draw is not going to vary by +/- 80%.   So what performance you get out of the chip may vary by bitstream, cooling, power regulation, the particular FGPA used, speed rating, etc the wattage shouldn't be that variable.
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1000
Well stable, the BFL unit is > 4x the hashrate than ztek and more than double ngzhang. Power draw is also more than double ngzhang (Dunno what ztek power draw is).  Even allowing for a 10% efficiency decrease for "real world" scenario vs the test data, the numbers still hold.



donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
ngzhang is advertising his boards as 360 MH, not 200. May be you were thinking of ztex ?
And ztex is advertising his boards at ~1.6$ per MH, not $1 per MH (100 unit order)
ztek offers lower price is the buyer provides all capital.  A licensed production run is $1.26 per MH (in 100 board runs) and $1.02 per MH (in 250 board runs).
May be I misread his post, but I think that "licensed production run" means "no assembly included", so the price will be higher to the end-user.

No I clarified w/ him via PM.  The price is an estimate (using component prices @ prices for assembly house he uses in Germany)

per the quoted text:
Quote
Estimated costs (including PCB, license fee, parts, assembly) based on the prices here in Germany (from official Xilinx Distributor) would be:

You would only pay a small fraction of that to him and he will give you 100/250 blank PCB, license to run 100/250 of them, and all necessary datafiles for assembly house to build the boards.

When I asked him why price is lower the answer was obvious (in hindsight).  He doesn't need to invest the capital, build a large number of boards upfront and take the risk/stress of trying to sell them all so he is willing to accept a lower profit and you also get the lower part/assembly costs of building 100/250 units at once.
hero member
Activity: 592
Merit: 501
We will stand and fight.
To Inaba:

I know you can't give exact numbers but can you give us more of a ballpark.

When running stable (no false hashes) was performance in the 900 to 1000 MH range or 600 to 800 or <600 MH?

When you say power was more but not 200W well now FPGA on the planet (not even one for 10 years ago) uses 200W.  Hell most CPU don't use more than 200W.

So is "more power" =
still <30W?  
30W - 40W?  
>40W?

Less hashes & more power could mean anything from slightly worse than expected but still decent to worse than products already on sale by other manufacturers. I know you are prohibited from giving exact numbers but not providing a firmer ballpark range on stats does a disservice to the 3+ FPGA developers who have always supported the Bitcoin community and have real products w/ real verified results.  They have had sales impacted as people wait for results from this magical unicorn.  If you feel you can be firmer but not exact and still meet the spirit of your agreement that would be the right thing to do.



Can someone run down the current MH/s and power draw of the current offerings?  I can give you an idea of how it compares when compared to what's currently available for sale.  From what I know (which may be inaccurate, which is why I ask for the run down) the BFL offering exceeds everything available that I know of by a substantial margin in hashing power (at stable speeds), although I'm not sure about power draw.

you mean how to test the power draw?

i use this one:



5 boards running @ max power
donator
Activity: 532
Merit: 501
We have cookies
ngzhang is advertising his boards as 360 MH, not 200. May be you were thinking of ztex ?
And ztex is advertising his boards at ~1.6$ per MH, not $1 per MH (100 unit order)
ztek offers lower price is the buyer provides all capital.  A licensed production run is $1.26 per MH (in 100 board runs) and $1.02 per MH (in 250 board runs).
May be I misread his post, but I think that "licensed production run" means "no assembly included", so the price will be higher to the end-user.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Can someone run down the current MH/s and power draw of the current offerings?  I can give you an idea of how it compares when compared to what's currently available for sale.  From what I know (which may be inaccurate, which is why I ask for the run down) the BFL offering exceeds everything available that I know of by a substantial margin in hashing power (at stable speeds), although I'm not sure about power draw.

ztek board is 190MH (looks like he pushing that to 192MH by improving power).
Quote
Prices are:
1-4 units: 327 EUR (about 460 USD)
5-9 units: 305 EUR (about 430 USD)
10-24 units: 282 EUR (about 395 USD)
25-49 units: 259 EUR (about 365 USD)
50-99 units: 236 EUR (about 330 USD)
100+ units: 213 EUR (about 300 USD)

License production programs can be offered too. The customer would purchase the empty PCB including a license fee and gets assembly data (stencil data, bill of material, pick and place data, ...). Estimated costs (including PCB, license fee, parts, assembly) based on the prices here in Germany (from official Xilinx Distributor) would be:
100 units: 170 EUR (about 240 USD)
250 units: 140 EUR (about 195 USD)

ngzhang board is 360MH (he indicated 380 MH is possible but it currently runs hot)
price is $590.

rph is experimenting w/ simplified board design targeting $1/MH but currently isn't available

All the boards get ~20MH/W.
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1000
xaxik - Sorry I wasn't that exacting... I will see what I can do to get an exact measurement, but it's kind of hard to get at the chips with a ruler with the caps and such blocking the way.
newbie
Activity: 10
Merit: 0
Someone asked that I measure the actual chips - they are 30mm^2.
Thanks Inaba.
Are they exactly 30 or rather 29mm^2?
Some chips from altera are 29mm and some are 31mm...
I'm just curious, what may be unter the hood heatsinks  Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1000
To Inaba:

I know you can't give exact numbers but can you give us more of a ballpark.

When running stable (no false hashes) was performance in the 900 to 1000 MH range or 600 to 800 or <600 MH?

When you say power was more but not 200W well now FPGA on the planet (not even one for 10 years ago) uses 200W.  Hell most CPU don't use more than 200W.

So is "more power" =
still <30W?  
30W - 40W?  
>40W?

Less hashes & more power could mean anything from slightly worse than expected but still decent to worse than products already on sale by other manufacturers. I know you are prohibited from giving exact numbers but not providing a firmer ballpark range on stats does a disservice to the 3+ FPGA developers who have always supported the Bitcoin community and have real products w/ real verified results.  They have had sales impacted as people wait for results from this magical unicorn.  If you feel you can be firmer but not exact and still meet the spirit of your agreement that would be the right thing to do.



Can someone run down the current MH/s and power draw of the current offerings?  I can give you an idea of how it compares when compared to what's currently available for sale.  From what I know (which may be inaccurate, which is why I ask for the run down) the BFL offering exceeds everything available that I know of by a substantial margin in hashing power (at stable speeds), although I'm not sure about power draw.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
oh, sorry sir.
i think i made some math mistake at the "POLL: Miners, do you pay for electricity?  " thread, no 25MH/W, i test them again today, and it's about 18-20MH/w as i say on the main thread : "each board has 2 XC6SLX150 -2FGG484I on it, generates a 360MH/s hashing power. 19.5W on wall power consuming."

No problem.  Thanks for the correction I will update my post.  I like your business ethics more and more each day.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500
I gave p4man that bet but with 25% variance.

Clearly they fucked that up.

What makes you think that? I havent read anywhere they were missing their goals by 25%. Where did you read that? For all I know, even as it stands, you will lose the bet with the current state of the software.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
What will the final odds be I wonder?

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=141

God bets of bitcoin sucks.  I know my fault for betting but honestly if you are listening b.o.b. please consider moving to an intrade type format.  Had this been a market style bet I would have been buying contracts @ 30 bitcents on the BTC and likely selling them now for 80 bitcents.  Grr.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis

BFL will not delivery any product in the next 60 days that meets or exceeds their original claimed specs.
>= 1.05GH/s
<= 19.8W
<= $500

? They never claimed $500 for anything other then a limited pre-order.

Quote
I think in time when they finally allow hard numbers we will see they offer nothing special beyond what the legit FPGA designers have acheived.

Maybe you should reread Inaba's post. According to him, the tested unit already presents a significantly better proposition than all the other FPGA. So you think a fixed final shipping product will be worse?

I would like to see numbers.  Maybe Inaba isn't aware of the performance other boards can achieve when purchased in bulk.  Inaba also seems to indicate the higher performance number (unstable) was the one that made it worthwhile.  And if they never get it stable at that speed?

Also YES I do believe delivered performance will be lower.  Sustained 24/7 operation on a mining pool is always going to be more challenging and lower performance than a theoretical hashrate against a fixed block header.

I would still like to know how a 32 board rig acheived 50x performance?  Maybe I can get one of those performance doublers for my GPU farm. Smiley
sr. member
Activity: 349
Merit: 250
What will the final odds be I wonder?

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=141
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500

BFL will not delivery any product in the next 60 days that meets or exceeds their original claimed specs.
>= 1.05GH/s
<= 19.8W
<= $500

? They never claimed $500 for anything other then a limited pre-order.

Quote
I think in time when they finally allow hard numbers we will see they offer nothing special beyond what the legit FPGA designers have acheived.

Maybe you should reread Inaba's post. According to him, the tested unit already represents a significantly better proposition than all the other FPGA. So you think a fixed final shipping product will be worse?
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
ngzhang is advertising his boards as 360 MH, not 200. May be you were thinking of ztex ?
And ztex is advertising his boards at ~1.6$ per MH, not $1 per MH (100 unit order)

ztek offers lower price is the buyer provides all capital.  A licensed production run is $1.26 per MH (in 100 board runs) and $1.02 per MH (in 250 board runs).

ngzhang board uses 2 LX150 chips (theoretical performance is ~200MH/s).  He doesn't advertise the board at 400MH/s because it might someday could acheive that.  He advertises what it can delivery today 360MH/s.   He actually has got it to 380MH/s but doesn't like the heat and power draw.

Shows a supplier w/ integrity.  Working on stability rather than try specsmanship.
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