Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $700 (was $500) — Butterflylabs, is it for real? (Part 2) - page 30. (Read 146909 times)

Nice.  Glad I subscribed.

AMD doesn't
a) public guaranteed specs based on simulations
b) provide official word on launch dates
c) indicate product will ship in 4-6 weeks for 4 months.

Often data will leak about a product and product will either not live up to that leak or meet the launch timeline.

It is far different if the company puts out an official spec or date and then fails to live up to their own promise.

The point is your right delays happen, product re-orgs happen, anticipated performance fails to materialize.

Since you brought up AMD here are two counter examples.  The 6000 series was suppose to be 32nm which would have made them roughly 50% more powerful in GFLOPS / W and GFLOPS / $.  However AMD never promised this, enver provided official specs, never set a deliver date.  The fab couldn't get 32nm working so AMD scrapped those plans, redesigned the chips and released then as 45nm parts.  The performance was lower (barely better than 5000 series) and the launch was late but AMD never broke any promises.

AMD obviously wanted the 7970 to launch before Christmas.  I mean it is Christmas.  The fab couldn't get it done.  AMD was disapointed.  Gamers were disapointed but once again AMD didn't break any official promise. 

Heh, Christmas launch of the 7970, anyone? That's what they get for going fabless.

Be fair. When was the last time AMD launched a product that was not delayed at least as much as BFLs product has been to date?  Delays are usually not measured in weeks or months, but in quarters.

Yep. They agreed to meet us at our UK offices where Vladimir Marchenko will do his testing and confirm capabilities etc.

We were planning on doing the review in this issue, but it's not looking like it's going to happen in time 

Are you going to interview the company for next issue? 


No product has shipped so I believe Inaba is the only one who has had physical access.  Luke also IIRC had remote access to a single.

Well I hope so.  Lesson to anyone else launch a product or company; keep your initial (and likely way overly optimistic) specs and timelines internal.  That way when you inevitably fail to meet them you only disappoint yourselves.  If somehow you do meet them you can "shock & awe" the market. 

I mean imagine if the launch had been like this:
Nothing.  BFL website didn't even exist pubicly.  Then one day a post by BFL saying they had a 800 MH @ 80W product for $800.  the 8-8-8.  Obviously a lot of "suspicion" so they already have 4 prototypes to give to senior members of the forum to test.  Inaba says "hey I live in same town".  They invite him over, he snaps some shots of their work area, sees single in production/testing, meets some of engineers, and gets a good impression.  He takes home a BFL single and post results that night.  Maybe to supplement that BFL hooks a BFL single to Deepbit, makes the API public, and provides local logs on a public website. 

1000 orders overnight, and unbelievable positive buzz.  Nobody would even know the product was 6 months late.  400% over original power spec and 20% reduced hash rate, and 20% higher priced than they could offer it at.  Now compare that to how the situation was handled.

That's the feeling I got as well. We'll find out on our side in a week or so for the Bitcoin Magazine.

I hope anyone who has had any experience with the singles (no speculation, just actual experience) sends us their comments, complains and professional opinions in email to [email protected]

If they're fake, we'll expose them. If they're real, we'll support them. Whatayagonnado.

From my interactions with them, I don't think it was B.  I honestly think they had an overly optimistic design and release schedule.

I don't think they said.  Product page says new orders will ship in 4 to 6 weeks.

Hopefully BFL learned a lesson.  None of this would even have been an issue if they had kept testing internally, not made promises based on simulations, and not offered pre-orders until board was in final production.

At this point I am torn.  Are they:
a) utterly incompetent.  I mean can anyone be that bad at launching a product?
b) manipulative and knew they wouldn't be ready for launch until Feb or March.  So they used the false promises/claims, and fake Nov delivery timeframe to freeze out sales on competing products until they were ready to launch.

Sadly I wish it was A (there business incompetence has little relevence on their electronic competence) but given the string of PR failures (the rig box still has what likely are impossible specs) I am leaning towards B.

Your right. When companies plan to release stuff, everything goes to plan and it's ALWAYS out on time! No exceptions! This seem fishy now that I think about it! /s

Good thing people don't get uppity every time a company is late on there release dates, oh wait.

I don't see how that message is trolling.  BFL claims to have taken a course of action that would avoid potential delay... and then pushed back the release another 4-6 weeks.  What gives?

*yawn* Reported. Tired of all the trolling. We can't even have a conversation in here without you butting in and being a dick. Don't you have a job, a hobby or something?

But they avoided that issue. Interesting info though. So what's this further unexplained delay?

I am not defending BFL I just want to comment on the Chinese New Year (CNY) thing.

I worked for 10 years in Hong Kong for an electronics supplier with a huge warehouse and shipping operation. Most of the stuff came from China. Two months before Chinese New Year they'd have toplace orders with the factories and suppliers in China just because if they wouldn't, there would be chaos for at least a month or two after CNY (under normal circumstances they could just order and get stock within a week or two). And the best of all, the Chinese factories wouldn't even prepare or let their customers know up front. They just accept orders till the last day and then close down. All they'd say to a delay of weeks is 'Happy Chinese New Year!!'. The company had to learn this the hard way for a few years. There is a cultural difference and there is nothing you can do about it. Everyone who worked with China can write novels about this. If you have a product in development during CNY, you can add two months to your time frame. Factories shut down, people go home to their hometown, forwarding companies close, customs don't process imports or exports, raw material stops arriving, etc. If your supplier is closed for only 8 days, that doesn't mean that the rest of the infrastructure is running as usual on day 9.

So yes, if you are not working with Foxconn and you are not Apple or Microsoft or Sony, you are doomed during CNY.

Again, I am not defending BFL but I just thought I'd comment on this since it's really not that far fetched. May or may not be an excuse from BFL though, but for us western employees of that Hong Kong company it was just a mystery how Chinese could conduct business like this ("8% downtime in one month" as stated by somebody above). But it's true...

There is still 2 more days
Suddenly in the next 2 days everyone in the first batch is going to get them in the next 2 days

You do realise that every company in China shuts down for 30 days over new year right? So you can blame the whole country for making the batch late ... ... ... ... ... ... ... wow 8% yearly downtime in just one month ...
/sarcasm

But seriously, no I'd expect probably another week at the minimum.
I'm sure if anyone actually knew they were going to get one in a day or two they'd have said so by now.
Since that is what most people are waiting to hear ...

So yeah once someone makes a comment about getting one we can guess at least a few days after that ... if they say it has already been sent.
Until then, well, speak to sonny and see what his latest excuse is.
(That 10 years of experience comment BFL made really makes me wonder what industry that 10 years of experience is in ...)

So far roughly .... 0.0.

At this point though I am pretty convinced that it isn't a scam just a poorly run operation.  They made promises they couldn't keep.

A smart company would have had the finalized product tested, mining 24/7 for weeks with accurate hashrates, yields, and wattage before ever offering pre-orders.  The production run still would have taken a month and maybe delayed another month but they would look significantly more competent.

Where are your singles, homie? It's the end of January, if my memory serves me correctly.

This shit is still vapourware until ONE. SINGLE. PERSON. GETS. A. UNIT.

So,

 - how many have actually recieved something from the company after ordering?
 - do we have linux drivers? (couldn't seem to get the link to work on the "drivers" page)

Seems to have a bit of a limited vocab doesn't he, kind of like Timmy from South Park.  

4 to 6 weeks!
4 to 6 weeks!

Comedy genius right there