Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $700 (was $500) — Butterflylabs, is it for real? (Part 2) - page 64. (Read 146936 times)

Because the criticism has been so hyperbolic. What's wrong with objectivity?

Why are people so intent on defending such a clusterfuck of a company?

Fixed your post.


They have no product ... yes.  Under the thermal and electrical load they have that board under it would be dead in a week.  So lets talk when they have a product which can run more than a 1 hour long limited test and is shipping?  Lets compare the product out then (4 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks from now) to the performance under 24/7/365 load in the real world.  Remember this is the company which promised delivery in 4-6 weeks 10 weeks ago. 

Yes someone reputable shipping a product which gets <$1 per MH and >10 MH/W is impressive.  Of course that assumes it can stand up to 24/7/365 mining for 2+ years and you trust the company enough to make that kind of capital commitment.  Everything BFL has done so far indicates they are good at overpromising and under delivering.

Can't wait for the BFL widget, but willing to wait for this?  Surely you jest. Tick-tock, tick-tock, I think I hear the block reward halving.  Two months before an announcement.

You are making quite a few assumptions here. How exactly could they 'be discovered' without a website or public office or advertising?

Only one person has seen a unit in action, and that was under BFL's conditions, not his own. They obviously didn't even have a working prototype or development board, because they would have seen the power issues a mile away. 10 years experience my ass...

I clearly remember BFL stating that they were discovered before they even had the website up and running, and before any initial work had been done.  It sounded like someone leaked to the presses before they were ready to go public (after having testing a design).  So, like any company, they went with it.  They had tons of emails asking them to take pre-orders and what not, so they said they would.
I personally heard about BFL on a Linux Users group I am a member of, and not here.  There was alot of chatter about them elsewhere as well.

Maybe he is biased because he saw the unit.

i'm still interested why only 1 person has ever seen the unit. and that person seems to be biased towards BF.

>implying they won't lower the specs again
>implying it's not bait and switch if there isn't anything better
>implying they haven't overestimated before
it's clear that they didn't even have a first design. it's obvious since the specs were WAY off. They just made a website, gathered a ton of money from preorders, THEN they started designing. And just because there still the best (assuming they don't lower specs again), doesn't mean it's right to overestimate by a factor of 3.

I don't understand all the bashing on BFL.  Sure they missed the mark on their initial numbers. Its a first design. Even at ~850 MH/sec and $599 with the current specs you still are getting one of the best MH/$ thats currently availble at nearly 1.42  MH/$.  Thats substantially more than any other FPGA out there.  Not to mention, this will be a fully finished piece with a stackable enclosure, fan and power supply.

BFL = 1.42 MH/$  --- Ready to go, with enclosure, fan, and power supply.

Icarus = 0.6 MH/$ --- Ships from China, does not include enclosure. Does ship with power supply and fans (although some say fans are loud)

ZTEX = 0.47 MH/$ --- No enclosure, No heatsink included (does need one), no power supply included.

X6500 = 0.38 MH/$ --- No enclosure,  includes heatsink, but developer said it *probably* will need airflow, no power supply included

So, lets get real here, the BFL unit nearly triples the MH/$ returns even on the diminished claims of 850 MH/s.

And if you want to discuss the larger power draw, the BFL unit is currently doing about 80 watts, but BFL claims that could be do to runaway, and may run lower wattages once released.  But still, we know it runs 80 watts.  The nearest competitor, Icarus, is running aboutn 20 - 23 watts real world.  IT would take about 3 of these units to equal a BFL.  When you consider the efficiency of the wall warts in the additional Icarus units needed to make up the performance difference, the power differential is pretty much null.  Or so small, that it would take YEARS of mining to make up the cost differential between the BFL and Icarus.

So, I dont want to take anything away from the FPGA home brew guys, but BFL's product is substantially better in my opinion. Mind you, this is their FIRST iteration of the design.  If they do indeed deliver their product to market, they will be the ones to beat, and that will be a hard battle to fight for the home brew guys.

First of all, I don't see any competing FPGAs with the same performance envelope.  Second, if by some chance someone does have a competing FPGA around the same envelope by that time, then nothing was really lost as far as "bait-and-switch" goes, since currently, there is nothing released that is even close to the neutered version that was demonstrated... and if they manage to get something that performs better than what was demonstrated, that's just icing on the cake.

I really hope for some production units rather than pre-order again and again

Do you have many completed or almost completed Rev A units that you'd consider selling with a drastically reduced clock to keep the heat and power draw within spec, with a deep discount to correspond with the low hashrate? I wonder if you might have boards that are now otherwise useless because of the discovery of higher power draw than expected.

they're basically using all this forum attention to sell their mediocre FPGAs, which by the time they ship it (if ever), would probably have the same performance as existing ones. even if everyone canceled their preorders because the specs don't match, they essentially got 2+ months of interest free loan.

Those were made-up numbers meant to 1. garner attention, and 2. convince people not to buy competing products. Obvious bait-and-switch scam.

SSHHHHH

Sheep dont want to ask any questions.

What i don't understand is how they came up with those figures of 20W and ~1GH/s...You have to test to find these figures...They have tested their "technology"  to "public" only ~1 week ago ,getting ~800Mh/s and 80W.(in front of a forum member) ,but i believe that their "real world test" wasn't made too long before that meeting with the forum member.
There is a big difference between theory and practice,especially in electronics...You have to test first and then advertise ,not read some specs and start advertising and collecting money.
In my opinion,BFL has little experience in this things...I am not saying that i know too much,but i have learned that theory is not = practice,especially in elecronics.Anyone who has something to do with electronics knows this.
Or they don't know shit about electronics and they had an ideea and they know person X and person Y and try to put a device together or there is a big lie around...To me ,this whole thing doesn't make sense, I mean the course of events....
Please correct me if i am wrong,but don't start to tell stupid things about this post...this is just my personal opinion.

I'm late to the party and am still catching up on this thread, but this line right here is suuuuuper telling on how BFL might operate as a business.

Obviously they had to know ahead of this test how their product performs, and not until a test was published do they come clean with the REAL numbers? 

That being said, I agree with other people in this thread that, if anything, this entire demonstration really makes the case for small time FPGA developers here due to their openness and honesty when it comes to their products performance as well as build quality.

Wow.