Topic: [ActiveMining] Official Shareholder Discussion Thread [Moderated] - page 265. (Read 630051 times)

If eASIC is 5-10 times as expensive as the other choice then yes it would make sense to forego the eASIC NRE cost and go with another company. I assume Ken wanted to go with eASIC but they simply were not competitive with their 28nm Full-Custom pricing and likely made Ken go with certain Fabs/Packages at a premium.

I'm happy that we got away from eASIC for a Full-Custom as their only purpose was the Nextreme quick to market niche that was passed up already.

Hopefully Ken can get back the majority of the NRE.

Am i understand that correctly that you already paid 1 million USD for 28nm to eASIC and now this goes to waste because you want to use a different engineering company?
If so what is so important that its worth that price?

We are expecting to recover most of the eASIC NRE.

Am i understand that correctly that you already paid 1 million USD for 28nm to eASIC and now this goes to waste because you want to use a different engineering company?
If so what is so important that its worth that price?

We are expecting to recover most of the eASIC NRE.

Do you anticipate liquidity problems from this?

Q. Refunds
A. They have received refunds and have been giving out refunds as they are requested. They are still very good financially and have no concerns about mass refunds.

We have processed refunds this week and mailed out checks.  With the volume of refunds being processed, we are running behind.

28nm chips* won't be available until about end of July at the earliest more than likely. A completed miner would likely come a month after receiving the chips.

55nm will be available by the end of April with Chips in hand around the middle of April most likely.

Even if the deadlines are met, hashing on 28nm at the start of June would be unbelievable. That would put tapeout at April 16th, and would leave less than 7 weeks to:
1. Get the wafers started.
2. Finish the wafers.
3. Get the wafers sawn and packaged.
4. Get the chips tested and the boards brought up.
5. Start volume production
6. Assemble finished miners.

That's not a 7 week process.

Ken has made predicted dates ever since last March and none of the target dates have been hit.  i think it would be safer to assume that we use the latest of the dates as the expected ones.

It's just an estimate, the beginning of June is a full 14 weeks away and I don't think that is an unreasonable date. Remember Ken made the prediction about Q3 before choosing the vendor so I am assuming that was a rough estimate on his part as not all vendors will offer the same time to delivery of product. The beginning of Q3 is 18 weeks away and the end of Q3 is 26 weeks away so feel free to do an analysis based on those dates. At the moment we just don't know what the vendor is quoting Ken for a timeline.

No trading and being investigated by the Missouri Securities Division - not so good.

Reposting a comment without the giant spammy text. The concern of customers receiving refunds is legitimate.

This was already posted in the unmoderated thread, but I think it's relevant so I'll re-post it here.
VMC's rating was demoted from B to E, because of refunds being ignored and no products on the horizon.
I can't blame them on the "no product on the horizon", but refunds being ignored can't be good for business.

Ken, can you address this?

This...I think [is] relevant so I'll re-post it here.

Hi Doggie,

I admire your work here it is potentially a good resource. But as an investor in the parent company of VMC I am interested as to where you get this information from:

'VMC set         B. Demoted to E, refunds are being refused [ignored] and no products on the horizon. Potentially a scam. Promotion to D if refunds begin to be resolved.'


I would like to point out that according to the CEO of VMC currently there are two chips in production, one a full-custom 55nm has been taped out and is being fabbed by UMC for bulk reel sale and for miners. These 55nm chips have in the past week been listed for pre-order on the VMC website where full specs have also been stated:
http://virtualminingcorp.com/shop1/index.php?id_product=35&controller=product

The other chip in production is a 28nm full-custom and has been given over to a vendor with tape-out expected in 8 weeks.  The chip will be used in a PCI card, it will be 'air cooled and use a double slot.  The estimate speed of the new card will be 432 GH/s and will be listed at $1499.00.'.

I could understand you saying that VMC product has been delayed but to say there is 'none on the horizon' seems factually incorrect to me.

As to the refunds being ignored I have no information on that, can you say how many people have reported that to you and out of that number how many have shown you evidence of their order? I only ask because the company is plagued by Trolls some of who have previously lied about having orders, having machines, having refunds refused etc.

Regards,
minerpart

BTW - Why are you estimating starting hashing at the start of June, even Ken's prediction was that tapeout would be 8 weeks after a vendor is chosen (so late April) with chips in Q3.

Our project manager and engineers have worked to get a chip that can be air cooled, this will work in our expansion cases.  The project manager with our engineers has managed to reduce the cost of the expansion cases to about 25% of what the cost was.  This will be changed on our website soon.