Topic: Alpha Technology Litecoin (Scrypt) ASIC Miner Order Batch 1 Now! - page 197. (Read 529054 times)

The concern is that they have to purchase the cases in bulk, which means lead time, which means the design was already agreed on. Or they have to buy the materials in bulk to build the cases themselves, which again means lead time and/or manpower changes at the last minute.

I'm not sure on the 90Mh/s, I was commenting on the 50Mh/s. Fiaz just mentioned they will adjust the cases. I'm not sure this is that big of a deal. Making a case or the base board larger doesn't seem like a huge deal to me, but I'm not expert here. I hope they are being honest.

I'm not so much the king of optimism, I've been bitten before, albeit not terribly. What I find problematic here is the extreme negativity with no reason. No one seems to be in the middle, and I'm trying to see both sides of things. I've tried not letting emotions go to my head.

At this point, considering our limited knowledge, I only hope Fiaz and company are being honest.

Well the problem is I don't see how you can get all that extra gear into a 4u rackmount case. I can see how the 18mh/s unit could be expandable to such an extent but not the 90mh/s. Even Alpha said only the 18mh/s unit was expandable.
"We have made the 16Mh/s upgradeable supporting up to 90 Mh/s simply by adding additional cards and a new power supply in case there is demand to upgrade your devices after shipment"

If you look at the case design it looks pretty packed in there. Please show me where they can get 4x as many chips (over 200 in total) another PSU (three in total according to Fiaz) extra heat sinks and fans into that case.



Assuming that design is correct and we have no reason not to. They will have 5 PCB's 15 chips per board. (18mh/s= 1 board 90mh/s=5 boards) how in the hell are they going to get another 8 PCB's into that case? They will have to radically change the PCB design to accommodate these new specs and I don't see how they do that and still be on time.

I'd find this more believable if they were giving you a couple of extra units but I'm not buying the idea that you can stuff all that gear into a 4u case and still have the thing run safely and reliably 24 hours a day.

Now I know you're the king of optimism but here's a fact for you. Most of the companies that have tried to develop mining asics have failed. Either completely and gone out of business or produced sub spec products. But for some reason you seem convinced that Alpha will buck this trend. I see now evidence to support this and I grow more sceptical by the day.

What is hard to understand about a miner that is expandabe via more cards being plugged in? If you plug more cards in you add another power supply. The cases design allowed for this and Fiaz said as much. You are acting like you uncovered a sinister plot and all you showed is that you don't understand the talked about design.

And to the other poster who edited their reply to me mentioning air flow - air flow is not affected with an expandable design, BUT you need more fans. Another shocking revelation. And if the heat is to much for you, run 1/2 of the cards. 

That's some eagle eyed shit there Anderl. I hadn't even noticed that. Clearly Fiaz is sent out to feed the community bullshit and hope we all don't look too closely at it. But there are some very smart people here. That's why they started their own forum, after the mauling they took here a few months ago.

This stinks more and more by the minute. I really don't see how any of this is even possible if they want to l keep the current timescale. Stuffing more chips in will affect everything from case design to cooling to psu size and capacity.  More chips=more PCB's=more fans=more power=more heat=bigger case.
How are they going to do all this at the same price?

The 250mh/s unit will be pushing 2000 watts when fans pcbs etc are accounted for. If they are supplying a PSU that will run at high load 24/7 with a decent overhead, that is not something you want to change at the last minute, or try to save pennies on. Unless you want to burn peoples houses down.

They post updates at 11pm UK time like they are making this up after a bong session. I had a pretty low opinion of them before, but now...........This is just sad.

There seems to be some confusion about what "tapeout" means.  Tapeout refers to the creation of the mask set which will later be used to fabricate the chips.  As I understand it, it is not a long process and is done inside of a day, though it is one of the most expensive steps in the production process.

Once the mask set has been made, the masks are then used to fabricate the chips themselves one layer at a time onto the silicon wafers, using a photolithography process.  This is the part that takes 4 to 8 weeks.

Guys, please be reasonable. The situation is obvious. Product is about to be shipped within 45 days. Yesterday you got the information that there will be no LCD or other unique features that were promised. Hashing speed is changed again. How it is possible that such a changes can be made last minute? What about manufactured already cases? This is not possible.

What is possible in my opinion is followng scenario:

1. Alpha tried but failed to design and produce working chips. Once they have written on the forum discussion "Call us a scam if we don't deliver by April 2014".
2. The situation got hard for them. Lots of smoke and mirror games. Options, features changed on weekly basis.
3. Luckly for Alpha the competition managed to develop and produce working chips.
4. Now Alpha is trying to buy some chips from other company. The prices went down so much that they can still get some bucks from it. As they have no boards, no cases no nothing they announced an excuse that because users pushed them so hard, they have to drop other features and focus just on hashing speed. The truth is that they have to adopt other's company solution as it is. That is why there is no Web UI no LCD no WIFI etc. Their biggest effort right now is to re-brand the chips with their own logo and buy some box to fit the gears in. The good thing is that the customer may still get some kind of equipment and maybe even be happy of it.

Another option, bad one, is that delivery will be much more late or there will be no delivery at all.

I call BS on that 11 months.  No foundry is going to touch a chip design until they get paid and "refining since May 2013" means that AT has been paying some schlub at Drexel for 11 months for what?  If it takes 11 months to design a chip that other companies are doing in 90 days then something is wrong with the skill level at Drexel.

So they needed 11 months before you could do a tape out ?
Am I reading this correctly, or is the above information incorrect ?

As soon as we can we will be showing more pictures/videos, for now though we are still in the tape-out stage so cannot make a demonstration yet. What I can say to reassure you at this point is that Dexcel Designs have been designing for over 10 years (dexceldesigns.com/alliances.html as you can see they have done various work including with the Indian Ministry of Defense) and have been refining our chip design since May 2013 so they have both the capability and have had sufficient time in order to achieve this and there is every reason to trust them. On top of this our VP of ASIC development is Eric Gunn who has worked as a semiconductor for over 30 years holding senior positions at the likes of TSMC, GUC, National Semiconductor and Plessey and with his contacts with our foundry we are being dealt with on a more personal level and have been assured our design is solid enough for us to confidently promise 50 Mh/s and 250 Mh/s at a bare minimum respectively.

I didn't think about the creditcard. Is that the purchase protection? I have bought with mastercard, they have a 180days purchase protection/insurance. If this would be covered, I could give it a go