Topic: Alpha Technology Litecoin (Scrypt) ASIC Miner Order Batch 1 Now! - page 248. (Read 529086 times)

These noobs had their web site crash under the load of a couple hundred people registering. LOL. https://twitter.com/UkAlpha/status/415848475985973248

The CEO name is Mohammed Akram  

Here is his picture, please people this smells like a scam.

I don't think I will be getting one of theses. The main factors are it won't arrive until 2015, no protection or money back if they fail to ship out on time. I can mine with my GPU for a year and still make a decent amount of coins. Their refund policy is just crap, price could be a little better. Good luck everyone else. We need more information before anyone should get into this.

Its only the pre-order fee you pay in december/january and then you have to pay full price 70% 2 months before shipping. Total price: £1350 inc. VAT.

I thought a 5MH miner is 405 pounds?

I hope everyone understands this is a SCAM.

8906 USD for 25 MH/s = 29 graphics card (280x) for about 300 USD each. 22 MH/s.

I know they better provide value for money and far less energy usage but their terms and condition are awful.


Viper (Scrypt) Miner (5Mh/s) = £1350  = 7 graphics card = 5250 Mh/s

If someone changes the scrypt code base they will both be worthless. And if you cancel pre-order before its begin shipped you'll only get 50% back + as if that were not enough they also charge 114.45 USD for canceling order.

In my country electrical power is so cheap I dont even notice any diffrent on my power bill if its using 100 or 1500+ watt.

ASIC miners are only created for one solid purpose which means they will be very hard to sell if a new ASIC resistant proof of work algorithm is created.
After GPU mining is no longer profitable selling computer parts will be easy even if you dont get full retail value back.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who thought this looks a bit dodgy:

1) The website is littered with spelling/grammar errors.  You don't see that from companies who have the profile that this lot are claiming.

2) The Ts&Cs look dodgy to me, as others have pointed out.

3) No sign of any development hardware or testing, etc.  In a market like this, that would be the thing that would turn people's heads; having a working prototype or proof of concept, even if it was sub-standard in terms of performance.  I know that this sort of thing will need custom ICs built to work, but a PoC would be needed beforehand, I think, to convince anyone this was anything other than wishful thinking (at best)

4) Checking out their development partners, they seem to have produced a few bits of kit a while ago, and do some FPGA development.  Nothing particularly special, and a load of claims/specs but not that much in the way of hardware on show.

Having checked out the other people who were going to make a scrypt miner which was FPGA based and seeing it would cost the earth and underperform, it's difficult not to see this the same way.  As someone's already said, 2015...best case scenario.  I say that as someone who invested in OpenPandora on week 3, and it took 3 years to arrive, instead of the 6 months they promised; that was on a fairly straightforward product that didn't involve any custom ICs...

Wow this is even more dodgy! How about you refund 200% deposit for not delivering after 5 months? What stops these guys stalling for 3 months then refunding everyone only 50%  SCAM!

9 months wait?
Illegal refund conditions (check Terms and Conditions).
So much overpriced?
I don't want to be BFL'd again, thanks, I am done here.

ASICs Killed BTC/SHA256 mining for GPU owners. LTC/Scrypt was born. ASICs compete with Scrypt, push out low end GPUs, a new (more ASIC resistant) coin will be made.

Bottom line, $9000 will buy you ~15MH/s in GPU Scrypt performance, with the added security of being able to resell the hardware. If you're frugal, you can probably improve on that. Cooling is still an issue, but both cooling and electricity aren't problems for a lot of people. Even if this isn't some elaborate scam (don't hold your breath) this isn't the same deal as with BTC.

Also, seems like saying Global Foundries will be doing your manufacturing is just name dropping for credibility. GF is a very large company. I'd be surprised if they would bother with a small order like this. Maybe we should call them up and ask if they are affiliated.  

Yeah opportunity costs  

I predict this will start shipping...

in 2015

LOL

9 months minimum wait... so let's say about 15 months just to be safe...

How much can you mine on GPU during that 15 months?  A LOT

LOL

No there are too many of us, we will come up with another GPU coin and promote it to the moon

Got an email today from them

Development Update 23/12/2013

December 23, 2013
Announcements

Today is the release of our full pricing, shipping, terms and all the helpful information you would need to secure a pre-order, this can all be found in the ‘Terms of Order’ page. We will be taking a 30% deposit payment, and remainder 70% to be paid 8-10 weeks before shipment. Minimum chip specifications have been confirmed from our ASIC manufacturer using Global Foundries as our foundry. In regards to our devices, we have confirmed a lower power consumption than quoted previously and also a guarantee of minimum hash rate. this can all be found in the individual Product pages. Please read the Terms of Order page, and individual Products pages carefully.

To summarise some other things:

Viper-5mh/s which can hash at minimum 5 MH/s: £1350 (inc VAT) Deposit- £405 (inc VAT)  ABOUT 2000 USD

Viper-25mh/s which can hash at minimum 25 MH/s: £5450 (inc VAT) Deposit- £1635 (inc VAT) ABOUT 9000 !!!! USD

ASIC Chip Specs

Process: 28nm/40nm HPP, 3.3v/1.8v

Internal Memory: >=128Mb SRAM

Gates: ~28M Gates

Clock Speed: > 600 Mhz Core Clock

Hashing Cores: >= 128

Chip Hash rate: > 350 Kh/s

Power Consumption: < 5w

Registration and Wishlist

Registration will be open on the 25th or 26th of December. We urge all customers to be prepared by providing shipping and billing information in the My Account section. Also showing interest by adding their desired products to the Wishlist, with stated quantity.

compared with scrypt performance on FPGA is very good and I would have also thought that if the investment in very expensive Asic development was done for the modified Blake-256 algo you could be talking 2-3x faster than even the current best SHA-256D Asic it would most certainly use less silicon space thus the chips would be cheaper each and use less power, I think an investment in scrypt based Asic devices is very risky with new algorithms like Blake-256 on the scene  

thanks! i have to study more of this

no Giga hash is correct  

GH/s

Edit:
Because its a new algo?

MH/s i guess  
sorry, i don't know blakecoin, you actually mean GH?
why do you compare it with scrypt then?

not GPU only GPU and FPGA 

Why Blakecoin beats other coins in the long run:

The modified blake-256 algorithm hash rate is just under 3x faster on the GPU and just over 2x on the FPGA compared with Bitcoin
The reward for mining Blakecoin does Not decrease over time it only increases with block height and difficulty
No restriction on any platform as Blakecoin does not include artificial *Security* that slows down possible mining hash rate and reduces power efficiency
Already has planned use for Blakecoin as a currency storage between MMO systems with prototypes in development

Blakecoin is the fastest !

5.1GH/s on a AMD ATI Radeon 7990
2.2GH/s on a AMD ATI Radeon 7970
1.4GH/s on a AMD ATI Radeon 6970
1.3GH/s on a AMD ATI Radeon 5870
1.6GH/s on a ZTEX USB-FPGA 1.15y Quad Spartan-6 LX150 Development Board (using < 40w of power)

Tweaks:
Removed some of the double hashing from the wallet for increased efficiency and reduced collisions

Everything about this including the people behind it looks dodgy