1. If BFL really have chips coming, then they are not making any so-to-speak "clock buffer adjustments", either that or they don't have any chips coming and have not tape-out at all, it is also entirely possible that they have not make the MASK yet either. I guess we will find out on the week of the 11th, in this month hopefully.
My understanding is that these clock buffer adjustments were made as soon as they figured out their first batch of chips wouldn't work (late October). They aren't still making any adjustments, they are just waiting on the newly-adjusted chips to arrive.
I wonder what price BFL is getting their 300mm 65nm wafers for, if Avalon is paying 4k for a 110nm wafer? Even if they pay half of what Avalon is due to their higher volume, their 100k chip order would be worth $200k.
They better hope the chips work this time.
i think the wafer cost is rather low than the MASK cost @ 65nm.. ...
Maybe I was misunderstood. BFL is probably getting around 1000 chips out of a 300mm wafer, so their order for a 100k chips would be about 100 wafers. The mask costs will be large, but ordering a couple to several hundred thousand dollars worth of wafers on top of your mask costs without doing a small run to test it just seems very risky.
It is quite a cost, but consider that timing is everything in this ASIC battle. BFL spending a couple hundred thousand to avoid having to way 4-6 weeks for a sample to be cut and THEN order new wafers and wait for those as well could be a smart move. Making customers wait another 4-6 weeks could be a reputation killer, and $200k might be a small price to pay to keep their existing preorders and reputation intact. I'm sure they don't like that they had to spend that much money, but they couldn't wait for new samples before putting in an order for their new wafers - it would kill them as a competitor in this race. I'm sure they're crossing their fingers that the new chips work just as much as everyone who ordered from them is.
