Check this out (from pcfli, who might have the inside track):
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12769055New batch is apparently in 10days and will be deprecated to 3.5TH-probably in lieu of the competition that will have a ~3.3Th machine for a bulk price of what was posted here already (very low indeed if it is true).
I sincerely hope they would seriously reduce the S7 "lite" price even if this would kill the aftermarket price of S7 "large".
Or, maybe they already have a 14/16nm solution?
I think its something like the batch 2 being the rejects from Batch 1 except even more unstable at higher freqs than the batch 2's... therefore they have to really drop the clockrate to get the 3.5TH/s and stability
Those units that do not make the advertising claims of 4.8TH/s are money thrown out the window if they don't make them work somehow. So it would make sense to throw them through a rework process, if they still don't preform, then lower the clock rate and look for the stability sweet spot and sell them as a de-rated S7.
The S7 B2's were de-rated to 575Mhz clock, maybe the S7 B5's are the real flunkers and are clocked for stability at 500Mhz clockrate.
Before tossing the ones that don't meet spec into the hopper and take the loss, I would re-work them and look for a workaround to recover some cash from the QC fail units.
