I'm just saying that there are probably a lot of little parts to order and they may have difficulties at this time to obtain them. I'm not saying because this one company is taking 3 weeks off that everyone will. I'm just saying maybe, there may be delays in the next little while. Apparently officially it's Jan31st and lasts for about a week. I'm not Chinese, I don't live there or study their culture, just that there are companies shutting down early, some working right through, who the hell knows. But tapeout = Jan 20th does not equal a shipping product. The key point of my pointless post was that mid-February is the EARLIEST you can expect something. I would say March.
I think March is too optimistic.
Tapeout just means the design is finished.
*If* they taped-out on Jan 20, and the fab started making the mask straight away it wouldn't be finished until late February at the earliest assuming that the fab will shut down for a week at the beginning of February. Then they have to actually make the wafers, slice them, package them, bump them and test them. If all that goes as fast as practically possible, and the tests results are good enough, then they can produce the chips in volume. I think with everything going about as well as could be expected they might have chips in volume by early April, not earlier. Then they've got to put them on PCBs and do final packaging.
If they have working miners in volume by the end of April they will have excelled themselves. Anyone who hopes for significantly sooner is going to be disappointed.
Edit: Also, considering they are going for a liquid-cooled data centre in a shipping container, they will have to test that configuration out as well. I think late April to get one of those puppies cooking would be an amazing effort.
Stop the FUD, troll!
