Topic: BFL ASIC specifications (Read 4272 times)

It is bizarre that Erk would claim that most orders were placed "after the design was done" since BFL (as of early June) has not completed the design of the ASIC Singles and Mini-rigs and had to redo the Jalapeno board (MOSFETs were the wrong spec) as late as May 25th.

I hope this has been done through investor money. If their investors have goven them enough money, no worries. The margins on FPGAs was not very high. That is easily said since you can source all parts on digikey, even the FPGA chips.


I dont know shit about their operation, but I know the costs. I don't earn anything from a smear campaign, actually. I'd love them to have been more professional. But since I found a COO calling customers stupid cunts, I have refunded a lucrative order.

The last time I heard a CEO call someone asshole and cunts was with a pretty big other company: ENRON


Also, according to the laws of the state BFL is incorporated in, they would have to disclose non-private venture capital funds. As a corporation, the only thing they have to disclose is who owns shares, in a limited manner.

So, from information policy and what I could dig up, the only way they could pull off what they have been saying is by having someone private signing a private loan to the corporation. Thats the only thing that does not leave a papertrail to follow. Or a bank loan. But sorry, never ever.


But, since you said most orders were done after the wafers were done: Interesting, that means they would have had such an amount invested at that point. Or not. Depending on what game they were actually playing.

I don't care either way, a COO calling people cunts on a public forum who argues that an engineer can tell a customer and his superior that "the project is done when it is done" is enough for me to pull my personal plug.

But, we will see. This is an interesting game of competition coming.

Citation please.

There is plenty of new info on them, just not in this thread.

There are also no new info about their 50 GH/s or 25 GH/s miners. Have they exhausted all their wafers, so they prefer to ship just the Jalapenos? I can't also see a word about their trade-ins, which should cost them even more money.

You can infer profit margins from BFL's FPGA equipment because it is all made from off off the shelf equipment and the cost of the components are well known.

BFL has never disclosed any venture capital investments made in their company, so that is a big red flag and a concern to anyone considering investing via pre-order in BFL.

These are serious concerns about how BFL can continue to fund their operating costs without dipping into pre-order funds. And if they are dipping into pre-order funds, it is even more concerning because they are lying about not doing so.

93% of BFL's order base in dollar terms is in non-Jalepeno units, and they have only shipped 10% of their Jalapeno units. That is 10% of $490,000 which is $49,000 in revenue over the last 2 months. How much of that (if any) is profit is also concerning, since all those orders were priced with 1 $90 (retail) chip but ships with 2.

Instead of re-assuring investors with pre-orders by supplying actual information about their financial health, all BFL does is call people liars and douches and accuse them of smear campaigns. What are they hiding and why are they hiding it?

Of course you wouldn't have a clue. This is utter BS. you don't know about investors or revenue from their FPGA sales or nothing about them, it's just a really obvious smear attempt.

Most of the pre-orders were placed after the the wafers and design were done, which kind of blows your revenue wild guesses.

^^This^^
is precisely why I am concerned about BFL's pre-order money.
If they have used the pre-order money to fund their ASIC development (which has run over budget on both time and money), then BFL customers have to hope that they don't get hit by a wave of refunds and that the pre-order cash keeps rolling in.
If they have not used the pre-order money (unlikely imo) then how did they fund the $4-5 million in operating costs up to this point?

Yes. With 10 estimated employees, 4-5 million dollars in costs towards development through subcontractors, I call it money problems.


10 employees at around 25-30k if they are not so well paid, makes for another 360.000. Lets say they burnt the first batches of chips, blew a lot of cases.... blew lots of chips, have to pay health insurance. Another 300.000.

I have calculated an ASICs business, since I have no idea what to do there. I called up contractors and specialists for everything, since I thought if BFL makes millionaires, why not become one myself?

As it turned out, some of the more prestigious development companies asked between 1.5 and 2 million EURO in advance for initial development and estimated a timeframe of one to two years until serial production could start.


 

Yup, trolling. But then you're shilling. I'm new here and I thought it was about time I lost the Mr Nice Guy facade and tried out my darker instincts. But it is my honest opinion of BFL. Nice to rattle your cage  BTW its lose, not loose (though some of their customers might be getting a bit loose in the bowel department given all the delays and shenanigans).

Loose customers yeah lol, like the 7million came from thin air did it?  I would say they have at least 7mill worth of customers.
The ASIC is designed, they work, and they are shipping fast. If you are trying to make a point about some other ASIC they may make in the future fair enough, if not then I suspect you are just trolling. The latter is more likely from the tone of your BS.

That all depends on how much of that they have spent. According to BFL, they have spent none of the pre-order money they have.
Expensive chips eat into margins, which just doubled for BFL when they had to go from 1 chip Jalapeno's to 2 chips.

Then they should have hired professionals to do their design work for them in the first place. Actually they could do it right now, and maybe get a good second-gen product out of the door before they lose too many customers. Or perhaps Josh is just looking to buy an island using the pre-order stash?

They got at least $7million in pre-order payments if you can believe http://bfl.ptz.ro/ which I don't.

Is that what you call money problems?

It explains why they would have money problems though, GF isn't really the "cheapest" place. They are among the best, though.

I don't think that too little high grade chips will be a problem.

They may have a botched wafer that has a bugged design on it with almost no grade A chips from the yield.
They could mix that with a fixed wafer to somewhat recoup the costs of the bad one.

Considering the ASIC's haven't even been ordered yet, as BFL are still ascertaining the final numbers before they pace the order, you have no idea what the yield will be. The process might have improved dramatically since the last wafers. They may not be able to deliver the low grade chips in volume.

One mistake in your proposition is to assume that the delivered 'mix' is a fair representation of the yield.
I think BFL is perfectly capable of keeping a significant portion of the grade A chips for themselfs.
They (will) have many products to support and i can easily imagine they don't want to put lower grades in their devices. They also made promises to their customers about hashrtes and power so they actually need the higher grade chips.
So it would seem natural for them to want to sell off as much of the lower grades as possible.
So i don't think we can say anything about their actual yield of grade A chips.

I think some people were speculating that BFL used TSMC which is in Taiwan.