Topic: BFL silent these past days? (Read 7095 times)

I see my comment and many others got deleted. Stuff like "box shifting", "people sitting around playing minecraft", "just a load of people moving boxes and sitting on offices", "9 months already", "video didn't show anyone using a solder iron or reflow unit", "at least we know the laser etching works" etc.

At least Tom has the decency to refund his customers instead of stringing his customer along like BFL is doing now.  What's worse is BFL taking on even more pre-orders... except for mini-rig, which is now out of stock..  How does something that was never in stock in the first place becomes out of stock?  I guess even in the fantasy-dream-world that is BFL, they ran out of fairy-dust to conjure up magical mini-rigs.

It's possible. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt there. They actually took orders in June, so they were already lying saying good stuff then. Perhaps I'm just too nice to BFL.

not may?

i thought it was around may when we started hearing good things from them?

OBV.

Last official update: 3/29
JZ devoted today to flaming on the forums, not updating customers

silent --> huge unresolvable problems ...

For those that don't know, the image is a screen grab from the, Butterfly Labs Company Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSu5Yyc1bEM

The same amount of BTC are mined every day regardless of whether they're mined with ASICs or not and regardless of difficulty.  BFL (or any other ASIC vendor) delivering in quantity will increase the overall network hashrate and reduce the profitability of existing hardware, but it's not going to affect the overall supply of BTC or demand for them.

Unfortunately I did not pay money to hear things from BFL but to receive a product.

FTFY

We've been hearing good things about this project since last June.

We've been hearing something 'good' every week since January.

I suspect that we will continue to hear good things in all the following weeks from now.

I don't think we'll see any actual progress apart from more prototyping 

I am so stupid! I just realized why we didn't see 22+ people in the video. The film crew was only there for the first shift, thus two more videos are expected from Camp BFL, depicting the going-ons during the second and third shift.

Today's riddle:

What does Josh say first thing in the morning went he greets the assemblers?
Hola.
What is he thinking when he says it?
Hijos de puta.

Silence is Golden (for Avalon owners and ASICMiner share holders).

We will hear something this week I am predicting, and its likely to even have an effect on BTC price if the news is positive.

I don't think so. I finally received my refund, but the way Tom handled this project I doubt that we would have seen a working miner anytime soon.

Thanks for clearing that up

i really wish bfl didn't lie so much.

if they didn't have these "ship dates" then tom might not have given up and we might've been able to get a good product from him.

These guys really are a pair of clown shoes.

No-one knows.

The 5,000 chips they have on hand (suspected to be 4,000 now because wafer 2 is the one which returned the crappy power results) won't fill very many orders.  The next 6 wafers were supposed to be completed once testing was completed on the first 6 but no-one seems to be talking about when they'll be completed any more (it was supposed to be only a few weeks after the first 6 wafers were done).

Perhaps more importantly, no-one's talking about the bulk order for 63,000 chips - from which the majority of pre-orders were likely going to be filled.

This leaves a lot of uncertainty about when customers who ordered after August can expect delivery because it doesn't sound like they're going to have the chips on hand to fill those orders any time soon even if they can manage to get sub-spec units out to June/July pre-orders in the next month.

I think people who are hanging in hoping that BFL will ship "soon" are assuming that once they start shipping everything will be fine.  But BFL has actually said nothing recently which suggests that they have enough components on hand to fill anything except the very early pre-orders.  Those with orders placed after August really need to start asking questions about what's happening with the bulk chips because delivery of their orders could still be months away even if June/July orders get filled soon.

They should also know with absolute certainty by now how many of each unit they are going to produce from batch 1 (which affects the likelihood of a particular order being filled from batch 1 because of their stupid 1/3 shipping plan), but that's something else they're not disclosing.

So what are they going to do with the second set of wafers then considering they ran into rather large issues? Would that be a scrap?

Nope.  Their entire gen 1 first run was supposed to total 75,000 chips.  They split the first batch of 12,000 into 2 and had 6 wafers delivered while the last few layers of the 2nd 6 were held back in case they ran into problems.  The bulk order of 63,000 was supposed to go into production a few weeks after the whole 12 wafers from batch 1 were delivered but there's been no confirmation that order has gone ahead. 

It looks like they're going to use what's already in production to fill early orders and that the bulk order will now be use for a revised design.

I cancelled my order with BFL when Avalon put out batch 3 orders... but could the silence be that they are preparing to ship? 

Reverse psychology perhaps? 

When they have absolutely nothing, they are updating like crazy about all their progress.  Now that they are updating nothing... maybe they are actually making progress?  It seems like we are starting to see some suspicious activity on Josh's Pool and then there is Luke's development miner on eligius.

I guess either way it doesn't really matter... but seems like as good a way as any to pass the time until Avalon start shipping out their next two batches.

6,000 sq/ft facility, 22+ (and growing) employees, and one bathroom.

FPGAs use to have a 6month warranty. Future asic products are lifetime. Im not sure if the fpga warrarnty has changed since they were first released but im positive it use to be 6 months.

BFL official update channel.

As a serious investors with self respect I do not resort to monitoring troll-box to get updates.

So here's the latest official update I've had :
Email :

In the meanwhile I've made some forum diving and subscribed to get notice of new post in the /Announcements/ section.

Here's what I've got so far:
Announcements :
Oh and they're also making contest for the best BFL drawings.

I've heard rumors they would give a discount for early investors but I can't confirm that.

This isn't what I'd call professional communications.

To be honest I did search the forum and 90% of what I saw looked like this : A troll or a customers with a Jalapeno or less whining, people telling him to STFU or get a refund ... and Josh coming from time to time to insult someone at random shedding doubt on their capabilities.

No! There was a post with an ASIC metal layer schematics. Custo msilicon Solutions Inc. is deisgning and manufacturing this ASIC. I don't know what this french guy is doing but it's not the ASIC, not the PCB and not the software. Maybe it's their project lead?!

Honestly I can't really see a KC company being a successful ASIC company. Shortage in the talent pool anyone?  Maybe if they relocated to where engineers are plentiful, say........California, they might have a chance of delivering this year.

I'm pretty sure there is no engineering team. The ASIC designer is some guy who works full time at a bank in France and works for BFL nights and weekends (probably like 10 hours part time), and the other parts of the "team" are the contract PCB manufacturers. BFL = sales & marketing hoping like hell they can stumble their way into shipping a product before people pull their pre-orders.

I have a few orders of 60 GH mining rigs so I am hopefull they will ship this month--- and Josh being silent is not good news --- and  bfl taking about 4 week after getting asic to get a working proto  type running make me thinks that the problem are greater than stated --- all I am trying to say is if the asic is ok and only has power problem --- it is fixable with a good engineer

I don't know how many ASICs they have, and they seems to work - well kind of - but I don't think those ASICs are working good enough for a product. At those little details in the videos, messages and pictures you can get from them leads me to this conclusion. If you have experience with ASIC design and manufacturing, read between the lines of their success messages. Those messages sounds good, but if you read about their remaining problems and the planed solutions you get another- very different - picture.

And then there is another major point: BFL is not Avalon - if they could really ship the products this month you would read victory messages from Josh in all forums. This silence alone speaks for itself!

He meant bowl's well.




Surely, they're not using the only PCB outfit in Chicago owned by Greeks who have relatives in KC, are they?

I think I read they have at least 85000 asic --- the asic works ok but use more power than expected --- they need to find a easy design solution to the problem --- note these asic use less than 50% power  of avalon (bfl asic will be better in long term - less power ) --- so design may end up in a much larger case with bigger power supply

They don't have good engineers. The ASIC is designed and produced by an external company. BFL has no knowledge about ASIC design and manufacturing. They allowed this external company to make the most stupid beginner errors with this ASIC.

There is not so many detail known about the board, but some things stinks here too. Maybe they outsourced the board design as well. Unfortunately the BFL people seems to have no clue what their suppliers are doing. In addition they are really bad in prjoject management.

I think we have to wait for at least one additional wafer run until Custom Silicon Inc. is delivering an ASIC that could be used to build a product.

You say this right? It was only 7 days ago

https://www.facebook.com/ButterflyLabs/posts/561388687226275?comment_id=6319490&reply_comment_id=6319537&total_comments=3

I just want them to start shipping, or at least Kano and ckolivas get theirs soon. Luke-jr "owning" the only one that's been "shipped" and mining just rubs salt in the wound.

At least they finally admitted they don't have a set shipping date. No more next month next month next month next week next month business. That was good comedy while it lasted though!

I agree they have a major power problem -    170 watts at 28 GH is not a good sign for a pcb designed for 60 watts-- but good engineers always come up with a solution to use the current asic
eg  3x 20 GH = 60 GH single -each miner at about 100 watts---  or change the power adaptor plug and use a power supply that has all the voltages external --- less heat on pcb and no power supply issues  ----- lots of other option are avaiable

the only problem is that the pcb may have to be redesigned ---10 layer proto type pcb may take 3-4 days but a production pcb  run of a few thousand may take a few weeks

I mean think about this one tweet (it was like a Q and A type deal)


Just ponder on that for a moment.

1. Evades the question straight away.
2. "That's what's happened at the foundry" - as in "we need the foundry to fix it and give us more chips".
3. classic BFL, "it bodes very well for us" - how in the world does a problem in the manufacture of the chip (or the chip design, it's not clear) bode well?

So BFL just tweeted the "Luke-Jr's Little Single is now running at around 27-30GHash/s". They don't mention anything about power consumption.

My speculation is that they can't fix the power issues without new ASICs from China. They are conspicuously silent about power consumption in their updates apart from relative measures like gaining a small % here from a board redesign, or a small % here from firmware - but I think they actually need entire new chips to be manufactured before they can meet power requirements and they know if they let on to this fact then it's all over.

They will stall and stall with power and firmware and 'developer units' (like Luke Jrs) until they get new chips in like a month. Mass shipping in 2 months if they don't go bankrupt.

Just like British Petroleum after the oil spill. (BP for those that don't know)

They used to intentionally build an atmosphere when reports were coming around. With someone shouting "Look Busy!" just as the reporters were about to get there.

It is all an act and a show. (IMO)

The dual waterblock unit is 2 FPGA's sandwiched together,not ASIC's.The one with the black"clamp" thing on it may be an ASIC,can't see from this angle.

God,I hope they ship soon 

Wikileak image from ICE's computer depicting a fiesta on the grounds of BFL, rewarding the temps for exceeding a 60% quality rating during the week by serving up a mess of locust whom failed miserably with their shipping performance.

Those are straws, not rumours... It is what BFL customers investors grasp at these days.
:/

FTFY

I thought they were claiming lifetime warranties, but only for tr life of their product, which they've had replaced for the past 9 months now.

What's this about not being able to do trade ins? I though they've extended that offer for a while now.

Anyone know what the warranty was for the FPGA single? I emailed them about mine on Tuesday this week, the power supply died. Haven't received any helpful information at all in the forums either. Plus finding out I can't do an upgrade any more makes it even more of a facepalm for me. I received it on November 2nd 2012 I believe... warranty has to be good still right? 

The only piece of hardware they aren't selling.

Ah, makes perfect sense!

Guys, guys, guys!  They were obviously off doing a team building exercise!  It takes a lot of coordination to descend upon anything like a swarm of locusts and not get in each others' way.  I hope they release a video of that, by the way.  A swarm of 22 locusts...  Can you imagine it??!?

Cute, that is the single in the back row: Two mini single connected together with a water block 

This is a quote from the youtube video.

As it turns out, they DO have something working:

Anyone who is still waiting on PIRATE want to comment on the BOLDED statement above? ROFL! 

30 GH +/- 10% ??

i was about to say the same thing.

no contact.. holding money indefinitely without contact.. lies.. a mismanaged company losing money for their customers..

its almost like karma really exists

Just watched the vid... something seems fishy that all of a sudden they have a bunch of workers, when the reddit guy who did an unaccompanied tour didn't report many people actually working.


I'm not bitchin, im not moanin. I've refrained from doing that for going on 9 months now. I've got a second month order that I'm waitin to receive. Sure hope the price figures out what it wants to do so that we can resume a somewhat steady mining setup.

Yes, that quote I gave read very familiar to the hundreds of others posting that about BFL. I was actually looking for the MtGox blogs (googled: "mtgox blog") and his post was one of the first few hits. I find it entertaining how the tables have turned.

Just quoting a rumor heard in the BFL forum shoutbox. Maybe it was wrong.

34? Looks more like 28 GH/s.

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/1CdcYVP4T4hjHwt353pEnGHrigeDLvuvZL

Did I read the OP correctly? Is it possible to exchange BFL for Mt Gox in the text, whereupon it would read the same? Here, Josh is espousing the exact beef with Gox as a myriad of others have about BFL, yet he came here and called some of the naysayers cocksuckers.

Madness!

They are not silent at all - today they released a promotional video on their website.
They are also preparing several dev units and were able to up the performance of Luke-Jr's unit to 34 GH/s.

While I am hear eager to receive what I ordered and prepaid 9 months ago, this is not the time to panic, nor is it a time to bitch and moan. If I want to hear bitching, I listen to my wife. If I want to hear moaning, I listen to "Bella", a trained professional.

In a nutshell: Good things come to those who wait.

Latest with no comment from me , but I'm sure some people on here will have lots.

BFL Video Tour Apr 11, 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSu5Yyc1bEM | We should be shipping soon. We don't have an exact date.

Mrr... As a customer invester, I really hope they deliver something. I believe they have good intentions, just horrible, HORRIBLE execution. There were a lot of mistakes they made (and they admitted to making several), which is to be expected. However, I think they bit off more than they can chew and are struggling to get it all together. I'm sure they'll deliver.... eventually...

They are silent because if Bitcoin will crash (what is very likely) they will be fucked, or rather i should say their customers will be. BFL will be biggest failure in bitcoin history.