Topic: BFL - Update 3/4 - page 2. (Read 5053 times)

I guess time will tell.

How many chips per wafer does Avalon get?

http://bitbet.us/bet/265/bfl-will-deliver-asic-devices-before-april-1st/

^ there is a lot of free money for your here, Josh!

Actually my estimate is if anything, rather high for a 200mm wafer. Have a look here:
http://www.gsaglobal.org/email/2010/general/0222w.htm

If they are using 300mm wafers it might be over $2000, but it still wont cost a fortune, particularly not on such old processes. Note that this doesnt include testing, dicing and packaging, which may cost more than the wafer, but BFL didnt do that on their "burnt" wafer anyway.

They'll just make more wafers.  They're not gonna lose any orders for having sacrificed that one wafer (IMO).

It still told them that the chips operate at a basic level.  The test could have gone the other way where the chips didn't operate at all, and they would have needed to start looking for a cause right away.

I think that the manually-wirebound test had value.

Actually I meant expensive in the sense of recouping the NRE with shipped product and not the actual cost of the wafer.

Avalon pays (it is estimated) about 4k per wafer at 110nm.

How is BFL paying half that at 65nm? Somehow your estimates sounds kinda off.

To be fair, the cost of a processed 65nm wafer is likely somewhere between $1500-$2000. Not exactly a fortune.

This whole testing fiasco is really a wonderment.  To lose that many precious (and expensive) chips to only gain a marginal amount of useful information is insane.  At any company I have worked for that kind of decision would have landed someone a pink slip.

Even if only 30GH is obtained, the product is so much better than Avalon's and there are so many more TH sold that it won't actually change profits that much.  Sure, 66GH would be better, but we're talking about a 10x increase in difficulty here.  Go ahead and do the math - for 33GH, say the diff increases 13x (because of avalon+asicminer), and for 66GH say it increases 21x, and see what comes out.  Running that shows $11/day vs $13/day per single SC - not much to cry over.

More proof that BFL is full of BS.

Prayer works, just how you use it matters. But we can discuss that elsewhere.


"Please oh please God, just let these chips perform super duperly so we can satisfy all of our empty promises to our customers up until now. And so we can make lots of MOH-KNEEz! Amen"

Just a thought of what they are praying...sounds ridiculous lol. 

More proof that prayer doesn't work.

Its Josh or whoever is calling the shots for him, not having a clue. I pretty much predicted this spot on:


So as predicted,  he now learned that testing a manually wirebonded chip doesnt really tell you all that much and they still cant green light the other wafers (which was the stated purpose) until they have a few BGA packaged chips to test with. Making that 6000 candidate sacrifice an utter waste.

Only in bitcoin world can a semi company that constantly screws things up this badly still be considered a market leader thats on track to making a shitload of money. In any other market they would have been bankrupt by now. Lets hope helveticoin is for real and shows them how its done.

This ^

Reality is going to set in fast with BFL once their customers get their units that dont run at the speeds advertised or they do and then burn out or BFL doesn't ship at all and continues delays.

Pick your poison, at the end of the process, BFL is essentially screwed, but BFL customers are screwed^2.

That's about what I paid for my Singles on Day 1.  I thought I would get my ASIC before most everyone and be able to make the 200+ BTC back.  I'll make my $1350 back but I did not intend to "sell" the BTC - I wanted to leverage it into more BTC.  In that aspect I have failed (or rather somebody failed me).

Actually I do not find this sacrificing one wafer odd at all. I am not sure if they are sacrificing really anything. My bet is going to be they are not.

The thing you all are overlooking is that is really really difficult to ramp up production so fast as BFL claims and as everyone expects. Avalon did not ramp up that fast either as they claimed to have done.

My bet is that the first batch size was selected to be high enough so that they do not run any risk of having shortage of chips while there are other factors that are going to affect the number of boxes they can possibly build on the first couple of weeks. So now they probably have realized that they were really optimistic when choosing the size of first batch of ASICs and they can safely "sacrifice" one wafer without actually loosing anything. They could probably use a second and third wafer from this batch for target shooting practice and still not limit the box output in any way and still have unused chips in corner when the second batch of ASICs arrive. All they "lost" was some manpower from their subcontractor which is going to send them a bill for.

Someone made a list of tests a reputable ASIC design house runs to declare whether a ASIC is really good or not. My bet is none of the bitcoin ASIC design teams are going to run even 10% of those tests. They cost money to run and who cares if the ASIC fails in some temperature. Actually if the ASIC fails some of the more obscure tests it costs the bitcoin ASIC design house a huge amount of money as they have to throw the whole lot to the bin and make a respin. Better make sure no tests are failed and that is made sure by not running the tests. It is a basic seems to work OK or NOT only test and away you go with manufacturing. Good luck with warranty claims covering the whole lot, not just some individual machines. This basic OK/NOT test has now been run on the test chip and it will be repeated on packaged chip and that is pretty much all testing there is going to be. Or if there any any other tests run it is just for giggles only and any fails observed while doing so will be promptly un-seen.

I don't believe they have actually given the go-ahead to finalize the next 6 wafers.  Read the announcement again.



In this case I disagree.  For as normal product this would be true, but in this case I think that customers would rather have it for a few weeks and have to return it than not.

It would suck for the vendor though.



Imagine ppl who ordered then and paid in BTC.  A Single would cost about 216 BTC.

Yeah its definitely concerning. Why test the chips at all if they cant do it at the full speed? What happens if they build the prototype and only 50% of the chips are stable above 400mhz?

Until they have working protoypes in the casing with a stock powersupply and cooling, everything is still a gamble.

Im a customer so Im trying to stay optimistic but I cant even imagine how people who ordered summer of 2012 are feeling with thousands of $ locked up for 8 months and endless excuses and delays. 

any update of shipping date? the bumping took so  much time, i have a bad feeling about the shipping

Just hope that they do all the function test thoroughly, returning a buggy product after several weeks of running will be even more terrible from an end user's point of view