*Monarch UPDATE* From our favorite boy Inaba ~~ More LIEs!https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/4414-monarch-information.html#post74594The Monarch roll out rolls forward
The silicon wafers are at the packaging planet as of the 13th of January. Our packaging plant is a multi-purpose plant and will be slicing the wafers into chips as well as packaging them. Traditionally, we've had to send chips to a slicing facility, then to the packaging facility, which incurs time delays. Our packaging facility eliminates that delay. They are also the same packaging facility we have been using for our second iteration 65nm chips and it has worked out very well, so we are familiar with them and they are familiar with us and know what requirements we have for our chips.
This should make for fairly smooth sailing as far as packaging goes.
We currently expect our first test silicon chips to take
approximately 1 week, gi
ve or take a few days, for processing and packaging. As with any cutting edge technology,
unexpected problems can delay the process, but it's been fairly routine up to this point, so we are not anticipating any problems. After the packaging process is finished, the chips will be sent to our testing and
binning facility in California to bring up the chip for the first time. Since this chip is based off of our 65nm design, the testing/bring up phase should be dramatically reduced from the 65nm chip bring up time, as all the IOs and behaviors are already known quantities. As with the packaging,
unexpected problems can cause delays in this area, but we are hoping the bring up/testing process will take
approximately one week, give or take a few days. Once the chip testing is complete and verified, the remaining chips are
sent to our Chicago facility for mounting on Monarch boards. At this stage, we will receive the
first live Monarch board in our shop in KC a
day or two later and we will begin the process of finalizing the firmware and testing out all facets of the board. We have had several prototype boards in for various types of testing, most notably a prototype design with resistors in place of the chips to test electrical connections on the board itself between the various components as well as to test heat load for the cooling system. As the majority of the testing of the board has already been done, unless there's a specific chip/board interface problem (which is unlikely), the board firmware testing and full scale testing
"should be fairly quick".
At that point, we will begin assembling the delivery units and start shipping the Monarch shortly after that. Right now, we hope to start shipping the first Monarchs out the door at the
very earliest at the very end of January or beginning of February, if there are any problems encountered, it may
delay the roll out, but right now everything is going fine and we've encountered no unexpected issues. I will post another update as soon as I have additional information to share.
.... NOT!!!!! 