Where did you get the $5k price on 28nm wafers? Does that 5K include the design cost of the masks? What about the bumping and binning processes? The boards? Etc?
Sorry, I just don't see it.
Topic: Bitcoin: On our way to a Petahash - page 2. (Read 4259 times)
BTW, regarding avalon. I read elsewhere their chip is only 16.13 mm2. Lets assume its square, that gives 4.65x4.65mm.
Im also assuming this is a 200mm wafer, not many if any 300mm fabs use such an old process. That gives up to 1188 candidates.
A processed 200mm 110nm wafer should cost no more than $2000 in volume. There is a fixed tooling/upstart cost that will weigh in on small orders, but still:
$2000/1188=$1.6 per candidate.
Cutting, testing, packaging and handling likely cost more per chip than the fabbing in this case, but even so, and after applying a yield % I seriously doubt it adds up to more than $4 per chip.
The rest is margin. Unless they used 150mm wafers in Fab2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC
Then you get 630 candidates per wafer, and you may get in the ballbark of the numbers you quoted assuming a substantial fixed fee.
One last point of reference. AMD Llano. Granted, its on 32nm, but that shouldnt make all that much difference, especially since it uses SOI wafers which are substantially more expensive than bulk. It has a diesize of 228mm2, and it retails for as low as $39.99 on newegg, so consumer price, boxed with fan and cooler, warranty etc. Do you really believe it costs AMD more than $20 to fab the chip? I dont. I actually think its closer to $10, but lets use $20
srqt(228mm2)=15.1mm
That gives 256 candidates per 300mm wafer.
256x$20 (tops!) = $5120 per wafer.
Thats includes yield, cutting, testing, packaging.
Still think Im far off?
Im also assuming this is a 200mm wafer, not many if any 300mm fabs use such an old process. That gives up to 1188 candidates.
A processed 200mm 110nm wafer should cost no more than $2000 in volume. There is a fixed tooling/upstart cost that will weigh in on small orders, but still:
$2000/1188=$1.6 per candidate.
Cutting, testing, packaging and handling likely cost more per chip than the fabbing in this case, but even so, and after applying a yield % I seriously doubt it adds up to more than $4 per chip.
The rest is margin. Unless they used 150mm wafers in Fab2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC
Then you get 630 candidates per wafer, and you may get in the ballbark of the numbers you quoted assuming a substantial fixed fee.
One last point of reference. AMD Llano. Granted, its on 32nm, but that shouldnt make all that much difference, especially since it uses SOI wafers which are substantially more expensive than bulk. It has a diesize of 228mm2, and it retails for as low as $39.99 on newegg, so consumer price, boxed with fan and cooler, warranty etc. Do you really believe it costs AMD more than $20 to fab the chip? I dont. I actually think its closer to $10, but lets use $20
srqt(228mm2)=15.1mm
That gives 256 candidates per 300mm wafer.
256x$20 (tops!) = $5120 per wafer.
Thats includes yield, cutting, testing, packaging.
Still think Im far off?
How does that $15 phone compare to an $1100 i7 4930 processor? It doesn't.
It does. Intels variable production cost for an i7 is in that ball bark too.
Now an i7 is about 2 or 3x the size of a mobile phone soc, silicon cost scales accordingly, and a bit more to account for lower yield, but dont be fooled thinking it actually costs intel $100, let alone $1000, because it doesnt. But there is a huge NRE to write off, developing an i7 is in no way comparable to a mining chip and may cost billions of dollars, not too mention the process tech, since intel does everything in house.
Its rather simple, a fully processed wafer on state of the art process tech from a foundry typically costs ~$5000 (and drops off to ~$2000 over time as the process matures).
IM not sure what 28nm wafer go for today, but last year they were $5000, today is probably quite a bit less. Lets take §4000 .
A 300mm wafer holds about 600 chip candidates if they are 10x10mm2
http://www.silicon-edge.co.uk/j/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68
$4000/600=$6.6 silicon cost per chip candidate.
If the chip is huge, say 18mx18mm=324mm2 you get 177 candidatres
$4000/177=$22.5 per chip candidate
Add a few percent to accommodate imperfect yields and add a few dollar per chip for cutting, testing and packaging and and you are in the ballpark.
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1 Exahash = 2 million 500GH chips. That's only 2x what Avalon had 'on order'. 780BTC for 10,000 chips = .078BTC per chip... and these were 110nm chips.
wafer processing costs for 110mm are not dramatically lower than for modern processes, the difference is probably only about a factor 2x or 3x at most. So 110nm chips are actually MUCH MUCH more expensive per transistor (/hashing engine/GH) than 28nm ones. The big difference is that the NRE (design and maskset) is dramatically cheaper for older processes (could easily be a factor 10 or more), and its much easier to book capacity without having to wait many months since its not like AMD and nVidia are putting in a lot of orders on 110nm anymore.
Actually we're heading towards a exahash.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
Excellent reasoning. I think you are on target. It would be very interesting to get a leak on how much chips actually cost at manufacturing (28nm for example) to get a base seed value for your estimate.
Im basing my guestimate on the embedded SoC market. A typical highend phone SoC sells for about $15 in large volumes. That is when you buy them from nVidia (qualcomm, samsung etc)., so these companies already have a margin on that, fabbing cost will be lower. OTOH 28nm mining chips may be a fair bit larger than mobile phone SoCs, I dont have any size data (does anyone?), but they should also be a lot more simple to produce and validate, contain less layers, far less IO pins, etc.
My guesstimate may well be off by a factor 2 or 3, but not likely more than that, and so should still give you a ballpark idea.
1 Exahash = 2 million 500GH chips. That's only 2x what Avalon had 'on order'. 780BTC for 10,000 chips = .078BTC per chip... and these were 110nm chips. I'm sorry, but I cannot see a more than 4x reduction in size for ~3x cost in that short a time.
Actually we're heading towards a exahash.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
Excellent reasoning. I think you are on target. It would be very interesting to get a leak on how much chips actually cost at manufacturing (28nm for example) to get a base seed value for your estimate.
Im basing my guestimate on the embedded SoC market. A typical highend phone SoC sells for about $15 in large volumes. That is when you buy them from nVidia (qualcomm, samsung etc)., so these companies already have a margin on that, fabbing cost will be lower. OTOH 28nm mining chips may be a fair bit larger than mobile phone SoCs, I dont have any size data (does anyone?), but they should also be a lot more simple to produce and validate, contain less layers, far less IO pins, etc.
My guesstimate may well be off by a factor 2 or 3, but not likely more than that, and so should still give you a ballpark idea.
Actually we're heading towards a exahash.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
Excellent reasoning. I think you are on target. It would be very interesting to get a leak on how much chips actually cost at manufacturing (28nm for example) to get a base seed value for your estimate.
Actually we're heading towards a exahash.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
Reasoning: those upcoming 28nm chips produce ~500GH and my guess is ~$30 is roughly the price at which they can still be sold profitably (that includes basic PCB, housing, minimal markup; variable cost of the chip alone is probably closer to $10 in large volume). So as long as there is demand at or above that price point, it makes sense for asic vendors to sell (or produce and mine themselves). If you do the math at what point most miners would no longer be interested in buying 500GH (250W) for ~$30, depending on electricity cost and BTC exchange rate, I get at a difficulty on the order of ~100 - 200,000,000,000. Which means a network speed of roughly a exahash. Thats where we are headed IMO, though Im not taking any bets how long it will take. Could be as little as 2 years from now to get close to that.
knc stated "delivery at end of september" not september 25th.
that's why he said "or so"
knc stated "delivery at end of september" not september 25th.
If KnC holds there schedule and starts delivery 25 sept or so we will see 1 PH about the second day, 26 sept and when there first batch is over around 21 days later, the 15 nov we will probably be at 4-5 PH at least.
Bitcoin's network is becoming a processing monster, and with dedicated ASIC core at it's heart is ready for a bigger world and a ton of transaction traffic. In the end, the network is quickly becoming larger, more distributed, and secure.
Really having a highly secure and robust network in place before Bitcoin takes its next giant leap forward is a really good thing. Not to equate GOX to mining directly, but we saw what it looks like when the infrastructure fails under the weight of a rapid push. Having a solid distributed net with multi-million dollar mining businesses involved should inspire further confidence in Bitcoin as a real currency.
You do realize that all this mining stuff has nothing to do with processing transactions, and that instead of running Bitcoin nodes that can process transactions practically all of these miners are just getting paid by pools to do outsourced sha256 calculations, and they never see transactions or even the blockchain at all, and as a result don't contribute much to improving Bitcoin's security— ... and that we're even in a worst state than we were a year ago, now kidnapping or hacking _two_ people is enough to freely perform transaction reversals...Really having a highly secure and robust network in place before Bitcoin takes its next giant leap forward is a really good thing. Not to equate GOX to mining directly, but we saw what it looks like when the infrastructure fails under the weight of a rapid push. Having a solid distributed net with multi-million dollar mining businesses involved should inspire further confidence in Bitcoin as a real currency.
You realize this, right?
Why don't you try again with a less dickish tone, and I'll reply
You do realize that all this mining stuff has nothing to do with processing transactions, and that instead of running Bitcoin nodes that can process transactions practically all of these miners are just getting paid by pools to do outsourced sha256 calculations, and they never see transactions or even the blockchain at all, and as a result don't contribute much to improving Bitcoin's security— ... and that we're even in a worst state than we were a year ago, now kidnapping or hacking _two_ people is enough to freely perform transaction reversals...
Make it _three_. BTCGuild, 50BTC, and Slush make up over 50% of the network. A year ago it took the top 5 pools to reach 50%.
And you don't need to kidnap them. Just use a $5 wrench.
Bitcoin's network is becoming a processing monster, and with dedicated ASIC core at it's heart is ready for a bigger world and a ton of transaction traffic. In the end, the network is quickly becoming larger, more distributed, and secure.
Really having a highly secure and robust network in place before Bitcoin takes its next giant leap forward is a really good thing. Not to equate GOX to mining directly, but we saw what it looks like when the infrastructure fails under the weight of a rapid push. Having a solid distributed net with multi-million dollar mining businesses involved should inspire further confidence in Bitcoin as a real currency.
You do realize that all this mining stuff has nothing to do with processing transactions, and that instead of running Bitcoin nodes that can process transactions practically all of these miners are just getting paid by pools to do outsourced sha256 calculations, and they never see transactions or even the blockchain at all, and as a result don't contribute much to improving Bitcoin's security— ... and that we're even in a worst state than we were a year ago, now kidnapping or hacking _two_ people is enough to freely perform transaction reversals...Really having a highly secure and robust network in place before Bitcoin takes its next giant leap forward is a really good thing. Not to equate GOX to mining directly, but we saw what it looks like when the infrastructure fails under the weight of a rapid push. Having a solid distributed net with multi-million dollar mining businesses involved should inspire further confidence in Bitcoin as a real currency.
You realize this, right?
This is exponential win.
Nothing like this has ever occurred in distributed computing in history, and before any complaining about mining ROI, think about what that means. Bitcoin's network is becoming a processing monster, and with dedicated ASIC core at it's heart is ready for a bigger world and a ton of transaction traffic. In the end, the network is quickly becoming larger, more distributed, and secure.
Really having a highly secure and robust network in place before Bitcoin takes its next giant leap forward is a really good thing. Not to equate GOX to mining directly, but we saw what it looks like when the infrastructure fails under the weight of a rapid push. Having a solid distributed net with multi-million dollar mining businesses involved should inspire further confidence in Bitcoin as a real currency.
What is more interesting however, is that despite soul-crushing ROI figures with the current crop of ASIC hardware, hashrate is still skyrocketing
Many mine operators aren't in it for the money, The Erupter USB's arn't selling because it will make anyone rich. I wonder if the simple need for economic change is driving it forward more than the profit incentive. Bitcoin mining would not be a multi-million dollar business right now (as a hardware maker or hardware user) without some level of belief in Bitcoin and what it means to the world.
So, being a miner at the moment sucks, but the end result is extremely good for Bitcoin.
Nothing like this has ever occurred in distributed computing in history, and before any complaining about mining ROI, think about what that means. Bitcoin's network is becoming a processing monster, and with dedicated ASIC core at it's heart is ready for a bigger world and a ton of transaction traffic. In the end, the network is quickly becoming larger, more distributed, and secure.
Really having a highly secure and robust network in place before Bitcoin takes its next giant leap forward is a really good thing. Not to equate GOX to mining directly, but we saw what it looks like when the infrastructure fails under the weight of a rapid push. Having a solid distributed net with multi-million dollar mining businesses involved should inspire further confidence in Bitcoin as a real currency.
What is more interesting however, is that despite soul-crushing ROI figures with the current crop of ASIC hardware, hashrate is still skyrocketing
Many mine operators aren't in it for the money, The Erupter USB's arn't selling because it will make anyone rich. I wonder if the simple need for economic change is driving it forward more than the profit incentive. Bitcoin mining would not be a multi-million dollar business right now (as a hardware maker or hardware user) without some level of belief in Bitcoin and what it means to the world. So, being a miner at the moment sucks, but the end result is extremely good for Bitcoin.
wow that would be crazy wouldn't it 
There is a good chance we will hit 1 PH by the end of September and 2 before November.
Hey guys, I'm back doing videos and as you know earlier this year I made a prediction that we would hit a Petahash by December 31, 2013 but with quickly rising hashrate I am changing my prediction and I also give an analysis about why the hashrate is increasing so rapidly and give educated predictions on what is to come.
Video: http://youtu.be/a1DHEBrPYVE
Video: http://youtu.be/a1DHEBrPYVE
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