Topic: BitcoinOrama Report on the KnCminer/OrSoC Open-day Mon 10/06/13 (Stockholm) - page 11. (Read 55679 times)

Stratix lets them in on the HardCopy process. They could have chosen to go structured ASIC instead of standard cell, then standard cell. Either way they give the same code to Altera.
You can pretty much run the same code on a Stratix and Cyclone (slower).

Cheers for the 0.1BTC whoever that was just now!

+1

They indeed said they would use Cyclone IV because it's more cost effective

Are they using Stratix now? Why?

Agreed on the chips lead time. The order should have been placed already.

My bad then, sorry...

Fixed.

Still not GH/s for the FPGAs, only MH/s.

48 x 106 MH/s ≃ 5.1 GH/s

They said they could feasibly ramp up production to the levels needed to cope with demand.

They said they could only sell products that gave their customers a return on investment and that; "We have a few things that we can do to make sure our customers get a return on investment."

Not sure if that answers your question, but that's alls i's got currently...

Ad hom. Play the ball, not the man 

If used Cyclone IV to Mars they told me. By saving costs.
Why Stratix now want to pass? I just hope that the order of the chips this and paid as of today.
Minimum is 12 weeks, this is second to third week in August

As I said KnC mentioned some novel solutions I cannot repeat, certainly they have all other parts on standby and multiple manufacturers in case there is a fault with one, but I will ask if they have ordered chips...

Ok, have an email from Marcus, correcting a few bits I made mistakes on. The mistakes were due to lousy audio in parts, as especially where the acronyms are concerned I kept replaying the audio at those parts and still got it wrong.

I'm going to to go back and fix the doc, but for those that have read it already, Marus sent me this at 7am;

======================================================


Marcus: No, no. 48 divided by 306. Calculator. That's 5, 5.1.

48 multiplied with 106GHash (original design) is 5.1, we wanted to show that we can run faster.

=======================================================

Marcus: They're FPGAs; Altera Stratix 4

(http://www.altera.com/devices/fpga/stratix-fpgas/stratix/stratix/stx-index.jsp)

They're FPGAs; Altera Cyclone 4

(http://www.altera.com/devices/fpga/cyclone-v-fpgas/cyv-index.jsp)

=======================================================

Marcus: Which we've already done...doing...yeah. I mean normal guys, dual ARM etc., etc. say you can never squeeze in exactly that ARM processor in the FPGA, so you will always have proportions of the design that you can't test in an FPGA, and that's when the risk goes up and you have to do a LBW...

"LBW" should be "MPW"  (Multi Project Wafer)

=======================================================

Marcus: Well it was more CGMiner...hiccup

Well it was more our CGMiner driver ....hiccup


=======================================================

Marcus: The second reason why it was that we needed something that can verify the ASIC code on, cos when...since we are going directly to ASIC and not the NPW, no prototypes from now...........


"NPW" should be "MPW"


--
______________________________________________

1 USD/day ?

Assuming a constant exchange rate of 100$ per BTC, you're talking about  0.01 BTC per day hence a bitcoin difficulty equals to 17.6 billion by March 2014. Am I missing something obvious ?

edit1:

just to make it a little bit more clear: to achieve 17.2 billion btc difficulty by the end of March you need a 29.7% constant growth rate every 11 days starting from now. I'm not saying it's impossible I am just trying to understand what OP is thinking.

Why all this talk about upgrades?  Is there an order cut-off date? 

Is there a minimum number of orders KnC needs to get started?

ref: http://www.bitcoinx.com/charts/

I'm trying to do some forecasting and risk analysis using the "bitcoin network vs. market linear, 30 days" charts and noticed that the "Mining Factor 100" (the USD per 24 hours at 100MHash/s) has dropped from 0.55 on May 21st to around 0.26 as of Jun 17th.  That's a drop of around 50% in 1 month ... and, that drop happened with existing ASICs (I'm guessing mostly due to ASICminer, a few avalons, and the BFL jalapenos).  At this rate, the "Mining Factor 100" could drop down to at least 0.13 by October.  Using those estimates, if KnC, BFL and others deliver by October, each 350GHash (Jupiter) miner, for example, will take, at minimum, well over 5 months to breakeven ... and, that's assuming a lot (i.e., the BTC/USD rates stay about where they are today, no new competitors, no new game-changing technology, no new ASICs added to the market, the difficulty level continues as it has over the last several months, etc.).  ... and, in order to earn the same in November 2013 as a Jupiter would earn today, I estimate that you will need to be mining with approximately 20 Jupiters by November.  Worse, if KnC can't deliver until November, the breakeven might not happen until well over 2 years later.  By March 2014, the Jupiter might be earning around 1 USD per day ... hhhmm.

In order to stay viable and profitable, it's really in our best interest to get everyone using Bitcoins: restaurants, websites, bit-tipping via cell phones, etc.  Just like paypal is everywhere, "Pay-with-Bitcoin" needs to be everywhere.  Over the past 5 months, when I've asked about 40 of my friends (in their 20s through 30s) if they had heard of bitcoins, only 2 said they had, but didn't understand it.  So, I'm guessing there's still plenty of opportunity for Bitcoin's growth.

@Bitcoinorama: Did KnC say they plan to release all 2000 ASICs to the market at relatively the same time or spread out over several weeks?

Please ask them if they already ordered the chips, if not how far are they to reach the minimum order goal.

This is crucial, any delay will be a big problem, they have a very tight schedule and tsmc is not going to hurry for any customer.

I hope KnC is not having any problem to manage and move the shitload of cash they have probably collected.

same here, they just changed status to "paid" on my account, nothing else..

FTFY^

edit: when they say they have the fastest design, do they mean "miner"? Bitfury is doing 300MH/s on a Spartan 6 (150). AFAIK *he* has the fastest design.

I have not received any order payment confirmation email, only status paid showed on their website. Did anyone receive some kind of payment confirmation?

KnC will allow for upgrades from Saturn to Jupiter while maintaining the place in queue, however, I am not aware if they'll allow the upgrade to additional units while keeping that place in line.

Ha, by all means take a breather and rest. I was just wondering if I can look forward to more KnC OpenDay pr0n coming up in the next few days / week..which based on your statements means "yes".