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Topic: Butterfly Labs Announces Bulk Chip Sales - page 11. (Read 15856 times)

hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
Forget how little they are making on the Jalapenos.
At $50 per chip (if that's correct) the 1.5 TH/sec mini rig will cost them $26,000 in chips alone to manufacture!

Dude ASICs cost between $0.5 - $2 each to manufacture dependant on volume of chips and intricacy of mask layers.
member
Activity: 112
Merit: 10
WTF!

what a piece of shit person/company

how are you going to announce chip sales when you havent even delivered 1% of your ridiculous 6,000+ order queue 8 MONTHS AFTER TAKING PEOPLES MONEY!

BFL is the the biggest disgrace to bitcoin, they are taking the entire mining community for a bunch of fools, and frankly dont give a flying fuck about the bitcoin community or the network. TRUE AMERICAN SLIME
full member
Activity: 146
Merit: 100
This really feels like a sinking ship.

Quote
approximately 100 days

...and more wild speculation. If anyone truly believes they would have the ships in their hand after 100 days then they are delusional. BFL are just trying to buy their time - and they are failing miserably. If BFL were a person, they would be a manic depressive crack-head.
legendary
Activity: 966
Merit: 1000
- - -Caveat Aleo- - -
So... I haven't been paying attention.

Are all the engines equivalent performance, and if so... what is the performance per engine?

2 chips per Jalapeno
~28 engines for 5000 MH/s, if we assume each engine produces 1 hash per clock then the engines are running at ~180Mhz and doing 180Mh/s

Imagine how much it stung to go from 1 chip  @ $40-60 apiece to 2 chips per Jalapeno. That probably blew up their margins on all of their $179 era pre-orders.

Heatsink + fan: $15
PCB: $20
Case, cable, and power brick: $15
2 chips: $100

Estimate COGS of Jalapeno is $150. Those are some slim margins @ $179 retail.





Forget how little they are making on the Jalapenos.
At $50 per chip (if that's correct) the 1.5 TH/sec mini rig will cost them $26,000 in chips alone to manufacture!
legendary
Activity: 2674
Merit: 1083
Legendary Escrow Service - Tip Jar in Profile
So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

I don't think that's right.  Isn't $97 for 16 engines about 29.7 mh/sec per dollar (180mh/sec is per engine not per chip).
Whereas the avalon chip gets 2.3 mh/sec per dollar,
and the ASICminer USB device gets 1.3 mh/sec per dollar.
I realize the 100 day shipping date and BFL history are problematic but the price seems cheap to me or is my math wrong?

I took the number from this post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2344464
Im not sure if the numbers are correct or not.
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 100
So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when I am considering converting my orders to chips because I trust yet unnamed DIY builders to deliver working miners before a multi million dollar company that has had 12 months to get a product out.

 Undecided

This is the irony of it all.  The grass isn't always greener elsewhere.  There is power in numbers.  With hundreds/thousands of pissed off customers, BFL was forced to actually DO something (however bad they are at it).  Divide all that business among 100 or so fly-by-night operations that have little to no experience in mining and assembling hardware, and the opportunity is ripe for scamming.  A company with only 100 customers as opposed to 60,000 has far less to fear in the way of legal challenges.  I think people are going to be disappointed in these chip sales, both on the BFL and Avalon side.  Not everyone, but enough to make the scams go wild.  
legendary
Activity: 1890
Merit: 1003
So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when I am considering converting my orders to ships because I trust yet unnamed DIY builders to deliver working miners before a multi million dollar company that has had 12 months to get a product out.

 Undecided
It makes you wonder what is wrong with the general design that it needs that many revisions. Lets hope they will provide technical support for those that take the reins in the future.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when I am considering converting my orders to chips because I trust yet unnamed DIY builders to deliver working miners before a multi million dollar company that has had 12 months to get a product out.

 Undecided
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
I'm selling the blades.

legendary
Activity: 1890
Merit: 1003
BFL is always behind Yifu!
You are wise beyond all men!
legendary
Activity: 1621
Merit: 1000
news.8btc.com
BFL is always behind Yifu!
legendary
Activity: 2674
Merit: 1083
Legendary Escrow Service - Tip Jar in Profile
So one chip has 180MH/s. 14 engines per chip means $89/chip. $89000 per 10k. -10% means $80100 for 10k chips. Avalon charges 782.1BTC * $128 = $100109. Doesnt sound bad. But avalons chips have 282MH/s standard. So the GH costs $3.55 for avalon and $4.45 for BFL. The half power usage doesnt mean much at the current time. And isnt it still open if that is true at the end?

Then 100 days mean 14,28 weeks. Avalon claims to need 9-10 weeks only.

So im not sure if BFL will make a fortune with this... but... when i think about it... i believe most BFL customers will happily get their chips instead nothing. At least they know the chips are working. Even when this means they have to wait some time to have a working miner... its still more reliable to wait for someone in the community to build a miner.

Maybe some people will prefer to buy BFL chips too instead having to trust a groupbuy. Its a good move to lower the minimum amount of chips needed to order.

Something wrong with my calculations?
legendary
Activity: 1190
Merit: 1000
So... I haven't been paying attention.

Are all the engines equivalent performance, and if so... what is the performance per engine?

2 chips per Jalapeno
~28 engines for 5000 MH/s, if we assume each engine produces 1 hash per clock then the engines are running at ~180Mhz and doing 180Mh/s

Imagine how much it stung to go from 1 chip  @ $40-60 apiece to 2 chips per Jalapeno. That probably blew up their margins on all of their $179 era pre-orders.

Heatsink + fan: $15
PCB: $20
Case, cable, and power brick: $15
2 chips: $100

Estimate COGS of Jalapeno is $150. Those are some slim margins @ $179 retail.

I think you are prob a little bit off here. With BFL offering the $100 upgrade from 5-7 gh/s for Jalapeño I am assuming that what that 'upgrade' consists of is that they use Class A chips instead of class C/D. This gives them a little better margins if they can use 13-15 engine binned chips for the 5 gh/s jalapeños.

Still not impressive margins, OR of course they may have MASSIVE margins on the bulk chip sales. Hard to know.

Yes, the upgrade was just chip binning and some firmware to run them at a different clock speed. The $100 is so they stay afloat while processing the pre-orders.

One can look up how much a square MM costs in an MPW production run. It ballparks them around $40-60 a chip which fits with their announced prices.
It also explains why so much time was spent tinkering with the chip & boards trying to get 5GH/s out of just 1 chip. They couldn't just slap in 2 chips per jalapeno and ship them without wrecking their margins @ $179. Since they promised 5GH/s, they would get lynched if they tried to deliver only 3GH/s for $179.

hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
2 weeks?! ASIC chips cost under $2 each to manufacture. It's FPGAs that are expensive. The point in ASICs is they have high non reoccurring engineering costs which BFL should have covered ages back, but keep finding new ways to spend and delay.

Overheads must be expensive, but they will not be running out of cash this way, even if they just convert the current orders.

Is this what Yifu' saying at this exact moment?; "WTF dude?! just sell the chips and **** the mining units".

legendary
Activity: 1890
Merit: 1003
i chuckled at this as well. i guess if they convert all the pre-orders to chip sales, they won't need to worry about fixing problems with their boards  Wink
Bingo,

It also lowers the bar with respect to complexity in the delivery of orders. If it's only chips...they can manage that much right? Grin

That is one way of resolving the issue.

legendary
Activity: 1890
Merit: 1003
So now they are also in the chip selling business:

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/3014-butterfly-labs-announces-bulk-chip-sales.html

Quote
Butterfly Labs will begin selling bulk chips to individuals and companies starting in June, 2013. Chip delivery schedule is approximately 100 days through end packaging once your order is placed. We will be providing reference documentation, reference design/schematics, and foundry receipt/documentation.

Chips will be graded and priced as follows:

Grade A: 16 Engines - $97/chip
Grade B: 15 Engines - $93/chip
Grade C: 14 Engines - $89/chip

Grade D: 13 Engines or less - $83/chip

Our chips will be provided in minimum lots of 100 with the following price structure:

100 - 999 chips - Regular Price
1000 - 9999 chips - 5% discount
10,000 - 99,999 chips - 10% discount
100,000 or more - 20% discount

Chip orders will require 50% down and 50% upon order delivery. Payment can be made via BTC (preferred) or bank wire.

Advantages of BFL chips:

1/2 the power usage per GH as the closest competitor
1/10th the silicon area per GH as the closest competitor (Very high performance density)
You can use off the shelf heat sinks depending on your chip layout due to FCBGA package vs custom underside heat sinks as required on some QFN packages. You don't have to design and manufacture heat sinks!
Proven design currently operating in the field and ready to go.

We will allow you to convert current orders with us into chip orders if you would rather design your own.

If you would like to place an order, please email [email protected]
Blows on his BS decoder ring.

The following is imaginary and simply wild speculation without a basis...allegedly

A) Oh shit, we have a shit ton of orders and little or no funding to pay for new wafers!
A1) I know, let just pass the cost of new wafers to our customers!
A2) I know, lets pitch the idea Avalon is doing to our boss. Surely he would love to see us sell 2$ chips for 97$!


B) Oh shit, we might not be able to complete our huge order backlog!
B1) I know, let get this monkey off our backs and shift the blame of bad boards to open source vendors. We will sell our yet to be made chips with an extra 50% downpayment for quick liquidity! That way we can clear our backlog of orders and prevent our asses from getting thrown into court.
B2) I know, lets lull people into thinking they can just make our boards for us. In this way we will only be responsible to order chips from the fab and the packaging people....and the rest will work itself out! We can't possibly screw this up....We are probably going to collapse soon, so we might as well open source our design. We are knee deep in commitments/liability we won't be able to fulfill anytime soon. Don't let them see the panic in our eyes?!

60 days to fulfill 2 days worth of orders.

How many days between june 23, 2012 and December 31, 2012? Alot. How many from Jan 1, 2013 till today? Can anyone say, entering PANIC mode?

So sometime in 2020? Right? I hope!
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 100
Yet another gimmick to buy themselves 2 weeks more of life with preorder money.  House of cards is collapsing faster than I thought.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Amazing how this is released at 5PM on a Saturday.

Of all the things that needs to be done at BFL, they've opt to sell chips they don't have. The same chips that................  FUCK IT!!!

This is so fucked up on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin.

Honest Abe must be rolling over in his grave, while PT Barnum is asking himself, "Why didn't I think of that?" The out-of-order sign in now firmly in place over the see-the-egress sign.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
Unnnnbelievable! I actually wrote in a post the other day that the best thing forward would be for them to open up to the community and open source.



100+ days lead time and $90 chips makes it a shitty proposition though. I doubt at those prices you can even find ROI on miners you would DIY build in Sept.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
So... I haven't been paying attention.

Are all the engines equivalent performance, and if so... what is the performance per engine?

2 chips per Jalapeno
~28 engines for 5000 MH/s, if we assume each engine produces 1 hash per clock then the engines are running at ~180Mhz and doing 180Mh/s

Imagine how much it stung to go from 1 chip  @ $40-60 apiece to 2 chips per Jalapeno. That probably blew up their margins on all of their $179 era pre-orders.

Heatsink + fan: $15
PCB: $20
Case, cable, and power brick: $15
2 chips: $100

Estimate COGS of Jalapeno is $150. Those are some slim margins @ $179 retail.

I think you are prob a little bit off here. With BFL offering the $100 upgrade from 5-7 gh/s for Jalapeño I am assuming that what that 'upgrade' consists of is that they use Class A chips instead of class C/D. This gives them a little better margins if they can use 13-15 engine binned chips for the 5 gh/s jalapeños.

Still not impressive margins, OR of course they may have MASSIVE margins on the bulk chip sales. Hard to know.
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