Topic: [CLOSED] Avalon ASIC chip distribution - page 19. (Read 220189 times)

Please don't bump this with your comments (there is a dedicated thread for this matter). Every time i see this thread bumping i'm hoping for a tracking number!

Yeah, right! They said: "Yifu, don't you dare to post in the forums for a month, or we'll release the information!"

Here´s the news:
http://www.avalon-asics.com

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It all begin a few weeks ago when we received an email attached with a PDF containing the person information of some Avalon team members in China. Extortion, a familiar tactic when it comes to the Bitcoin scene and business in China. Threatened to release this information public if we do not pay up; we choose to ignore the demands because the information is quite outdated and some even are inaccurate, making this a low threat.

Everything changed when people started to knock on some team members parent's house looking for them using the information found on the PDF or other sources. This called for a immediate reevaluation of operational security of the Avalon project. This is the main source of delays and lack of communication in the past few weeks. This matter is still on going, but a majority of the Avalon operation has once again been resumed.

Just as this matter is reaching its closure. WSJ prints an mashed article consists of rumors, opinions and pieces of various stories. Avalon whilst under NDA(s) are unable to comment on all aspect of the story. We will however state the following: We were indeed in Amsterdam on Tuesday and had a meeting with TSMC and we will leave it at that for now.

We would also like to take this chance to properly restate that Avalon will from this day going forward will no longer be participating in any form of pre-order, pre-sale type of business operations.
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Unit Batches

Batch three have completely left our hands, may DHL be swift in their deliveries. The refunds will shortly follow, this is the same for any tradein orders ( ran into issues such as some people were receiving their address to pay while other are not). we understand we are very late in this department of processing any customer support related issue, we will not be making any excuses, but this is literally the only thing left on our plate now. In the future we hope to eliminate this problem by selling only in stock products that will ship in under 3 days.

On the horizon are two new product designs, we are fairly happy with the batch 3 design, which will conclude as the Avalon Version 1 final design. In addition we will have a new 2 module unit coming to market and a 2U 17inch deep server blade slated as Avalon Version 2.
Chips

While we have send out some chip orders, there is currently ~200k chips stuck in custom right at this moment for about 2 weeks now, this matter is very painful for us and our customers. As majority of the chip orders ( 70% ) totaling ~800k is made between early and mid-may resulting in a tight time frame to work with. We do have more chips coming in via different route next week which will ease this a little bit. (you can take this as chips will resume shipping by end of next week for now.)

We will take this time to fulfill a promise to announce the next generation chip 2 month ahead of schedule so potential buyers can make a decision. Soon we will be disabling the pre-order of Avalon Gen1 chips and only sell the remaining stock as we phase out old technology for a new 55nm, which goes on sale for immediate delivery at mid October 2013. This 55nm will retain the same physical dimension as the 110nm Gen1, only few pads were changed so getting them up and running requires very little change to existing design.

In addition, there is 2 more chip designs in the pipeline, we have decided to proceed developing Gen3 and Gen4 in parallel due to the long R&D time of low processor nodes, both of these will be a Full Custom ASIC design.
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tl;dr chips are expected to be delivered "in two weeks"

It appears he lives...
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/incoming-avalon-news-892013-269950

As for the promise of news tomorrow, I'll believe it when I see it

This is so true. There are a lot of business people "on-hold" because the chips aren't delivered. Without all these people avalon wouldn't have sold a single chip and i think Yifu should give some kind of update at least for them, but it seems that the rudness of the business asian people is in Avalon team too...and they had such a good start. This is starting to get really sad.

The question I have - is whether the companies that don't need pre-orders will even need customers at all.

Those  ASIC companies which deliver machines with an expected ROI will perhaps just be outcompeted by those who can effectively deploy their chips into data centres and mine on their own.

There are no alternatives. This is unbelievable immature market. There are only preorders, not a single company is selling in-store ASIC. Only exception is Asicminer's USB sticks, and even these toy devices are at the brink of not being able to ROI. The only question is in witch month and witch year will emerge the first company not involved in the preorder game. Every single candidate now is also preordering. It is very strange considering 150 mil US$/year of BTC mining income.

I don't think it's correct to draw a  parallel between the batch 1 buyers and the chip buyers. Batch 1 was truly a high-risk high-reward ordeal. Chip buyers are merely paying for a product that is already developed and available. And as much as I hate the delay, my major gripe is with the lack of updates. I'd want to know why my business partner has not kept up his end of the deal if that happens. And the fact is that there's no way to get any kind of accountability from Avalon. This is something that I can't stand and there are no excuses for. We can add one more irresponsible hw supplier next to BFL and start looking for alternatives.

I have only a small number of chips ordered, so if they never arrive it's not a big loss personally.

What annoys me most is the people like you and burnin, group buy organisers and the many manufacturers who have devoted huge amounts of their time and money into producing low cost miners are getting royally fucked by these delays.

Things like the K1 are almost at the point of no ROI, if these delays continue and rumours of shady backroom deals to supply huge quantities of chips spike the hashrate (plus other asic manufacturers imminent arrival too) there may be no point buidling the bitburners and k16's either.

BKK if you find yourself in the position of being out of pocket I'm happy to chip in some BTC to help out, hate seeing people getting shafted.

+1
i'll go straight to tcsm

You're also ignoring that back in April a considerable number of Avalons had been shipped and the miners who had put up money early, at great risk, were using Avalons to rake in substantial returns. Indications were good that Yifu and co were fully able to produce chips and ship them as promised, and at that time there were few or no other options for someone who wanted to move beyond GPU mining. What's gone wrong now is anyone's guess. He just decided he didn't need a good rep and preferred a few million $$ maybe, or whatever.

I can tell you that it doesn't matter what chip they come up with in future I won't be spending any energy or money on it.

plus one.

unfortunately.

That is only one angle to look at it.

The other is: you need to pay in order to find out whom you can trust by his word. And this is not only true in Bitcoin land, but generally in RL. When you start a new business, you always need to learn the hard way whom you can trust and whom you better won't deal again in your life.

Our community is very young, so naturally it takes time and money to separate the serious ones from the bad and the ugly. How else can you do it other than giving some upfront trust and find out who deserves it? If there was a better mechanism available,  everyone would use it and save lots of resources - but right now that is the only method proven to work.

This is why i will not even consider investing serious amounts of money in this bitcoin mining and keep it as a hobby. What the actual fuck?! I hope that at least this time the community has learned its lesson and never ever ever in a million years go by someone's word. This is just pathetic. And i wish there was a way to teach those people a lesson. 

If you wanted to buy 10K, that for sure isn't going to happen, and with group buy at least you have a chance.
I have no doubts that Avalon is going to deliver, but my hopes are they are going to abide and ship by their own terms or at least stick close to them.

yes, and then not get those as well 

Ok that is fine, what are you suggesting us to DO?
Everyone of us to buy 10K of chips for ourselves?

... or China could come to us ...