most of the guys (knc, hashfast, cointerra etc) were taping out their 28nm with both tsmc and gf and receiving silicon back some 2 months later (thats after paying ridiculously high 'expedite fees'. if you dont pay the expedite expect 3 months) cointerra did it last time in 7 weeks. it'll be longer than 28nm for 16nm cos its so new... but not much longer. so lets say - for arguments' sake they tape out in October... they would expect to see 1st silicon in early Jan (or late Dec if theyre really lucky), and volume production later in Q1 onwards.
How can they tapeout now when 16nm production is supposed to begin in q1 2015?
20nm production was said to begin in q1 2014 and we all know how that turned out for KNC.
when tsmc lets you tape out, thats when you get your production slot. its possible theyre not doing volume production til q1 2015, but bitcoin asics are hardly volume
Great so this will be a test bed for their new 16nm production runs, the yields will be awful.
don't know.. a press release i read says its on the same line as their 20nm so they're expecting really good yields.
also, bitcoin chips are fantastic for yield because there's so much redundancy and repetition (repeated circuits) that they're pretty resilient to yield issues
edit: here's the link to the press about yields etc... http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2014/08/25/tsmc-to-start-16nm-production-earlier-heat-up-competition/
This would explain why cointerra-aire does not need one in particular 
