Topic: Cointerra Mining ASIC coming soon (Read 35548 times)

I'm not going to fight with your strawmen about Nvidia/ATI. Just quoting for the future reference.

There's no need to bullshit here about "optimising datapaths". SHA-256 is basically just a pair of 32-bit-wide shift registers with some cobinatorial logic thrown in the feedback loops. The cryptographers at NIST/NSA/etc. worked really hard to make sure that this logic is not minimisable in any meaningfull way because that would make it susceptible to cryptoanalysis. The "architectural" tricks would've already been exploited by the cryptoanalysts. There isn't any way to optimize power by e.g. not clocking parts of the circuit when not in productive use, which is where the most of modern CPUs and GPUs save power. So please no further low-power bullshit unless you can tell us how your low-power strategy applies to a circuit with 50% signal toggle probability. Nobody's going to run a pocket bitmine on a battery power.

There are some implementation tricks possible that minimize the critical timing paths, but they are all already published in an open literature or at most behind the ACM/IEEE paywalls. Other designers already took advantage of them, bitfury even sort-of republished the information behind the paywall.

Anyone who implemented SHA-256, even in software, knows that it is a self-testing logic, so please no further bullshit about design for testability.

The last remaining avenue for the significant gains is by somehow exploiting the high toggle rate in the circuit. The gates and flip/flops change state at the rate very close to the maximum possible, which normally happens only in a test structure called ring oscillator. My personal bet is that the progress will come from designers that take advantage of that and instead of using the bang-bang static logic use something out-of-ordinary: maybe some relatively obscure dynamic logic or some low-noise logic current-mode logic (a.k.a. source-coupled logic). Or the combination of the above: DyCML. Or something which I haven't even heard of.

Anyway, if anyone of you is going to visit Cointerra: ask them about their BSIM4 models, which of the 5 process corners they've simulated thus far, pay close attention if they have anyone working in analog simulators to optimize metal thickness and optimize the transistor/gate geometry to facilitate the best power noise bypass.

Bitfury's 5GH chip currently hashes slower primarily because nobody had spend any time on the problem of heath-sinking the QFN package. Also QFN is wire-bonded, which basically is a collection of half-turn induction coils. Those require very careful analog resonant pin/pad connection design, which again nobody had spend time on.

The way I see it, the progress will come from another company, which has designers experienced in analog/mixed signal ICs and who did high-power designs like cellular tower radios or synthetic aperture radars.

Edits: spelling and underlining.

Ladi -

you're not very good at this trolling business are you?   Before you start to troll, you need to read up on your subject.

The reality is that you dont realise that these guys are still waiting for their silicon to come back from fabrication  - having taped out on Nov 7th - and most of the other trolls (Icebreaker for instance) are trying to say that their silicon will be late and that they won't get it at the end of december like they're hoping..

I hope cointerra is a scam cause then my knc's will keep pumping out coins !!!!

They are committing fraud against people, took the money, now they do not answer phone calls, emails, and you cannot update their forum either it's disabled, very dishonest company. People so mad. Paid for orders since november they haven't updated their orders, still "ON-Hold" for a month now. And what's worst they are mining with those hardware before they send to clients for 30 days for each order, so they are getting rich with people's money...

Beware they are a fraud...

Cointerra, a well-funded startup of highly experienced ASIC designers, is pleased to announce that we are developing a high performance, low power and low cost 28nm ASIC which is expected to arrive in Q4 2013.

To learn more about Cointerra and to sign up for regular updates please visit our website: www.cointerra.com and follow us on Twitter @cointerra.

thanks... i see where the confusion is..  you're right..  its misleading...!

although  the question itself is more of an issue than cointerra's answer.  if it was asked exactly like this in his interview, cointerra probably should've corrected the misconception.    what may have happened is that the question itself may have been edited after it was asked and became slightly different than the question they asked him... but anyway, ravi's answer pretty much  matches my understanding of what happened... namely that they raised $1.5m from investors, which funded 'development' (designing the chip).  And then the product was announced, and preorders started, which allowed them to go into production without requiring additional investment - which is the key takeaway from ravi's answer.   and this practice of designing the chip, then taking pre-orders, which raises the cash to go into production jus no different than every single bitcoin mining asic company has done... from avalon, to bfl, to kncminer, to hashfast, to bit mine etc...   and makes cointerra no different than any of the others.

originally cointerra was trying to raise $6m and go into production (which would've been a different business model without pre-orders and probably without selling mining hardware at retail).. and instead, they raised $1.5, and did pre-orders to sell direct to customers.. so yes, the company pivoted from its original funding model.

its the question thats misleading and if it was asked it exactly like this i think he probably should've gone into more detail to correct the misconception...  so yea, as they've quoted it, its confused messaging.

although its no secret how much it costs to go into production of a 28nm asic, so everyone knows it can't be done for $1.5m or anyone and everyone would've been doing it.

-- jez

all trying to have happy customers?

You're joshing, right?

They are all trying to find customers and sell them Products and have them want to be happy and come back for more. 

With the usual ~70 Day turn-around for Chips   tits, that puts you a little past mid January for your first silicone.

I've picked almost all the horses so i am nearly certain to have picked a winner and I'm pretty pragmatic about the pros and cons of each of the horses.  I'm a customer of bfl (alas), and knc (yeayy), and hashfast, and cointerra, and even bitfury...!   and i was also an investor in asicminer (now sold.. at a nice profit).  the only major bitcoin asic company I've not bought from is avalon.

They have been saying it all along, as far as I know.  I've seen it several times.  One is below in the interview with CoinTerra’s CEO, Ravi Iyengar:

Q: What level of pre-orders are estimated before CoinTerra is able to ramp up production?  It has been listed in the media that a number of pre-orders are needed before final manufacturing can take place.

A: When we started looking for investment, it took two months to raise $1.5m from both Bitcoin users and the tech industry – at this point in time there is no need to ask for more investment.  In terms of pre-orders, within 24hrs of our website going live we had 150 pre-orders.  Our production is not hampered by sales in any way.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7246/the-rush-to-bitcoin-asics-ravi-iyengar-launches-cointerra

since when have they said that?  no recent asic mining company - as far as I'm aware - has ever entered mass scale production without taking customer funds in the form of pre-orders.   (and don't say bitfury because they only make the chips, not boxes and boards... )

cointerra said they raised $1.5m, which covers the engineer cost of designing the asic.  but in order to go into production they would've paid the fab several million, plus their partners would require a million or two... plus they need to order parts to build the boxes... so, the total cash requirement to enter production is $5-7m...  and they would've needed to take customer pre-orders before production could start.

Those were good times.   I used Amiga's and remember SGI machines back then

here's a good read

http://www.techspot.com/article/650-history-of-the-gpu/

true, if you bet on all the horses you 'win'

not sure you been around enough engineers though to notice that some spend 90% of their time on their craft and 10% promoting it and the others do the reverse