A little over a week ago ngzhang anounced his proposed production of the 'Avalon' ASIC with >= 60Ghs for about $1299 (about double the hashrate of BFL's Single 'SC', and Cablepair's bASIC)
Since then:
BFL have announced their Single 'SC' will now hash at 60Ghs (from 30Ghs) @ $1299
Cablepair has announced their bASIC will now hash at 54Ghs (from 27Ghs) @ $1069 (now selling 27Ghs version @ $599)
Were both BFL and Cablepair originally pricing their units at more than 100%+ markup of the cost of production and development?
Because as i see it they cannot afford to produce these now and make any profit.
Also how have they done it?
1) Are they just doubling the number of boards in each unit? (Only viable option if they have already started PCB production)
Or
2) Have they doubled the number of chips on each board? (Only viable if they haven't started production yet)
In either case i can not see any of these ever hitting the market before Christmas. My money is going firmly back in my wallet until some real devices hit the real world, because all i see at the moment is BS.
Welcome to bitcointalk! Do you mind posting some links to all of these statements? I haven't been able to keep up with all of the news lately.
Keep in mind all of the specs that were released were very preliminary. However, I do hope you keep your money in your wallet b/c that will increase my profits over the next few months.
Adding chips would not increase the cost of each unit all that much, so that's an easy way to stay competitive. However, I don't think anyone has released how they will accomplish this, b/c they haven't really released how they would accomplish the previous benchmarks either.
Getting excited for ASIC!
EDIT:
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showthread.php/16-Announcement-BFL-ASIC-Release-specificationsYou can check their relevant posts here in Custom Hardware, and their respective websites.
Sure you can add more chips to the board, but that requires a complete redesign of the PCB. So no one is even at that stage of production yet (or they've lost a ton of money in R&D).
Granted their specs were 'preliminary', but that was months ago.
I can't see how any production can possibly have happend in the past months, therefore it seems unlikely any of them will hit their proposed October/December delivery dates if they are still 'Talking' and changing proposed specs.