First commercial ASIC miner specifications and pre-launch

IXCoin

newbie

Activity: 7

Merit: 0

Quote from: Mad7Scientist on August 12, 2011, 11:30:50 AM

They should be sending out free prototype chips like other companies which develop new technologies do!

LOL, that'll be the day. Try-before-you-buy dedicated mining hardware.

Mad7Scientist

sr. member

Activity: 373

Merit: 262

They should be sending out free prototype chips like other companies which develop new technologies do!

randomguy7

hero member

Activity: 527

Merit: 500

Anyone got refunds in the meantime?

mobodick

hero member

Activity: 840

Merit: 1000

Soo... Now i'm wondering how many people have 'invested' in this guy.

Anyone dare to speak up?
Cool

makomk

hero member

Activity: 686

Merit: 564

Quote from: Xephan on July 27, 2011, 12:44:51 PM

Which was why I was asking him what part did he used since I expected there would be at least two trip up. The first being unless there's some really super fast breakthrough Flash chip, it would be pretty much damning evidence regardless of his answer Cheesy

Aha - cunning!

Xephan

newbie

Activity: 42

Merit: 0

Quote from: makomk on July 27, 2011, 12:35:53 PM

There's no reason why a specially-designed Bitcoin mining board would need an SRAM chip; SRAM is large and slow and a Bitcoin miner needs fast access to a small amount of data. This wasn't even a competent scammer...

Which was why I was asking him what part did he used since I expected there would be at least two trip up. The first being unless there's some really super fast breakthrough Flash chip, it would be pretty much damning evidence regardless of his answer Cheesy

makomk

hero member

Activity: 686

Merit: 564

Quote from: asicminer on July 24, 2011, 12:26:01 AM

Use of Block RAM (BRAM) for storage of constants [8]. Reconfigurable hardware devices
such as FPGAs often have on-board memories which can be pre-loaded.
Storing the Kt constants in these memories frees up space in the device
which can then be used to implement extra logic. The free space also leads to
improved routing and, thus, a general speed-up in circuit operation.

From "Optimisation of the SHA-2 Family of Hash Functions on FPGAs"
Robert P. McEvoy, Francis M. Crowe, Colin C. Murphy and William P. Marnane
   Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering,
   University College Cork, Ireland
   {robertmce, francisc, cmurphy, liam}@rennes.ucc.ie

As a person who's actually done an FPGA bitcoin mining design that uses block RAM (though not in exactly this way), I know that it's part of the FPGA itself and not a seperate chip. There's no reason why a specially-designed Bitcoin mining board would need an SRAM chip; SRAM is large and slow and a Bitcoin miner needs fast access to a small amount of data. This wasn't even a competent scammer...

Edit: Oh, and the reason it doesn't use block RAM in that particular way? Doing so is only worthwhile if you're designing a standard SHA-2 hash engine that computes the hashes of variable-length pieces of data one at a time, whereas efficient Bitcoin mining compute lots of hashes of differing short pieces of data in parallel.

openrune

member

Activity: 62

Merit: 10

Well if you try to call there, his phone is turned off cause of insuffcient funds...
i guess the HK Police Department will prosecute this, if you didnt get your refund aswell:
http://www.police.gov.hk/ppp_en/contact_us.html

Quote

Registration Service Provided By: EXOWARE
Contact: +44.3333408855

Domain Name: ASICMINER.NET

Registrant:
Shenzhen advanced electronics R&D Co. Ltd
Gerald Strobel ([email protected])
Room 823, Bd 144, Nathan Rd, Kowloon
Hong Kong
HK,00000
HK
Tel. +852606261520

Creation Date: 29-Jun-2011
Expiration Date: 29-Jun-2012

Domain servers in listed order:
ns3.exoware.net
ns4.exoware.net

Administrative Contact:
Shenzhen advanced electronics R&D Co. Ltd
Gerald Strobel ([email protected])
Room 823, Bd 144, Nathan Rd, Kowloon
Hong Kong
HK,00000
HK
Tel. +852606261520

Technical Contact:
Shenzhen advanced electronics R&D Co. Ltd
Gerald Strobel ([email protected])
Room 823, Bd 144, Nathan Rd, Kowloon
Hong Kong
HK,00000
HK
Tel. +852606261520

Billing Contact:
Shenzhen advanced electronics R&D Co. Ltd
Gerald Strobel ([email protected])
Room 823, Bd 144, Nathan Rd, Kowloon
Hong Kong
HK,00000
HK
Tel. +852606261520

MelMan2002

sr. member

Activity: 461

Merit: 251

For anyone still in doubt, I can confirm that it is, indeed, a SCAM.
See his post on reddit:

Quote

We're currently about to close the sale of a whole first batch of devices to a private investor. We will be required not to duplicate the device for at least 3 years. Sorry guys. We will eventually refund all the people who sent the 5 btc within 48 hours.

And just last night he sent me an email:

Quote

Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to write us an email.
We will have a couple devices left to sell.

Entry level device with 2 boards price breakdown :

Controller device $150.00
ASIC board $250.00 x 2
Shipment $50.00
Total $700

Full device with 10 boards price breakdown :

Controller device $150.00
ASIC board $250.00 x 10
Shipment $50.00
Total $2700

The case will be similar in size to a mid-tower standard PC and you will
be able to purchase 8 additional boards if you decide to go for the entry
level machine now, sorry to inform you that, in that case, there will be
one more charge of $50.00 for shipping.

In case you decide to go ahead please provide details of your order, your
full name, address and valid phone number along with the 5 btc transfer to
1FyZ3qU54jxU5tF2KHxHmnyjkAsdWuiyFr
We will let you know when the production have actually started both via
email and our blog.

Best Regards
Asicminer team

Now why would he be refunding 5 BTC back to everyone if he still has a couple to sell?? Undecided

Anyone who gave him 5 BTC - you will never see it again. So don't hold out any hope.

The00Dustin

hero member

Activity: 807

Merit: 500

Quote from: openrune on July 27, 2011, 05:08:14 AM

NO REFUND TILL THIS VERY MOMEN

Do you mean "so far" (as opposed to "until this very moment") in American English, or did you actually JUST get your refund when you posted?

openrune

member

Activity: 62

Merit: 10

NO REFUND!

miner3gazillionand8

newbie

Activity: 14

Merit: 0

Quote from: openrune on July 24, 2011, 06:43:08 PM

Well asicminer if you dnt plan to deliver i ask you for imediate refund

Thanks

Openrune

did you ever get that refund?

Tereska

newbie

Activity: 17

Merit: 0

i've also signed. this is really interesting to mine with special hardware -> less power

sirky

sr. member

Activity: 404

Merit: 250

I signed up for your list already!

ttul

member

Activity: 70

Merit: 10

Quote from: distortednet on July 25, 2011, 06:41:57 PM

Well, ASIC miner is closing its doors http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/iynpe/asicminernet_calls_it_quits_wont_sell_product_for/

they claim they just sold a batch to an investor, im gonna go ahead and call bull and say the total network hash wont increase 2.5 terahashes..

i guess we can watch block explorer and find out

LargeCoin continues to plug away quietly, and it's not a scam. For more information, http://largecoin.com.

Xephan

newbie

Activity: 42

Merit: 0

Quote from: distortednet on July 25, 2011, 06:41:57 PM

Well, ASIC miner is closing its doors http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/iynpe/asicminernet_calls_it_quits_wont_sell_product_for/

they claim they just sold a batch to an investor, im gonna go ahead and call bull and say the total network hash wont increase 2.5 terahashes..

i guess we can watch block explorer and find out

Alright I admit it, I'm the one who bought his entire batch. But out of love for my fellow bitcoin miners and not wishing to drive away potential bitcoin users, I had decided that I will only put one machine into operation every 3 days, which is why in turn I required that they don't duplicate the machine in the next 3 years.

Christian Pezza

member

Activity: 154

Merit: 10

will mean will just take longer to get trough 21.000.000

I will keep going Wink

...

;Ddig baby dig

distortednet

newbie

Activity: 6

Merit: 0

Well, ASIC miner is closing its doors http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/iynpe/asicminernet_calls_it_quits_wont_sell_product_for/

they claim they just sold a batch to an investor, im gonna go ahead and call bull and say the total network hash wont increase 2.5 terahashes..

i guess we can watch block explorer and find out

Bloody Bell

newbie

Activity: 18

Merit: 0

Quote from: Bert on July 24, 2011, 09:36:55 PM

It could be totally true, there was a research paper from the Chinese University of Hong Kong about using Pilchard "RAM" boards for DES encryption in ECB mode back in 2004.
http://microsys6.engr.utk.edu/~bouldin/pilchard.pdf
http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~phwl/mt/public/archives/old/ceg5010/pilchard.pdf

And they probably wanted us to believe that this is the paper they used as inspiration:
http://www.ee.usyd.edu.au/people/philip.leong/UserFiles/File/papers/sha_fpl02.pdf

Problem is that this paper is pretty old, and the hardware they mention is outdated. If other people in this forum with much more modern FPGAs couldn't come up with a feasible implementation, there is no way that this could be competitive. This paper was written before GPGPUs became common.

And I couldn't find a more modern version of this Pilchard module.

haydent

full member

Activity: 154

Merit: 100

I'm glad this thread is over... unfortunately this isn't

Topic: First commercial ASIC miner specifications and pre-launch (Read 29341 times)