If this is cost prohibitive, HashFast could offer the Sierra chassis option as a paid upgrade.
Well, I was just not suggesting to ship the BJs into sierras chasis, I suggest shipping as sierras complete units that are expected to be shipped in late november. Back in time when they made the "3 days sale" you could get a sierra with x3 hasing power than a BJ at the same price !
But when I complained about this and some customers try to upgrade or change their BJ into a sierra unit, HF said a clear NO, saying that there was a month between those batches, more than enough time for a BJ to catch the sierra in profit terms.
Now that the gap between the two batches seems to be really small, it makes no sense to ship the first batch customers a babyjet.
- The chip and boards are the same
- The power supply is the same
- The cooling solution I suppose is also the same
- The controller is the same
The only difference is the case, which HF has not yet bought or produced for the BJ. Indeed there is still no render about it, just for the sierra. So why no purchase a bunch of server racks cases and make the things right HF ? This way if we roi you wont have to execute the MPP.
Give the first batch customers a compensation for the delay, reward them for going first into this and compensate them for the error you made by offering the sierra units one month later and no saying a word in advance or giving them the chance to upgrade their orders.
It is an interesting idea and hopefully one that HF is at least considering. Based on the news, blogs, and mockups the BabyJet does seem to be taking a back seat to the Sierra anyways. Going forward (Jan onward) with rising and falling $/GH prices a 400 GH/s unit is less interesting than a 1.2 TH one so I don't see the BabyJet being a large seller in 2014.
It is almost a certainty that HashFast will need to pay out the MPP so each BabyJet orders means 1 to 4 more processing boards at some point in the future. Even a halfway step of upgrading all Babyjet orders to Sierra "chassis" and including 2 processing boards, the first one paid for and the second one being a "down payment" on the MPP would put customers in a better situation.
Of course Hashfast doesn't HAVE to do any of this they can just stick to the terms of service but I am pretty sure they are smart enough to know that 2014 sales depend heavily on how they "make it right" for batch 1 and 2 customers. KNC for example despite some missteps probably will have no issue lining up batch 3, 4, 5, 20 sales in 2014. Then again a lot comes down to how many chips Hashfast will have. They have 550 batch 1 orders + 500 more for Icedrill project. Not sure if the Nov sales are part of the first "batch" of chips from the fab or not. What they can do may come down to how many chips they will be receiving from TSMC in the next week. If it is 20,000 chips they they have a lot of options. If it is 4,000 chips and it needs to cover batch 2 orders as well, then there is a lot less they can pull off.