Topic: HashFast launches sales of the Baby Jet - page 27. (Read 119626 times)

next phase aint even pre-orders anymore..  that will be window dressing.. you will see the VC money roll in like that crazy blurb about BFL getting $million dollar payments from 'someone'
 

$5M is at the high end of my estimates, keep in mind a bitcoin asic in all likelihood is much simpler than typical soc's/gpu's/etc and requires only a minimum number of layers/masks,  but generally I agree and you are in the right ballpark. But so what? We were talking about marginal production cost, NRE by definition isnt part of that. NRE is a sunk cost, and therefore doesnt matter to pricing during the 'end game", when miners margins have dropped so low that vendors will have a choice between not selling anything, or selling something above marginal cost. If there is no longer a reasonable operational profit margin to be had, vendors may call it quits, but as long there is a profit margin to be had, they will sell (or self mine),  NRE be damned.  IOW  NRE will be a key factor determining if vendors end up making a profit or not (and IM pretty sure they all will), but its not a factor in pricing.

Thank you. I would really like to see Puppet do some kind of simplified business plan or actually any plan how would a company invest this minimum amount of money and how would they sell their hardware in order to cover expenses and make a healthy profit in order to have those absurd prices per TH.

a 28nm NRE is several million, plus the first wafer orders (and possibly the second order too if you want more in a reasonable time) plus the first batch of all the parts to make the box.. so you're talking minimum $5m to start production!

-- Jez

Expect KnC maybe who already shipped ~3000 units.

Please make me understand your way of thinking. How do you expect someone to pay for NRE costs for 28nm asics and also sell miners very very cheap? I think a 28nm mask is around the sum of 1 mil $ (no ideea how much is it actually but i know it's expensive) and let's say you don't count any other cost then what company would make such an investment? How do you see such company's business plan?

Edit:

Do you think R&D is for free? Why don't you take those into your assumption? Apple increase R&D to 3% from 2% previous years...

Yeah, and those are fair and honest comparisons per TH when asicminer needs 1200x more chips per TH than Hashfast. Im sure that has no impact on cost per TH whatsoever.

SO instead of pointless comparisons per TH with incomparable hardware, lets compare a 300GH Monarch to high end GPU's. High end GPU's have same form factor, similar powerdraw, similar cooling requirements, much more complex PCBs (14+ layers), loads of connectors, IO and non core functionality (DVI, HDMI, DP, PCIe, audio, Crossfire, etc..). This table is from Mercury research:


Take a look at the 6970. Eliminate the GPU and GDDR, and whats left is a BOM of $47 excl the asic (but including a load of stuff you dont need). But you think production cost of a monarch would be, how much exactly?


Please dont twist my words. Obviously efficiency is crucial. WHats far less important is reliability. Downtime of a KnC miner now in its first weeks is a huge deal. Not so much of a deal next year when your miners earn only marginally more than they cost in electricity, on a bad day it might even save you money . But I never said PSU's are not important, I said they wouldnt be included. THere is no PSU with a monarch, nor is there one with KnC. SHould miners calculate those costs? Of course. WIll they ? Very dubious, particularly people like me and assume you who still have piles of unused PSU's. And even if the cost has to be included, its shouldnt be written off in 1 or even 2 years. Those PSU's last much longer and have decent resale value, thats why in the cost calculation, they dont matter so much.

One last point about alibaba being so inaccurate; here you can buy a full ATX case, retail, 1 unit for 12 pound:
http://www.dabs.com/products/best-value-oem-717-midi-tower-with-hd-audio--no-psu--black-7XT4.html?src=3
Its not even the cheapest, I picked one that even looks decent. But you think $6-8 in large volumes is laughable and your $60 closer to the truth?

Don't forget there are already manufacturers working on 14-16nm 3d finfets.

In terms of hashrate (and thus wafer starts)



Of course unit volumes will skyrocket, almost no one is even shipping 28nm asics yet,  and current prices are at least an order of magnitude above marginal cost.
Dont tell me you thought the network was about to plateau at 5PH ?

I haven't been paying much attention to your posts, but after this one i will. So after the many millions of $ cashed by the many ASIC vendors here and after the many scams and lost money + the 2-4(maybe more?) times as much money outside the forum you still think that the volumes will go bigger than this? People running out of money and ROI exponentially lower every day makes you think that mining vendors will live to see BIGGER volumes than ever? WOW...

I used hashfast to guestimate electricity efficiency and asic costs in general, based on their figures as at that time they were the only 28nm ones with stated die size.  And you've seen the thread where I pulled that chart from, I never even made an attempt to price in the rest of the hardware, I based it solely on the chips and left it up to anyone who wanted to fill out their own assumptions for the non electricity non asic parts for reasons I also explained there. I also never set out to prove 650PH in a year, I didnt come up with that number, and I most certainly didnt come up with that timeline.

But hey, since Im to blame, lets see if we can defend it. Instead of using hashfast, lets substitute it with the Coincraft A1 specs at nominal mode (low power mode might be better, but I cant find a hashrate for it). And lets use some more realistic total system costs and expand the ROI horizon to 2 years. What do we get then?

Something about this feels like you blew too much money on HF, D&T.
First, let's toss a few unjustified preconceptions:

1.  The chips making up the bulk of hashrate in a year are unlikely to be HF.  I can't predict the tech which will be around in a year's time, but a year ago the hottest thing on the block was FPGA.  How many of those FPGA boards do we need for today's hashrate?

2.  Stop assuming that mining will always be done in the most awkward form factor -- a 4U case with twin PSs & 3 chips, cooled by three radiators & a bevy of fans.
No.
A commercial mining operation can rely on prefab rack units with modular shelving doubling as mounting plates for multiple chip sub-assemblies, complete with quick-disconnect power and cooling.  Water cooling will obviously rely on 1 pump/heat exchanger per rack of ~100 chips.  Heat exchanger could be a water-to-air or water-to-water.  Out in da back.  The cool thing about water is it runs through skinny pipes, nothing special.

3.  Why is everything being shipped to US in your example?  Why not Ukraine, where power costs ~4 cents per KWh?

4.  Why are the PSs multiples of PC power supplies?  You do realize that mining at scale, bigger, less well-regulated PSs could be used, without the pointless multiple voltages/individual cooling/protection/consumer code/etc.?

5.  What makes you think that you know of every chip being developed currently?  Not every company needs to skirt the law & fund their NRE with pre-orders.  Most normal companies don't.  I wouldn't be surprised by unaccountable lumps of hashpower.

If it ever becomes more profitable to mine than to bilk suckers out of their coin, that's exactly what ASIC makers will do.

Your "projection" was "based" on Hashfast cost.  It was at the top of your chart.  When asked to back it up you say you aren't interested.  Didn't you ALREADY do such an analysis before coming up with $250 to $50 per TH/s or were those just random numbers you made up?

Still $50 or $100 or $250 per TH/s is just as utterly silly for any vendor, any design, any configuration, anywhere in the world.  It is like saying you will make a clone of an iphone.  Can you do it for $100 maybe, maybe not but if you come in here and say you can mass produce iphone clones for $3.20 ea well it is just laughably dumb.

IIRC the power converters on Bitfury board are about $12 that is in bulk (i.e. 1000+ units).  Just the power regulators are $12 for 40 GH/s. = $30 per TH/s just for one non ASIC component.  Avalon board level BOM is open source (very similar to ASCIMiner who is very hush hush about components) and runs ~$10 per board (excluding ASICs, PCB and assembly).  That's $50 per TH/s for just minor components (crystal, resistors, capacitors, connectors, etc).

You can't get a pcb (no case, fans, cooling, heatsinks, power, host, etc) for the prices you claim even with free ASICs. Just once again to illustrate how silly $50 per TH/s is.  You say Bitfury is the answer to lower cost, at $50 per TH/s that is $2 per board for the overclocked version with higher output power regulators. All PCB production cost, all components, ASICs, assembly, testing, yield losses, etc.  $2 per board.   $2 a board for a 5" by 6" PCB with over 100 components.   I mean it is hard to point that out with a straight face.  Even if your board was $2 power, cooling, open racks, etc have a non-zero cost.

You say quality power isn't important but even at $500 per TH/s & $0.08 per kWh power is about half of the total one year cost.  Using 70% efficient PSU means 30% higher energy cost so robbing Peter to pay Paul.  The junk PSU you listed have horrible voltage regulation and were never designed for high current electronics so what happens when your piece of junk PSU destroys your ASIC.  Is that in your $50 per TH/s target?

IM not interested in pricing a Sierra. Frankly thats as silly as doing a BOM analysis on a minirig with an integrated Nexus 7 tablet to make a point that prices per GH couldnt go below $15/GH. Bare bones "designs" that asicminer and bitfury put out, is what future miners will look like. No fancy cases, no water cooling, no integrated tablets, just cheap as chips boards at most in a very basic box of fans. What HF, Cointerra etc are putting out soon is pretty darn nice, but at the prices they can ask for these rigs, there is no reason not to. But in  6 or 12 months when margins evaporate, water cooling  and seasonic PSU's may look as silly as an integrated tablet in a minirig today.

Well quoting a poorly regulated, low efficiency (70% ouch that is going to hurt power costs) junk PSU, unknown radiator as a substitute for complete sealed waterloop, and "all fans = $0.60" doesn't help your case.  Lets ignore the fact that the site you linked to is notorious for bad prices.  Ask for a firm quote and see how the prices magically change.

Still lets use your imaginary parts:
Junk PSU: 4*10 = $40
Imaginary complete sealed watercooling system: 3 * $20 = $60 (w/ pump, radiator, lines, waterblock, shipped ready to install yeah right.  you pointed out a radiator is $12.  Show me where you can get a pump, reservoir, tubing, connectors, copper waterblock, and assembly for $8 more).
Case: $6 (you don't really believe the listed price on alibaba do you.  Ever asked for quote on a specific model?  Suddenly the $10 special disapears marked up 300% or more)
Fans: 8*$1 ea (its 8 not 2 2 per radiator plus 2 exhaust)

So just these 4 junk components puts you at $74.  A $50 per TH/s target gives you only $60 for an entire system.  Your already overbudget with just the non-electronic components. There is still the ASICs, minor pcb components, pcb manufacturing, pcb assembly, major assembly, and testing.  This also assumes 100% yield, no fixed costs, overhead, taxes, salaries, etc.

Like I said my guestimate of $1000 per system was just a start.  I even said you likely can cut that by 50%.  That is a huge difference from saying you can cut it >95%+ to meet some silly 650 PH/s estimate.

Thanks by your own junk part links you just disproved $50 per TH/s nonsense.  You know it and I know it you just can't admit how utterly silly your projection is.   If you can't source the basic non electronic components (power, case/frame/rack, cooling) for $50 per TH/s it is utterly pointless to show that as a projection.  Moore's law isn't going to make a PSU or case or fan drop 50% in price this year.

And to reduce the cost of that "other stuff" bitfury did try to build minimalistic PCBs, but so far has had some problems...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3425695

spiccioli

At the network speeds we are talking about, those wouldnt be small runs. As for the price per chip, these bitcoin asics are no bigger than typical mid/highend mobile SoCs. You've already seen how I came to my estimates, but lets see what ARM has to say on that:

"Our SoC partners might put the first one out on the market with a $15 ASP, and as soon as the second person comes on the market the price drops to $7 and within a month or two, they'll be at $5."

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2303601/arm-reveals-the-mali-t720-gpu-to-help-vendors-get-android-devices-to-market-faster

In all likelihood, mobile socs would have lower yields (far less redundancy), more layers, and far more complicated IO. On the flip side, packaging for low wattage might be easier, but if HF could save money by using seperate chips per die, rather than packaging 4 in one MCM, Im pretty sure they would do it. Really, your low estimate is pretty high. Maybe asic vendors now cant reach that low because they dont have the volume to order directly with the fab, but at some point they will.


Surely you are joking?
Have you seen the cases of KnC? Just 2 flimsy cheats of aluminum that couldnt cost more than $3 in volume. For reference, here is a full fancy looking ATX case for $6
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/1016257579/Mini_ATX_Case_Mini_ATX_Tower.html
IT even comes with fans that you price at $10 each


Again, you have to be kidding. Its not because those prices are common in retail, targeting a select niche market that tolerates such prices, that large volume orders would cost anything like that. $20 tops. Here is a huge radiator, likely the most expensive part,  for $12:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/425032365/Computer_water_cooling_cooling_system.html

You are off by, well, a LOT. Again, for reference first hit on Alibaba, pricing starts at $0.6:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/1059988680/High_tech_120mm_fan_12v_dc.html


Im not gonna look for prices, but honestly, you are way,WAY off. First crappy 360W PSU I find
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/1313266704/360W_Constant_Voltage_12V_Power_Supply.html
Yep, $10 instead of you estimated $150. etc, etc.

I didnt even search for the cheapest, just took one of the first relevant results to give you an idea. Now the above components may be as crap as the infamous BFL power supplies,  might be wrong spec, whatever, but you get the idea. You really confuse retail prices of A brands with what stuff from China costs in volume.

i recently did my own guesstimates of the cost and came to very similar conclusions, though i think you're on the low side for the actual asic costs, but i think you've overestimated the power supply and cooling costs, as they appear to be using relatively off the shelf parts, which will be in volume production and they're not paying retail prices for them.

I think this is very critical, because what it shows is what I've always been saying, that the cost of the system is mostly "other stuff" (psus, cooling, case, pcbs, fans) and not the actual cost of the asics, thus you get enormous cost/performance improvements by having faster asics, as the rest of the system doesn't change in cost at all if the asics went faster!

I like the approach taken but the scale is simply unrealistic. For the sake of the argument lets assume the chips (silicon & packaging) is possible at $0.20 per GH/s ($20 per TH).  Small runs (less than 1,000 wafers) at 28nm are probably more expensive than you so raw silicon is probably close to that and multi-die package with high TDP and high ball count BGA design aren't cheap.  I think >$0.30 per GH/s minimum (excluding NRE and other fixed costs) for chips on a reel is probably more realistic.  However foundry prices are subject to NDA and often opaque so lets make it simple and assume the cost of a chip is $0.00 per GH/s and look at the rest of the system.

For example lets try to guesstimate the balance of the system (everything but the ASIC) on a Sierra.  Here is my guess what is yours?
case: $30 * 1 = $30
watercooling: $80 * 3 = $240
case fans: $10 * 2 = $20
power supplies: $150 * 2 = $300
PCB (both PCB manufacturing and assembly):  $30 x 3 = $90
DC regulators (12V to ~0.8V 200A output ea, 2 per board): $30 x 6 = $180 (probably more KNC uses >$300 per 400 GH/s system)
minor components (connectors, capacitors, etc guesstimate 100+ components per board): $50 x 3 = $150
labor (post PCB assembly, testing, packaging): $50
Balance of system (excluding ASICs) = $1,060 or ~$900 per TH/s.

That is nothing for fixed costs, markup/profit, yield issues, customer support, shipping losses, warranty, etc.

Now let say you could cut that roughly in half to $500 per TH/s.  Your "end game charts" start at half that.  $250 per TH/s might someday be possible but that is a lot of cost to remove from my guesstimate above.  In either case $50 per TH/s is just silly.  Might as well draw a line which shows the end game of $1 per EH/s. $50 per TH/s is $60 per Sierra.  If you think other designs are cheaper to build (excluding chp cost) that would be $25 per KNC Jupiter or $20 per Bitfury-400.  Say I gave you 1.2 TH/s (or 0.5 TH/s, or 0.4 TH/s) of free chips show me how the balance of the system can be made for those prices.  Seriously I would like to see the break down, even a crude guesstimate which gets you into that range.  Pay close attention to DC regulator (VRM) costs and power supplies they are more expensive on a $/GH basis than you might first think.  

Even a generous (I would say unrealistic) scenario of:
8 cent per kWh
20% cooling overhead (PUE 1.2),
no real estate overhead,
$500 per TH hardware
1 year break even for miners
-----------------------------
= network equilibrium at ~225 PH/s.

So it is more like "end game" of <225 PH/s (eventually) at current exchange rate even if my hardware cost is double what is possible.  It kinda shows how silly projections of >650 PH/s in less than a year really are.  Don't feel bad I have seen projections as high as 20 EH/s.

since BitFury's aim was 5 GH, and he achieved approx half that... i think its likely that whatever errors were in the design that prevented it from running at full rate, would get fixed next time around... so, with the die shrink from 55nm to 28nm (4x density of hash cores), and the errors corrected (2x speed), and perhaps some architectural improvements (e.g., fix the daisy chaining which makes it unreliable and hard to scale properly) ...  i would've expected the BitFury28 chip to be at least 8x the current chip's performance...  i.e.: 16 GH (or more), in something thats probably pin compatible with the old one in a low cost qfp as before.   Since its unlikely to run at an 1/8th of the power of the previous one... I'm presuming that the next bitfury28 design will need heatsinks on each chip because the likely power consumption might be in the 8 watt ballpark.

Just FYI - the main problem with the Bitfury chips, as I understand it, was a "metalization" layout problem - what Punin called "Kappies" (Finnish for pine-cones) appearing where there should have been straight-run bus lines and rounded corners.

Likely a penalty paid for doing a hand layout...