Topic: [LABCOIN] IPO [BTCT.CO] - Details/FAQ and Discussion (ASIC dev/sales/mining) - page 914. (Read 1079974 times)
July 27, 2013, 11:22:25 AM
Pathetic.
July 27, 2013, 11:00:59 AM
Will the IPO be today?
July 27, 2013, 10:42:31 AM
Looking forward to all the details! Glad to see that it's on BTC-TC as well
July 27, 2013, 10:32:51 AM
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-labcoin-asic-v1-130nm300mhz-16-cores-chip-european-chinese-team-241033
1. Please give us a detailed specification of the chip and its current status. What is the power efficiency?
Alright,the 130nm IC is designed to work at about 200 Mhz for core, with a total consumption of 0.8W per core, hashing performances of about 200 mhash per core, total speed will depend on the overall output grade.
The IC covers an area of 6.5mm x 6.5mm and it has been designed following ideas similar to those employed in the bitfury ASIC.
2. How will you show transparency with the 75% retained shares?
the IPO manager will arrange some kind of way for burnside to release that information
3. Are your first run ASICs in production?
the first test run is already out to fab
4. How many chips do you expect to get out of the first batch? When will you have sample chips?
estimate date for receiving sample chip, one week later, if there are no delays, the plan is having boards produced within the first week of september
5. How is it possible to create chips with a such much better performance than the competitors. You've arranged them to fit more on the same size? For that to be possible, not only each Labcoin core would have to be ~42% smaller [65/130*(6.5^2)/(7.1^2)] than each BFL core but also the Labcoin chip would magically operate at a higher frequency (300MHz vs 250MHz) while keeping the same power draw...
rolled cores instead of unrolled, sea-of-hashers approach. as in sea-of-gates. you can google this term and find out more about what it means technically. i remind you guys that the bitfury chip has up to 750 cores. they also use the same approach, we chose this design because one of our guys was close to bitfury developments 2 months ago
6. What is the software used for mining, protocol development ? I am assuming Theseven will be doing the firmware part?
yes theSeven is working on a sophisticated interface for the 65nm version
7. Is Labcoin a hardware sales or mining co?
We will focus on deploying internal hash power initially and won't ship USB miners yet, time is tight
8. How many wafers? How many TH's will be hashing in September? That knowledge will be known as soon as you get the chips, correct?
well not 30-50 TH. not sure what will be the yield of the test-run but it's in the thousands ICs. correct, also,next week we'll have the next batch going out to fab
in september we may have a few TH. i can't give exact figures, by the end of Sept, initial week of october we'll have the full speed online.
9. Is this chip the same design as the 180nm? or a completely new one?
it's based on similar design choices,but it's indeed different, as it's using a different library,different logic blocks layout
10. How can you fit 16 cores on 6.5x6.5 ? How many cores on average per chip, what is your assumption
The cores we have fit are not classical "unrolled cores",the cores as we mean them are the result of our engineering effort. i'll pass the questions i can't reply to the lead developer
11. Labcoin seems almost small now in the light of new competitors like btcgarden, hashfast, actm, terrahash.. do you think you can keep up?
btcgarden? Well, guys, i would do a reality check before saying such things. Undoubtedly ASICMINER, AVALON and maybe BFL have some kind of advantage. But we don't see how we are inferior to those vaporware companies. What in their announcement makes them more convincing than us? time will tell and the sheer of technical details we have provided is not trivial. it's very unlikely we are making everything up
12. So if everything goes as planned - we'll see Labcoin start hashing in the first week of September? Can you please confirm?
confirm, hashing with moderate speed and testing and within the end of the month, we'll have the full speed online
13. What are the chances that the chips won't work? can you guestimate?
we're not worried about this, as soon as the hashing power comes up, the price will go the right route. there's a small chance that the chip won't work, but very very small. it's much more common to get slightly underperforming chips rather than completely dead ones
14. Who is Samuel Noi?
Sam is our nominee director, Fabrizio is the founder
15. What's the status of the boards? How long will it take after testing to get all the board you need, set them up with chips and get them hashing?
The boards are near their design completion and will be tested as soon as we have the chips. we'll post pictures of the boards very soon. it will take about 7-10 days to get all the boards up and running probablyand, for the first run, we have 500 boards on order
16. Do you still depend on suppliers or do you have everything in stock? and what tools for p&r, sta, layout
we use Mentor mostly, and its suite. we still depend on suppliers but we're closing in the gap. we'll be ordering components according to the volume needed to avoid bottlenecks. 24july first one
17. Where is the lab? Shenzhen or Hongkong? Can we have a chance to visit? When if not now?
lab is located in SZ, at the university facility, we'll be moving shorty to another office. we'll be inviting selected investors to visit our datacenter in september
18. http://www.labcoin.com/presentation.html are these photos of the real where u r working in?
yes,they are real. it's the university i mentioned
Dear Bitcoin Community,
We are a new venture involved in the research and development of a novel Bitcoin mining technologies.
Our brand name is labcoin and our website is http://www.labcoin.com.
The management company is named "iTec Pro Limited" - Hong Kong, legally and officially registered in such jurisdiction.
This is initially a self-funded venture, so this thread is not meant to sell "pre-orders" or the likes.
Rather, it is a mean for the community to evaluate our work and plans for a eventual, future second phase, when we will open investment opportunities to the public.
I won't post many images of IC and similar here, as a fair number of details can be found on our website, once again, our url is http://www.labcoin.com.
We look forward for constructive feedback and criticism. You can contact us with any question at [email protected] or post in this thread. Thank you sincerely for your time.
Note : the pictures shown on our home page are just 3D renderings of possible case and board design and they do not represent real products.
Samuel Noi
Nominee Director
iTec-Pro Limited
[email protected]
We are a new venture involved in the research and development of a novel Bitcoin mining technologies.
Our brand name is labcoin and our website is http://www.labcoin.com.
The management company is named "iTec Pro Limited" - Hong Kong, legally and officially registered in such jurisdiction.
This is initially a self-funded venture, so this thread is not meant to sell "pre-orders" or the likes.
Rather, it is a mean for the community to evaluate our work and plans for a eventual, future second phase, when we will open investment opportunities to the public.
I won't post many images of IC and similar here, as a fair number of details can be found on our website, once again, our url is http://www.labcoin.com.
We look forward for constructive feedback and criticism. You can contact us with any question at [email protected] or post in this thread. Thank you sincerely for your time.
Note : the pictures shown on our home page are just 3D renderings of possible case and board design and they do not represent real products.
Samuel Noi
Nominee Director
iTec-Pro Limited
[email protected]
1. Please give us a detailed specification of the chip and its current status. What is the power efficiency?
Alright,the 130nm IC is designed to work at about 200 Mhz for core, with a total consumption of 0.8W per core, hashing performances of about 200 mhash per core, total speed will depend on the overall output grade.
The IC covers an area of 6.5mm x 6.5mm and it has been designed following ideas similar to those employed in the bitfury ASIC.
2. How will you show transparency with the 75% retained shares?
the IPO manager will arrange some kind of way for burnside to release that information
3. Are your first run ASICs in production?
the first test run is already out to fab
4. How many chips do you expect to get out of the first batch? When will you have sample chips?
estimate date for receiving sample chip, one week later, if there are no delays, the plan is having boards produced within the first week of september
5. How is it possible to create chips with a such much better performance than the competitors. You've arranged them to fit more on the same size? For that to be possible, not only each Labcoin core would have to be ~42% smaller [65/130*(6.5^2)/(7.1^2)] than each BFL core but also the Labcoin chip would magically operate at a higher frequency (300MHz vs 250MHz) while keeping the same power draw...
rolled cores instead of unrolled, sea-of-hashers approach. as in sea-of-gates. you can google this term and find out more about what it means technically. i remind you guys that the bitfury chip has up to 750 cores. they also use the same approach, we chose this design because one of our guys was close to bitfury developments 2 months ago
6. What is the software used for mining, protocol development ? I am assuming Theseven will be doing the firmware part?
yes theSeven is working on a sophisticated interface for the 65nm version
7. Is Labcoin a hardware sales or mining co?
We will focus on deploying internal hash power initially and won't ship USB miners yet, time is tight
8. How many wafers? How many TH's will be hashing in September? That knowledge will be known as soon as you get the chips, correct?
well not 30-50 TH. not sure what will be the yield of the test-run but it's in the thousands ICs. correct, also,next week we'll have the next batch going out to fab
in september we may have a few TH. i can't give exact figures, by the end of Sept, initial week of october we'll have the full speed online.
9. Is this chip the same design as the 180nm? or a completely new one?
it's based on similar design choices,but it's indeed different, as it's using a different library,different logic blocks layout
10. How can you fit 16 cores on 6.5x6.5 ? How many cores on average per chip, what is your assumption
The cores we have fit are not classical "unrolled cores",the cores as we mean them are the result of our engineering effort. i'll pass the questions i can't reply to the lead developer
11. Labcoin seems almost small now in the light of new competitors like btcgarden, hashfast, actm, terrahash.. do you think you can keep up?
btcgarden? Well, guys, i would do a reality check before saying such things. Undoubtedly ASICMINER, AVALON and maybe BFL have some kind of advantage. But we don't see how we are inferior to those vaporware companies. What in their announcement makes them more convincing than us? time will tell and the sheer of technical details we have provided is not trivial. it's very unlikely we are making everything up
12. So if everything goes as planned - we'll see Labcoin start hashing in the first week of September? Can you please confirm?
confirm, hashing with moderate speed and testing and within the end of the month, we'll have the full speed online
13. What are the chances that the chips won't work? can you guestimate?
we're not worried about this, as soon as the hashing power comes up, the price will go the right route. there's a small chance that the chip won't work, but very very small. it's much more common to get slightly underperforming chips rather than completely dead ones
14. Who is Samuel Noi?
Sam is our nominee director, Fabrizio is the founder
15. What's the status of the boards? How long will it take after testing to get all the board you need, set them up with chips and get them hashing?
The boards are near their design completion and will be tested as soon as we have the chips. we'll post pictures of the boards very soon. it will take about 7-10 days to get all the boards up and running probablyand, for the first run, we have 500 boards on order
16. Do you still depend on suppliers or do you have everything in stock? and what tools for p&r, sta, layout
we use Mentor mostly, and its suite. we still depend on suppliers but we're closing in the gap. we'll be ordering components according to the volume needed to avoid bottlenecks. 24july first one
17. Where is the lab? Shenzhen or Hongkong? Can we have a chance to visit? When if not now?
lab is located in SZ, at the university facility, we'll be moving shorty to another office. we'll be inviting selected investors to visit our datacenter in september
18. http://www.labcoin.com/presentation.html are these photos of the real where u r working in?
yes,they are real. it's the university i mentioned
July 27, 2013, 09:37:27 AM
Short Update 2.14 PM CET:
The IPO has been submitted to BTCT.CO and is currently being updated with some details. Current 'time table' is to complete the IPO for voting by (or before) Monday 29th-July. After which it will be up to the voting BTCT.co members to approve the IPO for release.
More updates will be posted as we get closer to the un-lock. We will also provide a Q&A in this thread.
Sunday 3.05 pm Central time:
More details added to the IPO description public under 'locked' securities on BTCT.CO, we are expecting to finalize the application today and open it for voting Monday.
IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS: please feel free to ask here. We are aiming for a well informed, fair and honest IPO and the more questions we can answer, the better!
The IPO has been submitted to BTCT.CO and is currently being updated with some details. Current 'time table' is to complete the IPO for voting by (or before) Monday 29th-July. After which it will be up to the voting BTCT.co members to approve the IPO for release.
More updates will be posted as we get closer to the un-lock. We will also provide a Q&A in this thread.
Sunday 3.05 pm Central time:
More details added to the IPO description public under 'locked' securities on BTCT.CO, we are expecting to finalize the application today and open it for voting Monday.
IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS: please feel free to ask here. We are aiming for a well informed, fair and honest IPO and the more questions we can answer, the better!
July 27, 2013, 09:37:13 AM
UPDATE FINAL:
(Ethan Burnside) Hi all, I'm posting this somewhat blind. (haven't caught up with the last 10 or so pages...)
TheSwede75 and I have talked a bit and here's what we've come up with:
- 3 PM CST/4 PM EST is the cutoff for bidding. (EDITED!)
- Sometime shortly after that time I will lock the asset.
- All bids below 0.001 will be thrown out.
- All bids posted after the cutoff will be thrown out.
- We will then add up all the bids and use the total to create a ratio of number of shares ordered to number of shares available. (eg, 9,000,000 ordered, 7,000,000 available gives us a ratio of 0.777)
- We will multiply everyone's orders times the ratio and extract a whole number of shares on a per order basis. The orders will then be filled according to the result at 0.001 BTC. (regardless of what they actually bid.)
- This will leave some number of shares available due to rounding down to a whole number on every calculation. We'll figure out a way to deal with these fairly. Most likely recipients will be chosen at random from the pool of bidders but they will be a very small portion of the overall issue.
- 8 PM CST/9 PM EST we remove the admin lock and everyone can start trading.
Wednesdays are already full days for me with ASICMINER-PT related duties and my day job. So please be patient today. Responses to customer service and related requests will unfortunately be delayed significantly so that I can write and test all the code necessary to execute the plan above.
sounds sane
Cheers.
THIS IS OUR SOLTION. TRADING WILL START AT 8 PM CST/9 PM EST
UPDATE:
There is an update coming shortly from Ethan Burnside. The situation as it is is very hard to solve fairly, and as BTCT.CO has never encountered a IPO where committed investments outweighs the amount of available shares Ethan is constructing a solution to the problem customized. The solution will mimic the behavior of regular IPO's and will be presented by Ethan himself here shortly!
NEW UPDATE:
We are working with Ethan Burnside of BTCT.CO on a solution to the overwhelming demand. IF we can find a solution that does not involve resetting the order book and opening the sale at previously announced time (8 PM CENTRAL TIME - US) we will communicate this here in advance (at least a few hours). If the solution is found to be 'good' by a majority of investors we may release share-sale earlier then previously communicated.
The reason for this would be (among many):
- Avoid possible technical malfunction of BTCT.CO
- Release the shares at IPO price and allow fair distribution among investors unable to place their orders at exactly 8 pm Central
- Avoid a situation where a large investor buys a majority of available shares at EXACTLY 8 pm Central
Once again, we are sorry for the situation at hand but had very little options in how to handle the sale as we had no control over the approval process.
UPDATE
THE IPO SHARE SALE HAS NOT YET STARTED!
We had MANY requests to not start the IPO at an arbitrary time, but give advanced notice of a time. This could NOT be done until voting was over and while we slept the IPO was approved. We will release ALL IPO shares for sale at IPO price at 8 PM CENTRAL TIME tonight (12 hours from NOW!)
We hope people understand that we are doing this to guarantee a 'fair' start to the IPO. I will communicate with Burnside on how to best release the shares.
UPDATE
LABCOIN asset is now open for vote on BTCT.CO
Excecutive summary:
Labcoin started out as a privately funded experiment, managed by iTec-Pro Limited back in September/October 2012, with the aim of exploring the development of novel mining technologies.
In early 2013 development of a 180 nm ASIC chip was started and in late spring this chip design became the foundation for the current development of and production of a highly competative and cost effective 130 nm ASIC chip. This is the chip that the company now has secured production of for it's first ASIC Bitcoin miner product.
ASIC is an acronym that stands for "Application Specific Integrated circuit", and indeed, in our case, the specific application we are interested in, is Bitcoin mining.
The company is running two separate development teams in both Europe and China, enabling the paralell development and production of 130 nm ASIC and the future 65 nm ASIC chips.
Developing a custom integrated circuit is no simple task, requires time, highly skilled, trained team of engineers, and a deep, low-level knowledge of hardware, and Bitcoin mining process.
Currently many companies are attempting at cutting a share of the market but only a few of them actually shipped real hardware (though intermittently) and proved as real competitors.
It is our ultimate future goal to control a "fair share" (approx 10-15% or more) of the Bitcoin network global hashrate, and position us both in the market of IC manufacturing, Bitcoin mining and mining hardware sales, for profit and benefit of the Bitcoin community and network decentralization / security.
Through our strategy, hard work and good communication channels with several foundries, (eased by one of the key team members being a researcher at the `Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen`) we believe to possess the right combination of skills, know-how and industry connections for being able to compete successfully in this niche segment, where time-to-market is critical.
The planned IPO, if filled will vitalize Labcoin with between $600.000-$650.000 (at a bitcoin/USD value of between $80-$90) enabling first run and mass production of 130nm chips and miners as well as continued development of 65 nm ASIC technology and miners.
In our mind there is no doubt that the funds raised will enable labcoin to become a power player in ASIC chip production, ASIC Miner sales as well as Bitcoin mining. Enabling Labcoin to thrive as a profitable company for investors and owners old and new.
Latest development news (latest we are ready to release pre-IPO at least).
Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W
Chip estimated cost (full production run post First-run): $9-$10 USD per chip or $2 per GH
Cell Image:
(Ethan Burnside) Hi all, I'm posting this somewhat blind. (haven't caught up with the last 10 or so pages...)
TheSwede75 and I have talked a bit and here's what we've come up with:
- 3 PM CST/4 PM EST is the cutoff for bidding. (EDITED!)
- Sometime shortly after that time I will lock the asset.
- All bids below 0.001 will be thrown out.
- All bids posted after the cutoff will be thrown out.
- We will then add up all the bids and use the total to create a ratio of number of shares ordered to number of shares available. (eg, 9,000,000 ordered, 7,000,000 available gives us a ratio of 0.777)
- We will multiply everyone's orders times the ratio and extract a whole number of shares on a per order basis. The orders will then be filled according to the result at 0.001 BTC. (regardless of what they actually bid.)
- This will leave some number of shares available due to rounding down to a whole number on every calculation. We'll figure out a way to deal with these fairly. Most likely recipients will be chosen at random from the pool of bidders but they will be a very small portion of the overall issue.
- 8 PM CST/9 PM EST we remove the admin lock and everyone can start trading.
Wednesdays are already full days for me with ASICMINER-PT related duties and my day job. So please be patient today. Responses to customer service and related requests will unfortunately be delayed significantly so that I can write and test all the code necessary to execute the plan above.
sounds sane
Cheers.
THIS IS OUR SOLTION. TRADING WILL START AT 8 PM CST/9 PM EST
There is an update coming shortly from Ethan Burnside. The situation as it is is very hard to solve fairly, and as BTCT.CO has never encountered a IPO where committed investments outweighs the amount of available shares Ethan is constructing a solution to the problem customized. The solution will mimic the behavior of regular IPO's and will be presented by Ethan himself here shortly!
NEW UPDATE:
We are working with Ethan Burnside of BTCT.CO on a solution to the overwhelming demand. IF we can find a solution that does not involve resetting the order book and opening the sale at previously announced time (8 PM CENTRAL TIME - US) we will communicate this here in advance (at least a few hours). If the solution is found to be 'good' by a majority of investors we may release share-sale earlier then previously communicated.
The reason for this would be (among many):
- Avoid possible technical malfunction of BTCT.CO
- Release the shares at IPO price and allow fair distribution among investors unable to place their orders at exactly 8 pm Central
- Avoid a situation where a large investor buys a majority of available shares at EXACTLY 8 pm Central
Once again, we are sorry for the situation at hand but had very little options in how to handle the sale as we had no control over the approval process.
UPDATE
THE IPO SHARE SALE HAS NOT YET STARTED!
We hope people understand that we are doing this to guarantee a 'fair' start to the IPO. I will communicate with Burnside on how to best release the shares.
UPDATE
LABCOIN asset is now open for vote on BTCT.CO
Excecutive summary:
Labcoin started out as a privately funded experiment, managed by iTec-Pro Limited back in September/October 2012, with the aim of exploring the development of novel mining technologies.
In early 2013 development of a 180 nm ASIC chip was started and in late spring this chip design became the foundation for the current development of and production of a highly competative and cost effective 130 nm ASIC chip. This is the chip that the company now has secured production of for it's first ASIC Bitcoin miner product.
ASIC is an acronym that stands for "Application Specific Integrated circuit", and indeed, in our case, the specific application we are interested in, is Bitcoin mining.
The company is running two separate development teams in both Europe and China, enabling the paralell development and production of 130 nm ASIC and the future 65 nm ASIC chips.
Developing a custom integrated circuit is no simple task, requires time, highly skilled, trained team of engineers, and a deep, low-level knowledge of hardware, and Bitcoin mining process.
Currently many companies are attempting at cutting a share of the market but only a few of them actually shipped real hardware (though intermittently) and proved as real competitors.
It is our ultimate future goal to control a "fair share" (approx 10-15% or more) of the Bitcoin network global hashrate, and position us both in the market of IC manufacturing, Bitcoin mining and mining hardware sales, for profit and benefit of the Bitcoin community and network decentralization / security.
Through our strategy, hard work and good communication channels with several foundries, (eased by one of the key team members being a researcher at the `Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen`) we believe to possess the right combination of skills, know-how and industry connections for being able to compete successfully in this niche segment, where time-to-market is critical.
The planned IPO, if filled will vitalize Labcoin with between $600.000-$650.000 (at a bitcoin/USD value of between $80-$90) enabling first run and mass production of 130nm chips and miners as well as continued development of 65 nm ASIC technology and miners.
In our mind there is no doubt that the funds raised will enable labcoin to become a power player in ASIC chip production, ASIC Miner sales as well as Bitcoin mining. Enabling Labcoin to thrive as a profitable company for investors and owners old and new.
Latest development news (latest we are ready to release pre-IPO at least).
Chip Specs: Multi-core 130 nm chip with power consumption of: 2.7 w/Ghash. Each chip runs at 4.7 GH/s @ 12.8W
Chip estimated cost (full production run post First-run): $9-$10 USD per chip or $2 per GH
Cell Image:
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