That would actually be pretty good if it was 50 of the 300kh/s miners since they overclock quite easily 20% to 360kh/s, which would yield a net system hash power of 18MH. But i'm betting the OC is already factored into that reported speed. I'm running 40 miners and getting 14.4MH so its conceivable they will just ship something with ~42 miners and call it 15MH.
I don't think Jack would cram 42 overclocked miners and call it an LA15M. Jack has been very honest and has undersold the capabilities of these units from day 1 (I am not saying he is perfect as there have been some slow responses and confusion in ordering from others; but he has been upfront, honest, consistent, honorable and has met all of his promises to me). Consider that Jack is not selling the LA3M as an LA4M, even though at 850mhz clocks (which are easily achieved) the units do in fact operate closer to 400 than 300 khz, so he **could** have called it an LA4M, or he could have shipped 9 miners per LA3M if that was the kind of company he wanted to operate. We will see, but I would be greatly disappointed if the "LA15M" was anything less than 250 gridseed chips (note that there is the possibility, maybe likelihood, that LA would create a board that hold more than 5 chips per board, in order to optimize power and cooling and minimize cost).
In addition, it should be better than just cramming 50 of the LA3M type miners in a case, as there would be many advantages to an integrated design. First, you would not need 50 fans and 50 huge heatsinks. Using a shared heatsink and case fans (with well designed airflow through a case designed with cooling in mind) should substantially reduce power and space requirements, and maybe even improve cooling to the point the additional overclocking is possible. Second, cable management and power distribution is not a trivial problem with 50 gridseeds going at once, and a single rackmount solves both of those problems. Third, as a consequence of the foregoing advantages, consider that 5 LA3M consume about 3250 watts (dual mode), which is more than a single 15-20 amp circuit could handle, but by design the LA15M would presumably run on a single circuit (TBD - hoping this is true). Fourth, setup, shipping, moving, and maintenance of a single rack mount device is WAY easier versus 50 individual miners. Probably quieter as well.
Even ignoring the advantages above, the LA15M should provide some cost advantages over 5 separate LA3M systems. At $2400 per LA3M, the total current cost for 5 LA3M (the equivalent of an LA15M, I believe though specs from Jack would help confirm this) would be $12,000 PLUS $600 for shipping... the $11,000 price Jack gave me included shipping so that is a $1,600 savings.
Finally, it is worth noting that Jack offered to me at least price protection vis a vis the LA3M cost, so that if he lowers the price of LA3M he would reduce the price of the LA15M to me. Since it seems inevitable that the LA3M is going to decrease (other GB's are already offering complete setups equal to the LA3M for 2100)... so it will ultimately be less in all likelihood. Caveat - I don't know if Jack would offer this to everyone who pre-orders maybe only to the earliest pre-orders so don't assume anything regarding terms if you are pre-ordering.
