I know it's not a Dremel, but isn't cutting chips from a wafer a delicate process, one requiring the least amount of heat created?
Yes. But does Burning Fire Labs know?
Topic: New BFL update. 25 February 2013. - page 6. (Read 12623 times)
I know it's not a Dremel, but isn't cutting chips from a wafer a delicate process, one requiring the least amount of heat created?
Yes. But does Burning Fire Labs know?
From Josh's latest update:
How on earth are the engineers going to wire bond a bumped wafer if it's not diced?! Maybe Josh should've kept that quarter for himself. You know, to purchase a clue
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..we can send it to the ASIC engineers who can essentially wire bond it manually and test the chips..
How on earth are the engineers going to wire bond a bumped wafer if it's not diced?! Maybe Josh should've kept that quarter for himself. You know, to purchase a clue
By dremeling the hell out of it.
Expect "We had been promised delivery of the Dremel by today, but unfortunately the Fedex man came and gone without it. I am right now trying to find out what happened to it" real soon now.
Also: "What the hell do you expect me to do? Drive to Lowe's and buy one?"
I know it's not a Dremel, but isn't cutting chips from a wafer a delicate process, one requiring the least amount of heat created?
From Josh's latest update:
How on earth are the engineers going to wire bond a bumped wafer if it's not diced?! Maybe Josh should've kept that quarter for himself. You know, to purchase a clue
Quote
..we can send it to the ASIC engineers who can essentially wire bond it manually and test the chips..
How on earth are the engineers going to wire bond a bumped wafer if it's not diced?! Maybe Josh should've kept that quarter for himself. You know, to purchase a clue
By dremeling the hell out of it.
Expect "We had been promised delivery of the Dremel by today, but unfortunately the Fedex man came and gone without it. I am right now trying to find out what happened to it" real soon now.
Also: "What the hell do you expect me to do? Drive to Lowe's and buy one?"
Especially not since those 1000 chips could go towards 1st month orders. They are now sacrificing 1st month orders to get later orders filled earlier. As everyone has already paid for their order...and the money is already in the bank for them, they are simply showing a lot of disregard for their early believers.... IMO
If their early believers were going to bail, they would likely have done so by now. It's the later orders which are more at risk of cancelling - BFL needs to keep those people on the hook as well as encourage new people to place orders now. If they can't keep people whose orders aren't in Batch 1 or Batch 2 on the hook, then the only people who are going to be ordering from them are people using their discount vouchers - who'll probably put up with delivery of their new orders being delayed several months in order to get their "compensation".
Mining's starting to look a lot less appealing to many people, and will probably look even less so by the time May rolls around. It doesn't matter if every single person cancels their Batch 1 order - Batch 2 people will just get their units sooner. It does matter if BFL can't attract a steady stream of new orders, though.
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How on earth are the engineers going to wire bond a bumped wafer if it's not diced?!
I presume that's what's going to destroy the wafer - them dicing it themselves to get test chips. They're probably wishing they'd done an MPW about now.
From Josh's latest update:
How on earth are the engineers going to wire bond a bumped wafer if it's not diced?! Maybe Josh should've kept that quarter for himself. You know, to purchase a clue
Quote
..we can send it to the ASIC engineers who can essentially wire bond it manually and test the chips..
How on earth are the engineers going to wire bond a bumped wafer if it's not diced?! Maybe Josh should've kept that quarter for himself. You know, to purchase a clue
If the bumping facility really has the chips bumped and ready for testing by Friday (as they imply for the projected start of deliveries is March 9th) then there is really no need to burn, i.e. destroy 1 whole wafer. 1.000 chips less for the 1st month pre-orders....
I think there point is that there's no benefit in waiting until all of the wafers are bumped - they're going to have to destroy a wafer in order to test unpackaged chips so they might as well destroy the first bumped wafer now as wait until the end of the week. The alternative is waiting until they have some packaged chips to test.
If the chips test OK then being able to accelerate the delivery of the other 69,000 chips might be worth the sacrifice - but early chip delivery isn't going to worth a damn unless they get the rest of their production processes streamlined in a hurry. If they can't get 6,000 chips bumped, packaged, placed on boards, assembled into units and shipped, how the hell are they going to manage turning their 63,000 bulk order into working units and getting them to customers before hell freezes over?
They are accelerating by 1 week at the most according to their latest timeline.... seeing as the project is already 4 months delayed I really don't see the benefit in destroying 1000 chips
Especially not since those 1000 chips could go towards 1st month orders. They are now sacrificing 1st month orders to get later orders filled earlier. As everyone has already paid for their order...and the money is already in the bank for them, they are simply showing a lot of disregard for their early believers.... IMO
If the bumping facility really has the chips bumped and ready for testing by Friday (as they imply for the projected start of deliveries is March 9th) then there is really no need to burn, i.e. destroy 1 whole wafer. 1.000 chips less for the 1st month pre-orders....
I think there point is that there's no benefit in waiting until all of the wafers are bumped - they're going to have to destroy a wafer in order to test unpackaged chips so they might as well destroy the first bumped wafer now as wait until the end of the week. The alternative is waiting until they have some packaged chips to test.
If the chips test OK then being able to accelerate the delivery of the other 69,000 chips might be worth the sacrifice - but early chip delivery isn't going to worth a damn unless they get the rest of their production processes streamlined in a hurry. If they can't get 6,000 chips bumped, packaged, placed on boards, assembled into units and shipped, how the hell are they going to manage turning their 63,000 bulk order into working units and getting them to customers before hell freezes over?
This whole update makes no sense:
The BFL ASIC project is 4 months overdue after an initial estimate of 4 months. That's a 100% delay.
Now to shave of a couple of days (1 week the most) they sacrifice/screw-over 1/6th of the pre-orders. Makes no sense at all !!!
If the bumping facility really has the chips bumped and ready for testing by Friday (as they imply for the projected start of deliveries is March 9th) then there is really no need to burn, i.e. destroy 1 whole wafer. 1.000 chips less for the 1st month pre-orders....
Now if it will take another whole month before the bumping is ready there might be a case made to do so..... to speed up the process of the wafers remaining at the foundry....
So either it's a really bad business decision on the part of BFL or the bumping is long from being completed and we will read so in the next update...
As always to be continued....
The BFL ASIC project is 4 months overdue after an initial estimate of 4 months. That's a 100% delay.
Now to shave of a couple of days (1 week the most) they sacrifice/screw-over 1/6th of the pre-orders. Makes no sense at all !!!
If the bumping facility really has the chips bumped and ready for testing by Friday (as they imply for the projected start of deliveries is March 9th) then there is really no need to burn, i.e. destroy 1 whole wafer. 1.000 chips less for the 1st month pre-orders....
Now if it will take another whole month before the bumping is ready there might be a case made to do so..... to speed up the process of the wafers remaining at the foundry....
So either it's a really bad business decision on the part of BFL or the bumping is long from being completed and we will read so in the next update...
As always to be continued....
Are you sure you don't have it backwards?
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We have changed our bumping facility from the left coast to the right coast (North Carolina),
Unless one's looking at a map of the US from, let's say Oz, the left coast butts up to the Pacific Ocean like California does, and the right coast butts up to the Atlantic Ocean like North Carolina does.
I likely do Phinn, there've been so many changes I've lost track.
Josh has been sucked into giving an estimated shipping date yet again. Saturday 9 March.
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1163-february-25th-2012-update-discussion-thread-2.html#post16081
It would have been better to refrain from giving an estimated shipping date until testing and packaging are complete.
Now people are going to start asking how many of each unit are going to be in the (reduced) Batch 1, when they're going to get an email about their preferred shipping method, when they should send back their FPGAs, and all that other shit all over again.
Sometimes I feel like I'm a character trapped in a developing screenplay with the working title One Flew Over the Butterfly Net written in the unreliable narrative voice.
Are you sure you don't have it backwards?
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We have changed our bumping facility from the left coast to the right coast (North Carolina),
Unless one's looking at a map of the US from, let's say Oz, the left coast butts up to the Pacific Ocean like California does, and the right coast butts up to the Atlantic Ocean like North Carolina does.
I likely do Phinn, there've been so many changes I've lost track.
Josh has been sucked into giving an estimated shipping date yet again. Saturday 9 March.
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1163-february-25th-2012-update-discussion-thread-2.html#post16081
It would have been better to refrain from giving an estimated shipping date until testing and packaging are complete.
Now people are going to start asking how many of each unit are going to be in the (reduced) Batch 1, when they're going to get an email about their preferred shipping method, when they should send back their FPGAs, and all that other shit all over again.
I can't tell a customer of mine that their barn wood will be on time even if I have to go to the barn to accelerate the process, when my subcontractor supplier doesn't let me know which barn he's procuring the barn wood from.
It sounds like they do know which bumping facility is involved, though, as they made the choice to switch from one in North Carolina to one in California. While it sounds like there's a hell of a communication breakdown, it also sounds like BFL "didn't know what they didn't know".
There's not really any reason for the packaging facility to assume their client has never heard of a blank alignment wafer and won't be supplying one. It's possible that the first either the packaging facility or the bumping facility learned about that was when the wafers arrived at the bumping facility. It's like trying to hurry up the printers when you failed to supply them with the artwork for your job. Now is the time to make sure that they know exactly what is needed for the remaining steps so they're not delayed by something BFL didn't take into account.
Are you sure you don't have it backwards?
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We have changed our bumping facility from the left coast to the right coast (North Carolina),
Unless one's looking at a map of the US from, let's say Oz, the left coast butts up to the Pacific Ocean like California does, and the right coast butts up to the Atlantic Ocean like North Carolina does.
I hereby once again challenge Bryan Micon to a 100 BTC or 2000 BTC (or any number in between) wager that BFL will deliver ASICs in 2013 in escrow.
New ETA is end of 2013. LOL.
It's a shame the 1000 BTC donation to charity is if they miss their power targets, not their shipping date.
I hereby once again challenge Bryan Micon to a 100 BTC or 2000 BTC (or any number in between) wager that BFL will deliver ASICs in 2013 in escrow.
New ETA is end of 2013. LOL.
I can't tell a customer of mine that their barn wood will be on time even if I have to go to the barn to accelerate the process, when my subcontractor supplier doesn't let me know which barn he's procuring the barn wood from.
It sounds like they do know which bumping facility is involved, though, as they made the choice to switch from one in North Carolina to one in California. While it sounds like there's a hell of a communication breakdown, it also sounds like BFL "didn't know what they didn't know".
There's not really any reason for the packaging facility to assume their client has never heard of a blank alignment wafer and won't be supplying one. It's possible that the first either the packaging facility or the bumping facility learned about that was when the wafers arrived at the bumping facility. It's like trying to hurry up the printers when you failed to supply them with the artwork for your job. Now is the time to make sure that they know exactly what is needed for the remaining steps so they're not delayed by something BFL didn't take into account.
From I will leave for the bumping facility, to I will be meeting with them, to we are not in contact with them (I assume implying third party contractor).
From what Josh has posted, it's the packaging facility which is dealing with the bumping facility. Changing the bumping facility quite late in the game might have created issues, too. It's not like all these facilities sit around doing nothing all week just hoping for piddly little rush orders to come in. BFL might be a large vendor in a very small pond but they're a tiny little fish in the massive customer ocean.
You are absolutely correct, although the key word is although:
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...,although I will be meeting them at the bumping facility and making sure...
I can't tell a customer of mine that their barn wood will be on time even if I have to go to the barn to accelerate the process, when my subcontractor supplier doesn't let me know which barn he's procuring the barn wood from.
From I will leave for the bumping facility, to I will be meeting with them, to we are not in contact with them (I assume implying third party contractor).
From what Josh has posted, it's the packaging facility which is dealing with the bumping facility. Changing the bumping facility quite late in the game might have created issues, too. It's not like all these facilities sit around doing nothing all week just hoping for piddly little rush orders to come in. BFL might be a large vendor in a very small pond but they're a tiny little fish in the massive customer ocean.
Thanks for copying over updates from the BFL forum.
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We had expected the bumping to be done by now, as per the previous update(s). That has not been completed yet. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, and we are not pleased with any of them. The bumping facility, which we have no direct contact with, did not complete the NRE on the timeline we had spoke to the packaging facility about.
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Week of January 26th
* Leave for fab/bumping facility at the end of the week
*KC facility starts assembly process of units to drop PCB into Units being prepped!
* Leave for fab/bumping facility at the end of the week
*
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We have changed our bumping facility from the left coast to the right coast (North Carolina), so we may have the 6 wafers overnighted via courier to the bumping facility vs me picking them up and couriering them myself, although I will be meeting them at the bumping facility and making sure they don't sit around for a couple days while some guy eats and egg salad sandwich and wonders why there's a "priority!" box on his desk.
From I will leave for the bumping facility, to I will be meeting with them, to we are not in contact with them (I assume implying third party contractor).
Sorry, Josh, but a minor diss here, bud. Look forward to clarification.
~Bruno K~
They did handle with quite a lot of transparency, this is professional, seems that they could ship a well tested unit before the end of March
ASICMINER has low effect on network difficulty, if Avalon do not ship as fast as they promised, BFL will catch up quickly
ASICMINER has low effect on network difficulty, if Avalon do not ship as fast as they promised, BFL will catch up quickly
I guess this means two more weeks of Josh piss-warring with Micon in the Gambling sub.
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