Topic: Novello Technologies new Mining System Project, prices as low as $0.3/GH - page 6. (Read 40764 times)

Long time listener, first time caller.

My view is that the people calling "scam" / "fail" etc, are the ones who shelled out big money for BFL rigs and KNC rigs, that have been nothing but headaches. They paid HUGE pre-order prices, saw KNC and BFL mine with their money and are disgruntled. Now, they are playing the extreme skeptics and naysayers.

This is an opportunity for a start up company, to be funded and prove its product. You KNOW right up front, that you are FUNDING this project (and not Josh's new house bought with BTC or KNC's data center) and you get a product out of your support. All these "pre orders" have been much different than this offer. These guys are transparent and TELLING you the roadmap to their product. How many other scammers can you list that have been this transparent? Please list them with details of their proposals.

I am in no way associated to Novello. I have contributed 500 to the project.

So, if you aren't here to support this idea, please go be cynical somewhere else that has PROVEN being scammers with their lack of delivery on their promised delivery dates and sent out miners full of used and broken parts.

I know this is going way off topic, but I thought it might be worth putting up.

In many of the threads on this forum, including ours, many posters use what I can only describe as repugnant language, and constantly deliver insults and accusations to those that don't agree with their point of view, and encorage others to do so. This behaviour is not unique to this forum, of course, it happens in many other on line forums, and is in effect bullying by proxy. Many young people have taken their own lives because of it throughout the world, and that's a terrible indictment on the state of our society.

I previously was a volunteer with the UK Samaritans, it's a unique charity set up to provide people in distress a means by which they can talk to someone at any time, night or day and they will listen to them. No judgement and importantly, no advice, it's just someone who will try to help the caller come to terms with their situation. It's all done by phone, and it's free to call them.

In recent years the amount of people calling them about cyber bullying has rocketed, and that's very sad. It's difficult to deal with, particularly amongst young people. Now there are clearly a lot of younger people on this forum, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that any of them are at the stage where they want to commit suicide, but constant bullying by other community members can have a damaging effect on a young mind.

Now I'll publicly say to all the trolls, shills, oafs and wanabee cyber bullies that inhabit this forum that you can send whatever hateful messages, insults and insinuations you can dream up to me or to our company all day long, it's water off a duck's back because we've probably heard it all before and will do again. We're fair game, and we're adults.

But to other forum members I'd ask that you might consider carefully the language you use towards other members in your communication - you have no idea who is on the other end, and think about how you might feel if you were spoken to that way. Remember that as  community we are viewed by outsiders and the way we conduct our communications in our forum does not always give the right impression.

Any intelligent person enjoys a good, open discussion or argument. You can argue your point and put it across in a polite manner, and it will carry a great deal more weight if you do. It will earn you far more respect than threats and putting people down.



 

Hi, thanks for your post and questions, here's my reply:

1. No, it's not too late to change from 40nm to 28nm, with most foundry's processes it's a direct physical shrink. Yes, you still have to carry out DRC, simulation and post layout simulation to make sure all is well, but there shouldn't be any major obstacles, perhaps maybe a few weeks leeway to be sure.
The Gantt chart doesn't consider reduced funding, that's true. We have several backup strategies, but before we did anything we would give them to our customers to ask how they want us to proceed. They might well say no, in which case they get their money back.

2. You are quite correct in what you have said, we have no paid staff right now. The subcontractor budget is for the company that will populate the pcb's and the one that will assemble the enclosures, all the design costs are included in the NRE area.

3. Good point. We'll change that.

4. No, it's not a typo. We are going to launch an Indiegogo campaign for a time machine.

5. Disagree with you here, the GSP is designed to help all of our customers grow, we'll also be including the NOVA-S ones into it soon. Our example for 'Jane' is based on her buying a $500 system. I know it's a lot of money to a lot of people, but it is still affordable. She get her system power up by buying more hashing modules through her earnings from the rig, that's not using any more of her own money. I agree that anyone who buys a lot of out big rigs would get bigger, but in the same proportions to Jane. There should, however be a lot more Janes around. It's not really against our ethos, we want ALL our customers to be competitive, and they will be if we get the chance to make this project work. By offering low cost, competitive rigs we can open the doors to more 'small time' miners. 

6. It's a commodity purchase, we take pains to point out that our figures are projections, not fact. Nowadays most people looking at mining are confuse by the numerous calculators available and a lot of misinformation on the forums. All we tried to do with Jane was to put down a reasonable picture of what might happen in a given set of circumstances. Surely more information is better than none?

7. Fault tolerance is something we're used to designing into what might be termed 'mission critical' systems. making money is definitely critical. You're right in saying that heat causes most of the damage, but regularly checking the health of a pipeline means you can be sure it's hashing properly. If not, you might end up missing out on finding a block because one adder got too hot.

8.  We don't get paid at the moment either, so you'll have to join the queue!

Thanks again for your questions.

Warning:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=358439.20


Technobit.eu will never send anything!

Yeah, sorry I didn't get back to you. We are not sure yet if we will be selling chips to third parties, it depends on how the funding program goes. Any information we gave out to you would be under an NDA, and we would only do this once we can give you a complete datasheet.

So it's not going to be in the immediate future, we need to concentrate on other matters just now.

Thanks again for your interest, drop me an email and we'll keep you updated on progress.

UPDATE - Friday 6 June

Good morning everyone, it's a pretty dull and overcast morning here in Glasgow, but expected to get sunnier and warmer later on. Pity I'm tied to a desk but we all have our crosses to bear.

Yesterday was another interesting day, and again thanks to everyone who's taken the time to post in this thread. Ben Turas made some very interesting points about how project like these might be funded in the future, and it's certainly food for thought. Not saying that I necessarily agree with all he suggests, but if you have an open mind it's surprising what you can learn from others.

I'll now return to some points that have come up during the past few days. We've been asked time and time again for 'details' about our technology and I gave out some extra information yesterday, expecting some kind of feedback.

Silence. Nothing.

This tells me that either those requesting the information didn't see it, or that they don't understand it, so here's a summary of our chip's spec:

40nm medium Vt process (simulated in bulk, so vendor independent)
100mm²  die size
256 dual SHA256 pipelines in main array + 16 spares
FPMBGA packaging with exposed die
Clock speed 500 Mhz at rated Vdd of 0.85V
Power consumption at rated speed/Vdd is 23.5 - 25 watts approximately
0.18 - 0.19 Joules/GH at chip level
Power distribution:      Flip flops : 46.2%
                               Full Adders (in carry save chain):31.3%
                               A,E and Word generator Adders: 22.5%
                               Clock Power approx 14% included in figures
Areas of key elements: Full adder - 1.72 square microns, Flip Flop- 2.02 square microns

That should tell an experienced engineer all that he or she needs to know about the chip.

I have to admit that we have been a little disappointed in the lack of professionalism exhibited by a minority of the posters, but then its easy to say things and use obnoxious language if you're safely tucked behind a computer. Most of the posters are actually pretty polite and courteous and the professional credentials of some shine through. For the others .....  the most strident and hateful ones have clearly never worked in a proper company or had to work with teams of other professionals, so to those people please take this message on board: We're here to stay in this forum and don't respond to taunts or insults. You are rank amateurs compared to customers we've dealt with all our working lives.

I would also reinforce to other readers what we've already said in our proposal:

There’s also a hard core of individuals and companies who really don’t want every wanabee miner with $59 joining their party, making the difficulty higher and reducing their earnings. They will try extremely hard to convince you that pre-orders are ‘bad’ and under no circumstances should you go down this route - despite the fact that most of them made their money from pre-order products! We’d advise you to read, read, then read some more and make up your own mind.

There's even a separate thread started by one poster asking if we're a scam - they've already made accusations about this several times, and you have to question what their motivation is in this instance.

Hint: it's not about protecting innocent buyers from evil scammers like us.

Now I'm pretty certain this person lives in the UK, so I'll give him (or her) this challenge:

One of our team will meet you personally at a time and place of your choosing anywhere in the UK to discuss this project face to face, on the proviso that you bring along your original Passport or Photo Driving License and proof of your address, as will our team member. We will pay your reasonable travel costs to attend this meeting, as we're fairly sure you're unemployed. You can call us directly on our telephone number, 0141 280 0447

But back to business.

One poster remarked that we have 'got' $4k from Indiegogo. That's not true, we have some contributors who want to buy products, but we don't get the money until the campaign ends AND we draw it down, so at this time we have nothing. I've already answered a question put by C2M earlier in regard of what happens if we don't hit our target.

Canary posted a question earlier on about whether we had considered the amount of network power that would be added by the Asicminer chips. I've answer this so please have a read at my reply, whether or not you choose to contribute to our program, it's an explanation that might help you decide what to about your own mining strategy. There's lots of other stuff in our proposal that might also help you, if you have any questions about how we calculated our various metrics, please email us directly.

One of my younger colleagues will be posting later today regarding the situation around our team's identities and some other business. Please watch out for it.

Lastly, keep the posts coming. We like to discuss what we're doing, and will be more than pleased to answer sensible questions. Thanks again for taking the time to look us up.
 
Oh, if anyone does want to talk to us, they can do so by calling +44 141 280 0447 during normal business hours. There's no one in the office today, but leave a message and we'll get back to you. You can also email us at any time: tech@novellotech,com or [email protected]

Seems Novello ignoring most of questions related to money and funding.

I just pretty sure this is scam and not differs from mendicant in front of the shop-nice story but always same demand.
Thanks to your silly approach, greedy way of making money leaving risk on simple simon shoulders i'm out and really who ever will even have stupid idea of funding this PLEASE READ WHOLE THREAD AGAIN.
There are cheap asics ready to be delivered today not withing another 4 months or so.
Your delivery time frame is a joke. You have idea but not even working ptototype. No chips, only promises. No support from anyone with  more BTC than you have at this moment.And now you loosing this battle thanks to ignorance.

I'm still waiting for more info on chips.
In order to decide to do design for your chip or not we need:

1. Pinout
2.Chip comms
3. Command guide
4.PCB recommendations by the chip designer/producer
5. Sample chips delivery terms, i.e. pricing , availability etc.
6. Delivery times for bulk and bulk pricing for 100,500,1000,10k chips

Best

Who is?

Forgot to add, don't underestimate what you can do with 40nm, especially if it's a full custom design.

Hi Canary, thanks for your post and for raising that point. Yes, we have taken into account that there will be a ton of Asicminer product in circulation. Our prediction is a fairly linear network growth averaging around 30PH a month from July to December, ending up just below 300PH. From what we understand of the chip, that's equivalent to 25 Million of them or about 10,000 wafers worth.

Their higher than expected power useage will have ramifications about how they are deployed, so earlier predictions about them taking over the network probably won't happen. Yet. We've done some calculations on how much a system with their chip would cost, and for the purposes of this exercise we've put them into a 4U rack enclosure, with 4TH power. So each box would draw about 3.5kW, or nearly 4kVA, with 10 in a rack - 40TH -that's a power footprint of 40kVA per rack. We'll ignore cooling for just now.

The raw box build cost in 10k volumes comes out at approximately $1800, or $450/TH. Then the boxmaker/miner has to incur other costs to get the units hosted, installed and powered up. For a rack's worth, that going to come close to $24,000, or $0.6/GH.  If this is a professional, dedicated mining setup then they'll have other admin costs as well, ditto if they've borrowed money, but we'll set both these aside for now.

The point is, to get this level of power up and running solely with Asicminer kit is going to incur costs of about $23,000 x (180000/40) =$104 Million

We have a metric in our proposal regarding how much you should pay per GH of power depending on when you actually get it delivered, based on the US average power bill. These rigs will likely be deployed in Washington state, with power costs after taxes etc of around 4 cents/kWh.
Based on our formula - which includes power costs and assumes a break even period of 6 months -  then what should be paid per Gh is around $1.1 in September, $0.83 in December, $0.62 in March 2015. People building capacity at these levels don't just slap the money down and get hashing the next day, they have to plan well in advance and make a lot of guesses as to what will happen to the Btc price. The figures we've just shown that up until next March they will break even after 6 months, but after that the return might not be so great. Factor in hosting costs or, if you've got you own setup, rent/taxes and the rest then it might look like an awfully big rig to sink so much money into it.

Long answer to your question, sorry, but I'm guessing you want an explanation that gives some qualification? Summary would be that unless the Btc exchange rate stays significantly above $500 for the next few months, investors are going to do their sums and be very wary of how much they build and when.

Hope this helps.

Hello Dogie, thanks for your post and input.

This isn't exactly mass manufacturing, but if you look at our FAQ's we've already said that it's a lot of systems to ship in a small(ish timeframe. It would be true if you has never been involved in such projects before and so didn't know what pitfalls or problems there might, but if you have experience and the correctset of skills, particularly product engineering and a set of known and trusted supplies and subcontractors, there's a very good chance that the whole process can run very smoothly.

We also said that most of the non-custom build would be done before we get the asic'c back, that includes the enclosures, PSU's, the controller boards and the DC-DC converters. Because our systems are modular, all these parts can be assembled and tested without the asic, in particular the Pi and it's ability to connect properly to the network. It can 'practice' mine with no asic just to test things out. The DC-DC converters can be burnt-in with dummy loads, ditto the PSU's.

The actual hashing modules will be built for us by a subcontractor. The on board MC can test functionality with having to be fixed into a system, so this speeds things up a lot. Once we have working modules, they get fixed into the rigs and get a full test with the network.

Hope this addresses your concerns.

does your NTR graph consider the unholly amounts of petahashes ASICMiner chips are going to add to the network in the next 3, 6, 9 months?

I don't know if you're a scam or not, but you're late to the party with 40 nm.

Exactly  

Here's a calc I did for 250 PH network size(they're guesstamation by December 2014):
Diff                   36647500000.0 (approx.)
Hashrate           1000GH (1TH)
Exchange Rate  $656
                       Coins               Dollars
per Day =   0.01372281 BTC    $9.01
per Week = 0.09605964 BTC    $63.08
per Month =0.41768789 BTC    $274.30

Then minus power.What's the use,it's over for us "at home" guys    UNLESS we hit & HOLD BTC at $1000.

Uh,even $1000 BTC looks to be short  
Diff                   36647500000.0 (approx.)
Hashrate           1000GH (1TH)
Exchange Rate  $1000

                        Coins               Dollars
per Day =    0.01372281 BTC    $13.72
per Week =  0.09605964 BTC    $96.06
per Month = 0.41768789 BTC    $417.69

Looks like @ $2500 BTC it could be a money maker  
Diff                   36647500000.0 (approx.)
Hashrate           1000GH (1TH)
Exchange Rate  $2500

                         Coins              Dollars
per Day =    0.01372281 BTC     $34.31
per Week =  0.09605964 BTC    $240.15
per Month = 0.41768789 BTC    $1,044.22


So,@ $350 a TH @ .5 watt per GH=500 watts per TH @ your kwh price,mine is .13 cents per kwh.8TH =4000 watts, I can't run 4000 watts at MY home,MAYBE 2500 watts.Still can't make it work  

Alot of people have made valid points on here on the preorder and investment system. We assume the risk for a product that may never see the light of day. Indiegogo and other crowdfunded projects have a VERY low return rate....you could also go the quirky.com route.....they actually will invest with a percentage of the profits going to them and if it gets the support/success it can make the light of day. I would recommend that and then pitch it here with that instead. Indiegogo just as has been said is a pre-pre-order. Quirky.com on the other hand IF the idea is popular enought THEY will invest with an expectation of the product https://www.quirky.com/how-it-works

I think this road would be better with you prospectus that you posted up. You can solicit the support from the community which only requires them to create a login on quirky and support the idea...no money invested on our part so no worries if it succeeds or fails. Its a good idea, but like people said....you did not put up your own money and this community is leery of pre-orders in a bad way with good reason.

Quirky at least will invest BUT ask for a modest percentage while you reap the overall rewards. I would recommend really looking at this as a potential option.

Thanks brother for your post but i was hoping to get answer from NOVELLO which differs from yours or will be similar if they are really honest about this whole idea.

I knew your answer straight away when was creating my post but again was hoping IDEA company will answer promptly.

Hahaha you missed the whole point of going the preorder route.  Sure they could get a loan if their business plan is sound and they have collateral.  They don't want to do that though.  If they take a loan, two things happen.
1.  They have no company assets that they have mentioned, which means their personal assets would have to be used to back the loan.  They believe in their idea, but not enough to risk their own assets!  They would rather get you to risk yours.
2.  There is a legal obligation to make fixed payments.  They don't want to pay you for taking on all the risk.

This is exactly how I feel about this.

December is roughly half a year from now.  Most Mining equipment become obsolete in 3 months or less.

Having money tied up for 6 months or more for something that may or may not come to market, isn't a risk customers are willing to absorb anymore.  Too many BFLs, Hashfasts, VMCs, KNC's, Black Arrow's have all of us with shit taste in our mouths.

As been said before, people hate pre orders and you can cry now to bfl and others scam companys.

I can see in the thread people-users who are actually are known(respected) to community and if they saying something like ...this is not the way to go...
I think this means more than thousand words in your first post.

Sorry but idea is not enough. My question is: Can you build prototype based on this idea? If yes how long does it take to do it, and how much it would cost?

What you asking is 4m for just prototype or for production let say batch one?

Please this time answer and dont ignore as this just proves you are here to ask,get and run away...

I do believe if you are so good as you saying you and your team are, build a working prototype shouldn't be a problem.

Correct me if im wrong, but if you will go to bank and ask for a lone let say 100k secured by house etc. this money would be enough to cover build. And once prototype is build you coming back here showing what you got. We sending BTC and you have money to :

a. produce batch 1 and have date of delivery to every customer who invest in to this
b. have money to cover loan and to develop more stuff or to produce batch 3
c. have money for wages, costs and will live happily as hell.

I'm not a fan of this. The market is moving on from preorders (or trying to), and this is a pre of a pre of a preorder. The chances of actually ending up with a mass marketed manufacturer on time are less than 20%.