Topic: Overt AsicBoost Released today? (Read 1781 times)

Yeah I was thinking the same thing about Inno as I reviewed the hardware list I have yesterday. While it all seems to convenient I remember there being something in the Halong thread that there was some business relationship between Halong and Inno, just can't find/remember what it was. Regardless it shouldn't have been an open door to the tech unless there was something else going on behind closed doors.

Then I was also wondering about Bitfily they also produced miners that run AB, and I'm not sure who or how they fit into that list of licensees.

Regardless I guess it's safe to say any manufacturer who think s AB will improve their efficiency will be able to integrate it into their designs in the future, or at least test it and decide. That's assuming the patent continues to get tossed.

So its been a week and a day since the S9 AB firmware was released... think they're working on the hashrate bug in the S9 firmware before released the AB firmware for the other BM1387 based machines?

Speaking of which, if you check the Little Dragon BDPL site for its list of licensees one company very obviously missing from the list is Innosilicon who are using AB in their T1+ and T2 series of miners. The companies that are listed have NO patents to their name to 'share' with others and aside from Halong nor do they produce/sell any miners. Are they shell companies owned by Inno or otherwise associated with them? Again, the BDPL covering AB is very obviously just an attempt to get access to other companies IP.

IMHO that rather points to Inno being behind Little Dragon and the AB patent...

What can I say lost in the details/lack thereof. I guess I did assume their identities as being under one umbrella, as that makes the most sense to me when I look at their overall corporate relationships. Regardless we'll see if they stick around or do anything in the future; or if they end it as an enigmatic puppet.


This I find interesting and plays into my musings above. This "game changing" patent came out of nowhere and was being used to create a consortium of companies sharing patents. Now it is being shot down as non enforceable by a company that was easily able to adapt their machines to run in the same manner. In the end it looks like an improvement that was held back and used in an attempt at corporate espionage done out in the open.

I might finally have my chance to play around with AB gear as the T9+ is supposed to have some firmware drop, really can't make the machine any worse fingers crossed.

It's nice to know that there are manufacturers out there finding ways around needing this and getting great results. This is still where I plan on looking for new gear.

Yes the chips were designed with BM's version of AB in mind. However, after the kerfuffle over covert AB Bitmain seems to have decided to hold off turning on their overt AB until the noise over AB in general settled down AND until someone else got the pools to support it.

Why do so many folks still continue to wrongly say that Halong Mining owns the AB patent? As has been said time and again including being very clearly spelled out on the Halong site the patent is owned by Little Dragon LLC. Halong is just a licensee of it. Now as to who owns Little Dragon (and for that matter Halong) is anybody's guess as neither company wants anyone to know and both have gone to great lengths to prevent anyone from knowing. The only info on Little Dragon is that they are represented by a Chicago law firm (look on the Little Dragon LLC site) and all communications go through them.

As to violating the Patent - highly doubt it though of course I expect that to be contested. However BM made mention in their blog that the Patent has already been shot down in several jurisdictions. More to the point - you cannot Patent an end result (reuse of previous hash calcs) and there are always several ways to skin a cat. Case in point, Intel/AMD cpu's, the various makes of GPU's, etc. all do the same thing, just differently but producing the same results.

Thanks for that.

I guess even with that information, you would still need another level of transparency to prove whether or not Bitmain had been using this firmware upgrade for any definitive amount of time. Just seeing blocks within their pools, or even the unknown pools can't be verified as the claim could be that it was a known asic boost miner.

With all this, I've been going back over the beginning of this thread and I admit to being lost.


How did this play into things, if the firmware upgrade works on all s9's does that mean the chips were already designed with this feature in mind?

Does this somehow violate the patent held by Halong?

Again, covert AsicBoost no longer works, because of segwit.

There is therefore no longer any miner that is able to use AsicBoost in secret. (This has been the case ever since block 481824, when segwit activated.) The non-standard version numbers of their blocks would immediately give them away.

If it benefits to mine with AB whether covert or overt, it's just bad business to not to on every piece of hardware. If this has been practice it's been a poor one.

Yes, there is.

Non-AsicBoost blocks have a version number of 0x20000000. AsicBoost blocks may have different version numbers.

For example, block 546932 — mined by ViaBTC, which currently does not support AsicBoost — has a version number of 0x20000000. Block 544704, which is a known AsicBoost block, has a version number of 0x3fffe000.

When it comes to Bitmain, who knows what goes on behind the curtain.

I want around for the "yay" Bitmain days just, the bad reputation and ill will part of their business so far.

Is there a way for the public to tell if a block was mined by an asic boost piece of equipment? I know the pool can tell but I sort of assume that's just because the hardware is connected, and you know what hardware runs asic boost.

Most big businesses are thieves and practice illegal moves all the time.  Smart ones do it in ways they do not get caught.

So they  could simply mined to an unknown address
See below

You would have seen more AB blocks solved by Antpoo and BTC and yadda yadda.

my guess would be   a 10 to 15% improvement in efficiency .

So if your s9i  was doing 94 watts a th it would do  80-85 watts a th

but  since the m10  is the same size chip and does 70 watts a th  I guess that would be possible.

Apparently its a simple firmware upgrade available now for the S9 from the Bitmain support page. Some testing going on now with an S9 on Kano to see if there is any noticeable improvement in hash rate or a reduction in power consumption.

Given the new firmware was given a "LPM" designation, I'm leaning towards it reducing power consumption for the same hash rate.

That is exactly my question.  What is the effect on power consumption and hash rate for this.  Is it worth even bothering to do given the S9's mine at a loss.  Is it really going to change anything?  Would love to hear more and what you have to do to use this feature.

Hah, I knew it.

Did they figure it out like yesterday or have they been doing that with their own machines for a long time? 

I haven't really been following this to closely, as I don't own any asic boost hardware.

Bitmain tweeted that they have new firmware to activate this for the S9's

https://twitter.com/BITMAINtech/status/1054329450018435074

What sort of hash increase can people expect? Are th eefficiency numbers going to get better for the S9's that are currently available or is this just going to be more powerful?

I’m pretty sure, that Halong didn’t design and implement a 10nm ASIC without help. Design teams capable of 10nm implementations are not coming out of nowhere.

In principle Innosilicon is a design service company. They are realizing any kind of microchips for any customer who is paying them. Normally that kind of service companies are “pure-play design service”, which means that they are not releasing products labelled with their company name. Innosilicon seems not to be so strict here, they have own products too.

However, I guess that Halong contracted/paid Innosilicon to implement their 10nm ASIC as a turnkey service. Halong covered the complete NRE costs, took all the risks and is the owner of the resulting ASIC design and mask-set. The engineering was done by Inno (maybe Halong developed the ASIC architecture and parts of the front-end design).
That is the way it goes, nothing really wrong here.

Could Innosilicon have created Halong to avoid sharing its patents with BDPL?

There are strong indications that they are related in some ways. The following post summarizes the key points:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.33551682

How can a startup like Halong afford to create prototype device? A mask is a multi-million dollar investment. Is it possible they acquired their chips from another manufacturer or that Halong is actually Innosilicon? My bet is on the latter.

If Innosilicon is supplying chips to Halong, shouldn’t Innosilicon also be obliged to join BDPL if they manufacture chips with the AsicBoost design?

I completely agree with what you are saying, was just speculating on ways things could play out. The overall contract implied here doesn't represent a balanced trade, nor do the implications of backing out of the agreement hold a fair "punishment" for exiting the agreement. These items would have to be addressed in detail before entering the agreement.

I can't imagine why any company would sign into this agreement anyways but if they were so inclined; there would need to be a level of openness prior to releasing all your patents. For example this Asicboost, it's still early but given what I've been reading it still isn't performing as expected (Though not enough samples are in the wild to confirm this). If it doesn't live up to expectation any other party should be able to walk away with their patent rights.

Prior to openly pledging support there should also be a set fee structure in place for what you would have to pay to use any of the competitors patents. At the same time each of these companies should be able to limit how long you have free access to their "original" patents should they walk away; as well as you retaining free access to all patents you brought to the table in the first place.

Overall it's a terrible system set up to create an oligarchy instead of using competition to drive innovation. These companies will dictate among themselves the marketshare for each and will pummel any small outside producer who try's to break into the system.

Can you imagine these companies locked into this for the long haul this early into the life of Bitcoin?

The issue here isn't so much whether the incumbents would get to "coast" on the back of the newcomers' R&D, should the newcomers even decide to invest in their own R&D. In fact, the way the BDPL is currently set up actually incentivizes the opposite — the newcomers would be a lot better off simply leaching off the incumbents' patents and resources. And if the incumbents decide to simply stop developing because of the burden of spoon-feeding the other BDPL users, everyone loses, because the entire BDPL pool of developers and manufacturers would grind to a halt. They would all then very soon be overtaken by non-BDPL developers and manufacturers. In other words, it would be far better for the incumbents to have never joined the BDPL in the first place.

The issue here instead is that should any company choose to leave the BDPL, they remain obliged to license their patents to BDPL users for free, while the BDPL users would then be allowed to impose additional terms on the leaving companies for their continued use of BDPL patents. This isn't just unfair, it's extortion.

I have 2 things I find funny here.
1) It definitely screws over the companies that have poured a massive amount of time and effort into their R&D at first. This is done by providing the new guy with all your secrets; this just isn't done anywhere.
So I don't know why BDPL, thinks it needs to be implemented in this environment specifically to "democratize" blockchain technology.

Really though at a certain point your trade secrets are stolen on the first models that ship to the world. It's tore down and reverse engineered and changed just enough to avoid a lawsuit.

2) In the end this up and coming company then proceeds to strive for continual improvement investing their funds into R&D. Now the older companies can effectively sit on their heels and let the new patents pour in. It's not a great long term strategy but if someone else is going to put in the work and you already have the "Brand power" to coast why wouldn't you.
This is the outcome I would expect from the given example of a company choosing to leave; as opposed to them paying to use Patents they didn't deem worthy on the off chance the next development is better.

Overall short term it's a no brainer for Halong to pledge their patents; access to all those secrets for the cost of only a few words.

Much like communism being great in theory; this is an idea that on paper seems great but is a legal and logistical nightmare that isn't worth the headache for larger established companies.
The best case scenario for this project would be the smaller ASIC producers joining, and thus helping themselves push advancements and creating their own "Brand Power" to chisel more of the market share in their favor.

Thanks for the new topics to read up on gave me something to do this evening.

Coming from a miner currently running >300TH/s-- YES.

1. The latest 16nm miners still have long legs left and depending on your power cost will be good to run at least another year or more. I easily see the latest A841's I've picked up being good for at least 2.

2. As expected by those who work in the semiconductor industries outside of this mad market, moving to lower nodes do NOT in-turn make dramatic improvements in mining chip performance. So far there very little to no advantage in power eff being seen. The Halong T1 miner uses 10nm chips and even with its AB is so far showing to be - meh. Ebang's 10nm miner actually has worse efficiency than their 16nm miner has.

3. As a miner wanting to get maximum life out of my equipment, the longer delay before truly faster/more efficient gear hits the market the better. Helps slow down the diff rise at least a little.

Technology advancement.  Thats what I'm for.  Thats the only way that blockchain will prevail.  However it gets there, as long as it does and nobody gets burned, I'm okay with it.  So yall are saying that you would rather have waited another 6-9 months for a 10nm asic boosted miner to be available?

You had me at "disagree"

Frodo, for that!

That is precisely how I feel about Halong's patent and it's being BDPL along with an excellent and on-point dissection of what a company joining the BDPL pool would mean to said company.

To the best of anyone's knowledge Halong's version of AB is all they have to offer. Their "you get to use our 1 patent (and any ancillary IP we may or may not have invented/refined) in return for you giving us (and all BDPL pool members) access to ALL of your IP. Oh btw: You also have to release all of your suppliers from any restrictions, NDA's, sales agreements, etc as well" is insanely 1-sided in their favor. Your line "one carrot in exchange for a thousand pieces of gold" is a spot-on description for what BDPL is to Halong.

As an Engineer and systems designer with a few Patents to my name I categorically state that it stinks to high heaven like the huge steaming it is.

edit: Interesting that the BDPL Users List so far has only Halong and 1 other company (Little Dragon Technology LLC) on it. Ta boot, The required BDPL Offering Page for Halong dated March 6, 2018 states "Licensor does not have any patent at this time".

edit edit: Today forum user Dr. Mann wrote in the Halong thread (color emphasis mine):
So the gist of that is despite everyone calling it 'Halong's patent' - it isn't actually theirs unless it turns out that Halong Mining and Little Dragon Technology LLC are actually owned by the same (unknown) folks. That then leads back to Little Dragon and their BDPL AsicBoost actually being a means for Halong to gain IP they want/need and don't feel like developing themselves.

Fully polarized interesting.

One) the gear needs to show it can do 10-20 better then the s-9 or the 841.

So far more hash more power used and very close to 0.10 watts a gh

And limited to two pools.  At these numbers not good and not worth modding your pool or buying.

Pretty much a bust.

Now if it tweaks with firmware and goes to 16th and 1425 watts it will cause issues.

I disagree. Halong's method of choice for patenting their implementation of AsicBoost — the Blockchain Defensive Patent License (BDPL) — actually sets the stage for further centralization of mining technology, and not the converse as advertised by Halong and the BDPL's website.

Under the first question of the BDPL website's FAQ page — "How do you benefit by using the BDPL?" — it is stated that in return for immunity from patent-related lawsuits from other BDPL users, each BDPL user receives "royalty-free licenses from every other user's patent portfolio." This looks great at first glance on its surface, because it seems to encourage technology-sharing and prevents any one BDPL user from being a patent troll.

However, upon closer inspection, the BDPL begins to look more and more like a very cleverly disguised weapon designed to obtain competitors' valuable intellectual property for free, and then snuff them out.

We know that Halong now has their implementation of AsicBoost patented under the BDPL. If then, for example, Canaan wants to use Halong's implementation of AsicBoost, Canaan would have to join the BDPL and license all of their patented intellectual property to Halong (and other BDPL users) for free. In effect, Canaan gets AsicBoost, and Halong gets access to all of Canaan's patented technology, on which Canaan had previously spent millions, if not billions, in prior research and development. The playing field between Halong and Canaan has now been leveled, but at Canaan's expense. (It may be argued here that Canaan also has access to Halong's portfolio of patented technology under the BDPL, but at this point it is reasonable to assume that Halong doesn't have anything else to offer that is of competitive value. The BDPL only works if the playing field was already level to begin with.)

Things get worse from here. If, in the above example, Canaan now decides to pull all of their patents from the BDPL, Halong still gets to keep licensing all of Canaan's patents for free. Halong, on the other hand, is now allowed under the BDPL to impose additional terms ("fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND)" according to the BDPL's website, whatever that means) on Canaan for Canaan's continued licensing of Halong's patents. In other words, Halong now gets to use Canaan's patented technology for free, while Canaan has to pay Halong to use Halong's patented technology, in addition to whatever terms that Halong may now impose on Canaan at Halong's discretion. Again, Halong wins at Canaan's expense. If Canaan hasn't already been forced to shutter their doors at this point, they may soon have to, due to them being placed at such a competitive disadvantage as a result of the BDPL's terms.

This is but one slice of how the BDPL is designed to unfairly benefit startups like Halong — startups who dangle one carrot in exchange for a thousand pieces of gold. A better and more equitable way of democratizing access to mining technology would be to release them under one of the many free and open-source software and hardware licenses.

So no, we are not better off today than if Halong and the BDPL never came along. We may actually have regressed far more than we realize.

Its been so long ago that I kind of remember them saying being fully funded but not sure.  But I almost guarantee that the only full funds they had were for the chips and first pre production run and maybe small batch, and rest of money was allotted for NRE.  If I had to write a conspiracy theory book about the whole ordeal I would guess that the principles had a good chunk of cash, had the connects to get relationship with samsung and contracted innosilicon to do R&D.  Pretty sure they had no choice to do pre-sale.  Behind the scenes of the business is rarely seen, and AB prevented much of anything, so pretty much nothing at all is what we got.  Not saying they were right, but saying in their shoes with limited resources as everyone has, it was probably the only way to get miners to the market.  So you either do it the way they did, or you never get off the ground because you ran out of cash.  I think positives of increasing technology to the market outweighs the negatives of forum speak.  Has anyone gotten hurt?  Did anyone lose their money?  I think we are all still better off today than if they never came along.....

That is exactly what I am saying.
As you said, doing public pre-sales sets a huge milestone that MUST be met regardless of how the technology co-operates. ref the fallout from BFL's Monarchs and Bitmine.ch/AMT A1 Coincraft miners. Unfortunately input from the Engineering side of many companies - not only those involved in crypto - is ignored once the Marketing group is unleashed. In the crypto mining business pre-sales translates to anything from 'we have this idea...' (ala the GMO vaporware) to Halong's 'we have some engineering test rigs built and running' (but still a work in progress and not ready for Prime Time).

Much to their credit Canaan and yes even the 'evil' Bitmain never did that. They stay quiet while developing and once factory production trials start only then announce upcoming products.

In the beginning of their thread Halong specifically stated that they were fully funded all the way through to at least pre-production trial runs and "we have no need of further funding via pre-orders". Then went on with their spiel never to this day saying *why* they did pre-orders.

As both an engineer and a miner manufacturer, I have refused to take a single dollar in presales without having first distributed several working prototypes to well-established people for public critique.

Never ask for money without working units in hand, and if you have working units in hand never ask for money until they've been verified by independent parties.

Never send money to someone who hasn't had independent parties verify their working units.

Are you saying that if you were in their shoes, had spent the so called millions on development, had working units in hand and a pretty good feeling about success rate of the design based on experience, that you wouldn't have tried to do presale?  As an Engineer, I hate pre-sale stuff as much as the next guy because in reality, at that point it isn't ready. And then you have a time limit your final R&D phases have to be restricted by.  I could probably argue both ways, sure business sense wise and the optics was not good, however, I can't say that if I were in their shoes that I wouldn't be one of the first to want to hawk my 'wares ASAP.  In the end its about the miner and not about the launch PR, or lack thereof.  I'd much rather them focus on getting the hardware right than trying to quiet down the peanut gallery.

By not following almost every page from "Scamming for Dummies" and being an honest and open company.
1) NOT doing pre-order sales at all
2) providing verifiable business contacts and company information
3) NOT implementing their version of AB as an all or nothing feature which would let the market decide if AB is a good thing or not. So far the T1 performance compared to the s9 and A841 is -- meh.

Probably mention, without specifics, that the control code uses a non-standard stratum implementation that's currently only available at one pool but they're working with other pool operators to patch in support.

Can complain all we want about them not advertising that it works on certain pools, but don't you guys realize that the only reason they didn't was to hide AB implementation, which was obviously withheld for legal reasons?  Kinda hard for them to disclose that info ahead of time without letting cat out of the bag.  In due time, I would bet all the pools will support AB and this whole point will be moot.  How would you guys have handled it differently?

IANAL in general, moreover IANA patent L, but I used to sit next one at the table during conferences and lunches.

The way they explained it to me that the history of US jurisprudence and legal precedents make it easier to defend a "device patent" against any sort of infringing "emulation" or alternative "embodiment" than vice-versa or any other combination in-between. Basically, if you think that your understanding of English grammar and Boolean algebra is sufficient to understand the patent, you are sorely mistaken. If your experience of patenting is only as far as getting it granted by the USPTO then you have less than half of the required knowledge.

Patent lawyers are so well paid, because they known the best combination of claims that's easiest to get approved and hardest to overturn in litigation.

Yeah that part's kinda crap. Hopefully some more decent pools implement compatibility, now that CK and such have done most of the legwork.

I *do* find it odd that Intel makes specific mention in point 15 and later in the filing go into great detail about BTC mining. Possibly as a cover-all-bases approach and response to Halong?

I would think they are also targeting the myrid of other blockchain applications such as ledgers of Public Records. Don't forget that their FPGA division (formerly Altera?) is pushing their tech like crazy for blockchain processing.

re the Intel patent, in USPO filings I've done they are rather picky about differentiating between a physical device or assembly vs what would better be described as a Method or a Process.. Given heavy mention is made of it being a SoC along with:

Sounds like a description of a physical hardware/chip/SOC or such to me.

Back to the main point here, aside from the nature of Halong's patent my major problem with their approach is that their gear MUST be pointed at an AB-enabled pool or it just does not even connect. That is most definitely something that should have been clearly stated when they started pre-order sales.

Ya know. The not-so minor omission that unlike every other previous BTC miner made, you cannot connect them to any mining pool you want or even Core unless the pool/Core are patched to work with AB.

edit: wording change to par.1 to reflect further reading of the patent.

I read some reports from people reverse-engineering Bitmain's firmware. According to them the AB is not only switchable on/off but also allows variable levels of boosting.

I wouldn't make that inference for any patent in the USA, probably even for most of the world. In my understanding the use of "device" abstraction is a method of strengthening the patent against counter-claims, not anything technical or technological.

I think you are needlessly conflating two separate things:

1) legalistic maneuvering related to patents and their licensing

2) deception and disinformation tactics like "covert AB"

They are only very loosely related and untangling the two is the key to understanding the situation.

It seems like a lot of bitcoiners had fallen into believing their own bullshit and now have hard time returning back to reality.

I think the company 21e6 (now 21.co ?) was a good early example of what happens when you believe your own propaganda. Their "Bitcoin Computer" was utterly non-competitive because it included some complicated DRM logic to guarantee coinbase payment address. If you think that Intel is somehow above making such a strategically stupid mistake, all I have to do is to remind you about Itanium and their completely unfounded in reality claims about advances in compilation technology.

@2112
Interesting...

Regarding BM's AB, everything I'd read is/was saying that it was a hardware implementation in the chips but able to be switched on/off. Considering it was never put to use, the ability to simulate (fake) AB by reprogramming the FPGA makes more sense as oppose to wasting die space on unused circuitry.

Intel's patent application definitely is a hardware implementation probably destined to become a Foundry IP block for use by whoever wants to pay the royalty.

As for Halong's  'open' version...
A) To me it is a blatant attempt to hijack other mfgr's IP by saying, "Sure. You can use our 1 patent for 'free' -- provided you open access to all of your IP and lift all vendor NDA's as well.

B) Their miners only work with a pool that implements the stratum AB switches. While writing/testing the T1's driver -ck has been emphatic on that. When he forced the firmware to connect to a non-AB pool only 1/4 of the hash's produced are valid. Now if they manage to convince most of the pools to support the new stratum code to use AB then yes the Halongitosis patent does become a rather large carrot to dangle even if it is a very malodorous one-- assuming the T1 miners eventually live up to their promised specs. So far the jury remains out on that point.

C) My feeling is that not only Intel but also Bitmain, Canaan, Bitfury et al will all pursue their own implementation of covert AB. Hell, with Samsung getting into the ASIC miner chip biz it would even make sense for them to also come up with a Foundry IP block for AB to drop into whoever wants it in their chips.

If I ever get ASIC samples and data from those guys (it's been discussed a bit), I'll drop you a line and figure out what to look for.

This is both true and false.

It is all true if you really believe that the particular chip really implements the AB.

On the other hand is it possible to write a firmware that drives the regular non-AB mining chips in such a way that they appear to produce results that look like made with the AB.

But the only way to actually verify the existence and support for AB is via reverse-engineering of the firmware or attaching the logic analyzer to the signals sent to the mining chips.

Edit: As far as reverse-engineering the firmware, the cost and complexity depends on the MCU. I believe the recent hardware has been using Xilinx Zynq chips which is a dual core ARM chip paired with the Artix FPGA logic slices. Reverse-engineering the FPGA programming bit-streams is nothing like disassembling the microprocessor's instruction ROMs, it is several orders of magnitude more cumbersome and expensive. In particular there are no tools available publicly for that task.

On the other hand writing a firmware that fakes the AB (provided that you have the source for non-AB firmware) is fairly trivial exercise.

Just looked and that message usually means that the post or even entire thread thread was deleted by mods. It was probably in the Halong Dragon miner thread and the mods there have been rather free about removing disparaging posts and specifically any with the word 'Bitmain" in it....

Beyond that, both Biteme and Halonitosis's versions of AB rely on physical circuits inside of the ASIC chips. The chips themselves need to be changed. It is not just a change in firmware.

Thanks NotFuzzyWarm! I always like your posts on here.
The thread seems to be off limits to me now?

ref my post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--3218166
IF Bitmain were to revise the physical logic inside the chips to use the Halongitosis's overt vs BM's covert AB protocols then yes they would be required to open all of their IP to the public. Don't see that happening.

If the Bitmain does that, does it have to sign away the patent rights?

I had the same thought... one firmware update release, and we are all back on a level playing field again (at least all of us Bitmain owners).  More likely, Bitmain will just create a new S9, using old stock with new firmware, and sell it as their V11 - advertising the 20% improvement in hashrate/watt.  Only trick would be to keep all S9 miners from reflashing using the V11 firmware...

When can I get the patch for my Bitmain miners?  LOL

asicboost.com
I am seeing a few news sites picking this up, but nothing I personally trust.
Anyone have more information on it?

From what I can tell, covert asicboost is now invalid, but overt asicboost works, but only for companies that give away their patents.
Not sure if it's related to the huge price drop, or if that's from the Whales dumping in Japan and at the Auction