Topic: Top 10 reasons why BFL will postpone their February 2013 shipping date (Read 1838 times)

From BFL_Josh:


Short version: "It's everyone else's fault but not ours! The world should revolve around us and our mini production order alone! It's just not fair. Boo-Hoo ... "


Long version:

"25 Feb 2013 Update

I know people have been waiting on an update for awhile. The simple fact of the matter is there hasn't been any solid updates to offer. I know people are desperate and starving for information and I wish I could provide new information every day, but some days there just isn't new information. Luckily there is some new information today. It's not the best information (such as we are shipping today!) but it is at least an update.

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. As I've written in previous posts, we are dealing with such an accelerated time scale that all of these facilities simply aren't used to dealing with. It's been a learning experience for both us and for the facilities we are using. The upside, such as it is, is that going forward, we will have all the large, time sucking hurdles already out of the way and the rest of the chips should breeze through without issue, as all the NRE, tooling, design, planning and machines will already be configured for what we need.

Since Friday we have been, in a word, agonizing over how to make up for lost time. Obviously, we can't make up for all the lost time, but what we have decided is to effectively burn (this is not a technical term, I simply mean we are using one of the wafers for testing instead of creating chips out of it) one of the initial six wafers for testing. This is definitely not something we wanted to do, as it will reduce our initial chip count from a potential 6000 to 5000 chips for the first set of wafers. We are doing this because it will buy us 7 - 12 days for the second set of wafers (and the remaining set of wafers down the road). The time frame between the 1st set of wafers and the 2nd set of wafers should be reduced to a matter of a few days.

Why are we burning the wafer, what advantage does that give us and how can that accelerate the timeline? As many of you already know, we have had the 2nd set of wafers holding with the last layers being unfinished until we confirm we have everything the way we want it on the first set of wafers. We've already started the process to continue laying down layers up until about the last 5 layers or so - by burning one of our precious wafers, we can send it to the ASIC engineers who can essentially wire bond it manually and test the chips, but the wafer will become useless for creating usable chips. By doing this, they will verify that everything is how it needs to be and we can give the foundry the go-ahead to finish the second set as well as the bulk of the chips immediately. The second set of wafers should be done and on their way to us by the time we get chips in house in KC, and the bulk wafers should be done shortly after that.

The test wafer is already on it's way to the ASIC labs and should arrive tomorrow. Presumably it will take a better part of the day to get everything situated and for the testing to begin, so I don't expect to hear anything until late Tuesday or sometime on Wednesday assuming everything goes well. In the meantime, the bumping facility will be bumping the remaining 5 wafers, which should be shipping out on Friday to the packaging house, whom we are paying extra to stay on for the weekend and start the packaging process. We expect at least some of the chips to be on their way to Chicago by Tuesday, where they will be mounted and sent out to our engineers and KC for testing and final MCU programming. At that point, once the MCU programming is confirmed we'll begin assembling the units. Right now, I'm planning on a week from Friday to be the day, but I'm just gonna say that's subject to change at the moment, although I don't anticipate a change right now.

The ASIC team has promised me pictures of the wafer tomorrow, Tuesday the 26th. As soon as I get those, I will be posting them. As soon as I hear something with regards to the chip testing, I will be posting that as well. If I'm not posting an update, it's because there's nothing new to report."

#3 Due to a number of recent delays, we have employed a consultant with experience in such matters.
We would like to welcome 'Tom' a person many of you (forum admins) recognize as a man of exemplary talents.

"We ran out of acronyms for telling people how much they are screwed."

-3 Chips, what Chips? Do you mean nachos.... I like nachos, they'll best served with cheese sauce and jalapeños.

It was me, Pirateat40 all along! xD

-3) We'll come clean. We've no intention of building ASIC's, we're just pumping the forum full of get rich quick hysteria for a long as we can. Then we're going to simply disappear with all the pre-order money. All the refund stories you hear are false. To be honest, we're surprised that we've managed to string you gullible fools along for as long as we have.

-2. We have engaged in a mutually beneficial relation with a gentleman from Nigeria, currently the funds we had set aside for chip fabrication are being transferred to his account so that we may be able to by a MUCH larger batch of chips next month, so as to most quickly fill all our preorders.

# -1: They got screwed by their bumping facility, which was in fact a humping facility. Now all their wafers are fucked.

It also sounds like Josh isn't dealing directly with the fab and so he's getting his information 2nd or 3rd-hand (he didn't actually have accurate information on how many wafers/chips were going to be in the first batch until recently which suggests he's not involved in making those decisions).  If they're using a representative, then estimates are only as good as that representative's relationship with the fab and their order will get bumped to make way for the orders of more important customers.

I wanted to make a snide comment, but isn't it better that they ship something that actually works than shipping prematurely and having all kinds of problems ? I am not an electrical engineer, but it seems like this stuff is kind of complicated.

Seems like what they really suck at is to estimate delivery times though, unless of course it's some kind of elaborate scam in the end.

Why don't we ask Nagle about the endgame ? 

Win.

0.69 - The chips were lost in an unfortunate boating accident while on their way to the US.

1.111 - We assembled them, but they were all stolen over the weekend. Looking at the security footage,  it was Brad Pitt and George Clooney who done it, along with a few of their whimsical cohorts.

#1.2
Our Chinese subcontracting operation is run by a well-respected local relic collector named Chen Jianhai, who unexpectedly is not returning our calls.

#1.3
It will be released together with Microcash

#1.5th/s - Clock buffers buffer

I really like #3

#2 My dog ate the USB thumb drive with the new ASIC revision layout on it.

#3 We promised "Week of February 10th", but we didn't specify which year.

They actually haven't had that many cancellations. Also they don't keep very much of their funds in BTC, just what they need to issue refunds - BitPay converts to USD at the moment of purchase and these funds are sent to your standard-issue corporate bank account.

And now I'll duck out before the bile and vitriol gets deep enough to drown me...