I were still deciding which of the two ASIC units I should get myself. BFL or Tom's hardware.
Consider that if you order a bASIC today, your order will likely ship out with the first batch, whereas if you instead order the mentioned competing product, your order will likely have to wait in the queue a good while after shipping begins before being shipped out.
With the first batch of ASIC chips produced for Tom (a 1000 of them), not with the first batch of bASICs shipped.
Why? Let's see:
bASIC units will be assembled at the same plant that the ModMiner Quad's are, they will be produced in batches of 30-50 every 5-10 days and shipped out on first come first served basis
i recall Tom telling me that roughly half of the order # represents real orders; so ~750.
Having 750 orders now, shipping in batches of 50 every 5 days (the optimistic assumption) - your order will likely ship 75 days after bASIC starts shipping.
Having 750 orders now, shipping in batches of 30 every 10 days (the pessimistic assumption) - your order will likely ship 250 days after bASIC starts shipping.
So, the answer for Bitcoin_Bing is: today placed order will likely ship 75-250 days after bASIC starts shipping.
If things has changed from 4th September, let Tom correct me.
When I originally announced the bASIC we were just testing a preliminary prototype and I really had no idea of the response we would get to it or how nicely the product itself would develop.
I was thinking of the volume I was currently handling with the ModMiner Quad - and based those very small and I admit very ignorant numbers on that. Basically I was not planning to expand my operation but considering the volume of sales we have been able to achieve - I am in the process of expanding my operation significantly.
Batches of 30-50 every 5-10 days is about the maximum I could handle by myself and that's why I quoted that. The assembly house that actually produces the boards can handle whatever quantity I need at whatever rate I need them made at, I could literally have 1000 ModMiner Quads made by them in 24 hours (it would not be cheap) but this demonstrates their capacity.
However everything is changed now including changing some things about the design that make it much easier and faster to get out the door than the ModMiner Quad, and I am upgrading my operation quite a bit to handle the increased demand.
What has changed?
(a) The ModMiner quad goes through a lot of steps that take time
- The PCB boards are fabricated in one place in china
- The FPGA Chips are purchased from another place
- Everything is shipped to me and then
- Everything is shipped to the assembly house
- I purchase some final parts and have them shipped here
- Everything gets nearly assembled and shipped here
- I put them together and test them, package them up myself and ship them out myself
- All while trying to handle support issues, customer service and the logistics of the whole thing
So with the bASIC I decided to streamline a lot of these things, for one I have a very good relationship with the place that assembles the ModMinerQuad and they have taken over a lot more responsibility with this project:
- Their engineers are designing the final production board
- The PCB's will be fabricated by them
- The Boards will be assembled by them to completion
Then final boards will be shipped to me
And here is where I have made another change and upgraded my operation:
I have also leased a 2500 square foot office space / store front which I am in the process of moving into and will be hiring full time employees to help when the bASIC units ship out, their duties will include opening up boxes from the assembly house - loading firmware - testing for 24 hours - boxing them back up and shipping them out to customers.