Quote from: The Avenger on May 31, 2016, 11:36:27 PM

Quote from: NotFuzzyWarm on May 31, 2016, 10:53:48 PM

Quote from: s1gs3gv on May 31, 2016, 09:46:27 PM

Quote from: sidehack on May 31, 2016, 09:25:43 PM

And I think if they had competently built the what, $30M-odd datacenter full of 16nm chips they supposed had a year ago they probably wouldn't have gone broke. But it looks like they screwed that up too.

It kinda looks that way, doesn't it.

To have had enough 16nm chips to fill a data center a year ago would have meant getting chips in quantity say around Jan 2015. That is impossible. At that point in time all research and production at ALL the Fabs just starting to be capable of producing 16/14nm chips (not counting IBM & Intel who only make chips for internal use) was exclusively for AMD, Apple, Cisco, and Samsung (and Samsung was 14nm, internal use only back then).

Unless KnC was willing to maybe pony up several 100 million dollars to join the que for low-node chips back then all they would have gotten is nice smiling nods in discussions with the Foundries and that's it.

According to their news archives, they taped out 16nm in Feb 2015 and "deployed" in June 2015.

That said, their investors said they encountered "large technical issues" and "they failed to get the right processors", so you assume they f-ed up 16nm, a big part of the reason they went bust.

They certainly didn't have 100 million dollars, they were VC funded to the tune of 20-30 million.

So what do you think of that story? Do you think they bluffed all their investors about 16nm?

My interpretation of it (and their low hash rate) was that 16nm either failed or required 2 goes at it to get a sensible chip.

Its worth pointing out that this isnt a BFL / Spondoolies style bankruptcy, they're essentially just calling it day and will (as far as we know) pay all their commitments and distribute the rest to shareholders. Its also worth pointing out the large amounts of money that flowed out the company which is still counted as success, ie the core and extended team's handsome payments for several years as well as any other side companies they have. They were trying to be competitive though, they let go ~20% of their employees back in January.