Quote from: burnin on June 07, 2013, 05:14:53 PM

I would start work on a custom BFL-chip board once i'm done with the Avalon development.
(I am sure can recycle some design aspects which should speed things up)
But It would need encouraging news from them that indicate that we can really expect them to deliver + documentation on the chips.

Thank you burnin very much for taking the time.

We have now two lead community developers - burnin and Chris (Klondike) - to consider BFL chip board. Under some conditions of course. We may have the power to make this happen. (Or not.)

Quote from: Rampion on June 07, 2013, 07:18:35 PM

...........
Seriously guys. Have a little bit of self-respect at least.

We are the first to actually negotiate with BFL. That indicates BTC community is not a bunch of idiots to throw money at them with no guarantees at all. I see a lot of self-respect in that.

In business world, you don't make deals according to your feelings. You take advantage of the best available on the market and take maximal possible precautions. I'm not responsible for their previous costumers that took lesser precautions.

The truth is BFL may have the best chip technology - they invested a lot of money in their chip (maybe too much), no doubt at all.

They can't handle the board manufacturing and that's where community can take over and profit. That is a business opportunity to me.

Quote from: Rampion on June 07, 2013, 07:18:35 PM

........ and now we accept we will never get our Singles, Mini Singles and Mini Rigs.

Don't accept it and get your money and self-respect back. You kind of support what BFL does by not making so.

Quote from: Operatr on June 07, 2013, 03:13:50 PM

Quote from: Kernel32 on June 07, 2013, 12:17:24 PM

Quote from: 67152398 on June 07, 2013, 12:09:15 PM

Another scam
Angry

Seriously man, did you read any part of this thread? Can you explain why do you think this is a scam 67152398 ?

It's a good thing to be careful, but c'mon we have John (not the same person as Josh Wink

) .

BFL itself is the scam, get real.

Zero products shipped from the revised BitForce line (Jalepenos are older and no longer offered, Little SC was supposed to replace it, none have shipped at all in over one year)

Now offering chips that are just as much vaporware as their ghost machines

And they are apparently wasting time on their own charity thing?

BFL and all of their cronies earned a scammer tag here, that should be enough to kill this thread right here and now.

C'mon man. BFL does not manufacture the chip. You really think they are producing 65 nm chips by themselves? They have only licence to resell it. With 100% escrow I don't see any problem in that.

I'm not willing to (group)buy any boards/devices made at BFL.

Quote from: nave on June 07, 2013, 09:38:27 PM

Quote from: k9quaint on June 07, 2013, 07:11:29 PM

Quote from: nave on June 07, 2013, 07:04:27 PM

So I haven't been following all of the BFL drama over the past however long, but I have another concern that might be of note to this group buy.

We know that they have actual chips that work, they've shipped (a few) Jalapenos. But from what I've seen of the tear down of these devices they have 2 working chips on a board designed to house 8 chips, with a pretty beefy heatsink and fan on those two chips. They've stated they missed their power numbers, and thereby the chips run hotter than they intended. Is it possible (me not being much more than a hardware layman) that these chips run too hot for any reasonable cluster size on a PCB?

If so, then BFL could ship the chips, fully complying with the terms of the group buy, and have the money released from escrow, only to have the buyers holding chips that overheat constantly and have to be throttled or have fewer chips placed per board than intended. I think it was a surprise to a lot of people (myself included) that Josh agreed to the full escrow deal. Maybe this is why? They have a ton of chips and can only use a few per board? It would only make sense to sell them and get all the money they could out of their (our) investment at that point.

That would certainly explain why they have not released the Singles or Mini-rig prototypes. Those are supposed to be densely populated boards. Perhaps the chips cannot be kept cool. Very hard to say until they release specs and samples.

Exactly. I might suggest to the group buy that previous to the escrow being released they are able to test a fully populated board with sample chips that are running at full speed and on all cores in order to be able to see how much heat they're putting out and work out a suitable cooling solution if one exists.

Fisrt of all, love your avatar nave. Secondly, this is a fruitful discussion I was hoping for to see here. Thank you guys (and also to others discussing and expressing support).

It seems the 65 nm chips are generating a lot more heat, than BFL expected. Where being unable to put 8pcs of 4 GH/s chips on few square inch board may discard some cute-black-box designs, for most of BTC miners the size of the board is not as crucial. (Remember GPU rigs?) They are not to keep on the desk anyways. Community developers need to reestablish what "fully populated board" means. I'm pretty sure the hash/board-square-inch ratio would be still noticeably better than 110 nm Avalon's. My best guess is twice (as 65 nm chip consumes twice less power).

Is anyone here able to measure his Jalapeno heat parameters? For example putting it into polystyrene box and measuring temperature over time. Maybe start with low temperature and don't go too high. Remember, it was manufactured by BFL. Wink