As promised, here is an important update about our progress, and some changes to our initial plan.

First thing to say, while the team in China was developing the first 180nm iteration, it was simultaneously exploring a 65nm IC design as well.

Few days ago, the team was carrying on with the final preparation steps to put our 180nm design out  for final tape-out with UMC fab.

Briefly after hearing about the latest news regarding ASICMINER new deployment of 800-1000 TH within the year, the management decided on a strategy shift.

We stopped at last minute the tape-out of 180nm first iteration test-run, and further development stopped as well.  

The Chinese team is now optimizing the initial 65nm design to work at 433Mhz, with over-clocking possible;
we expect to release final estimated hash rate and more precise estimations about power consumption data for this IC in 24 hours.

If all the post-simulations are positive, this IC design will go on tape-out, without test runs but with minimized risks, in a few days;  TSMC has a 65nm CLN65/CMN65 on schedule for 8 and 22 July.
Should we miss the 8 July shuttle we will go for the 22 July one. After about 50 days the deployment will start.

This IC could be used for a high-powered USB mining device, as preliminar tests shown power consumption is in the range of 0.7~0.9W

The version 2, which the European team is working on, is progressing as well; We got the whole I/O IC interface HDL code ready and it will be adapted and used for the new version 1 interface as well; The version 2 will still be a 65nm IC design with an expected higher hashing rate, in the range of 4~5 GH/sec, and lower power consumption but real progress is expected in September/October.

We need to take another decision now, since ASICMINER dominance is getting worse day by day, we are at a turning point, we have enough funds to finance a initial batch of 10.000 version 1  IC at an approximate cost of 700,000 CNY, or about 88,000 USD. This would output about 4.5 TH of power. Accounting (estimating) for a tripled or quadrupled mining difficulty during our deployment phase, we estimated that our initial investment could be recovered in about 1~1.5 months.

The other choice is opening a public IPO and going for a larger run of IC, 100.000~200.000 and mantain our previously announced marketing strategy. We want to hear the community opinion about this.


The Labcoin Team

EDIT : Photos of the new 65nm IC design with on chip PLL will be published as soon as they are ready.  Typos.