Quote from: Simon Barber on August 11, 2013, 02:02:01 AM

Quote from: ninjarobot on August 11, 2013, 12:43:12 AM

If you really want to do it right you should provide customer protection by providing refunds based on missed opportunity cost.

For example:

HashFast promises to ship on October 30.
Customer paid ~60 BTC for a pre-oder unit.
Customer registers a refund BTC address at the hashfast.com site.
For every day HashFast misses their target shipping date, a partial automatic refund will be made based on what a 400 GH/s unit would have mined at the difficulty at that date.
This would continue until either the refund is complete or the unit is delivered.

This would:

Prevent a BFL-type pitchfork scenario and alleviate worries that HashFast might be hashing with customer hardware at customers expense.
Give customers peace of mind; At worst they would have provided a free BTC loan to HashFast. At best they get a unit that has already started making some ROI before delivery.
Provide a strong incentive for HashFast to deliver on time.

We are working on finalizing a guarantee program for purchasers that will provide some good coverage in case of late delivery, the text is being perfected now, and we will be publishing it in the next few days. It will be offered free to all existing purchasers.

From Hashfast's website - they hope to tape out in August - shortening a 12 week timeframe to 6 weeks
https://www.hashfast.com/uniquifystatemen/
https://hashfast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/uniquify_statement_about-_HashFast_ASIC_Chip.jpg

From the KnC thread, some time line discussions about else needs to be done POST tape out. Assuming the chips don't get stuck in customs for 2 months.

Quote from: HyperMega on August 03, 2013, 02:30:38 PM

Quote from: sbfree on August 03, 2013, 02:05:48 PM

Yipyip, in other words, according to kncminer, by "tape-out" they mean to say that the chip is beyond theoretical design, and is now actually in the fabrication (or build it stage as you put it) plant where they make ASIC chips?

Anyone know how long it takes to fab 50 wafers?

Wafers are manufactured in lots (e.g. 25 wafer each). A Foundry normally gives you a committed cycle time for the concrete 28nm fab for a wafer lot. That time strongly depends on what priority your run got and which tech options you choose (e.g. how many metal layers). If they were lucky and got a so called "rocket" run it could be as fast as 30 to 45 days. Standard runs take between 60 to 90 days.

After that the wafers must be bumped (prepared for flip-chip packaging, probably at another facility), diced in dies and packaged in the flip-chip package. Don't know how long this takes exactly, but it could be easily "2 more weeks". Wink

http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php