On a serious note though; what's the latest on KNC's progress?
Does the October shipping date seem likely?
We have no reason to believe they won't hit their ship-date at this point. The only evidence we have that they will is their claim that they are on time with everything so far.Does the October shipping date seem likely?
Yes that is true, but for that kind of project they are really quiet about their project schedule. (Yes, I know: "The competitors!"
)They communicated only one concrete milestone
"Start of delivery: end of September (latest 30th September)"
(Tape-Out done "some time ago" does not count as a concrete milestone. What does "some time ago" mean? 2 minutes?
)They stated several times that they are on track for the September target. But anything else until then will be a black box.
So you have to trust them and they have to trust several 3rd parties that they deliver on time.
There are some quite complex manufacturing steps (besides pure 28nm wafer manufacturing) which have to be first time right to meet the target, which are not completely under their control.
Does not feel really comfortable, but it is probably the only thing you will get until end of September.
Just seems a bit odd that they are going to start delivery in less than 2 months, but all they have on the site are a few sketchup drawings of what the box might look like.
Their products tick all the boxes and I'd love to get a hold of a Jupiter, but i think I'm going to wait until delivery starts and just be a bit behind.
Dave, there's nothing odd about it, unless you haven't read up on why that is. Once in a while we get a newbie stating something of that effect in all these new ASIC manufacturer's threads, but sketchups or fully cad rendered pretty pics, they're all the same as the products are being developed in a race against eachother to market. The only place you'll see anything more is in Avalon, BFL or ASICminer threads, the rest are 'artists impressions' until we see something of substance from somewhere. It's a PCB board and some chips, it requires nothing more than a sketchup, be more wary of pretty CAD, and nothing else behind it as housing for these boxes are the last things you need to consider. Speak to Butterfly Labs about that, they learn't that the hard way