Post
Topic
Board Hardware
Re: HashFast announces specs for new ASIC: 400GH/s
by
cedivad
on 24/10/2013, 19:35:45 UTC
when will your asic be available and are there any prices?

We will be shipping in October.

We will be releasing pricing and launching sales shortly for a one chip hashing machine, a more dense rack mounted unit, as well as individual chips.    

HashFast is an interesting and much aticipated idea but please tell precisely whats Your plan to send working product to clients at the end of October.
To me this plan looks like quite ambitious one. Slightly too ambitious? I dont see any place for errors and delays. None.

So we have known phases - please provide a list of actions with roughly dates.

To have working device we need to:

1. Design a chip : do You have final design, its valid/seems working etc.?
2. Produce Chip : ??Whats You timeline here
3. Design PCB : ??Whats You timeline here
4A. Assembly service : ??Whats You timeline here
4B. BOM - components preorder : ??Whats You timeline here
5. Create software or adapt existing one : ??Whats You timeline here
6. Design/Adapt Case : ??Whats You timeline here
7. Start shipping  : 20-30 October

Above its a quick and dirty estimation of critical minestones of which each one have many intermediate steps. Of course some of them can be done in parallel.

Please provide Your estimations. This will show us how do you approach this project.

Agree - it certainly is an ambitious schedule.  We have put a *lot* of thought into every way to optimize it, multi-source components and suppliers, have contingency plans in place for delays/surprises at any point, etc.  Still, you are absolutely right - it is an operationally complex process under very tight timelines.

1) Yes, we do. 
Our chip was taped-out to TSMC last month, as described in the joint press release we, Uniquify and TSMC put out about this.  Prior to tape-out it passed all our physical and logical tests, and following that it passed all the design rule verification rules etc. that are part of the tape-in process.  Currently it is under fabrication - we past design, well into manufacturing, and are exposing more mask layers every day or two.   We get daily updates about it's progress, and track against them.

2) Complete silicon wafers will come out of TSMC in roughly 4 weeks. We would love to be able to release a *lot* more information about this, but we do need to be mindful of our NDA
What we can + will do is to post a basic explanation of the fabrication progress, how we track against it, etc. in the next few days.  Unfortunately this will be far higher level and will -not- have anywhere near the level of granularity we have;  we would **love** to do just that, and replace the noise about we are seeing in the market about hopes + aspirations with straightforward factual information, but our NDA with TSMC prevents us from doing just that.

3) Initial PCB design is complete (including both Gerbers and parts/sourcing selection)
We are currently finalizing it, optimizing for fabrication.

4A) Assembly service selection is completed.   The steps are as follows;

- First wafers coming out of TSMC will be hand carried by from the TSMC to our substrate manufacturers
  I'll see if I can get a picture of the airline-approved wafer carrying case we will use Wink

- Chip substrate and packaging
  We have contracted 2 separate companies (one low volume/very fast turnaround, the other huge volume/longer ramp-up)
  Either one is capable of producing sufficient volume to package all chips sold to date 

- PCB and power stage assembly
  We have contracted a US-based specialized company for production of PCBs+low power stages for all chips sold to date.

- Final Assembly
  We have contracted a specialize company to assemble the modules into working Baby Jets and Sierras, and ship them to our customer
   via Fedex as soon as they are completed, following our published order # list.

4B) BOM complete, down to individual screws and stand-offs.
Components ordering well underway - that and shipping/logistics is the primary focus of our operations team right now

Also, prototype machines using precisely the same components as the final machines complete, assembled, and tested.

Re: testing, this includes completing stage III thermal performance tests; stage 1 was chip thermal emulation during the physical design stage of chip development, stage 2 was software thermal emulation of the finished machine, and stage III is inserting a controlable heating element of the same form factor as the chip package into a complete gold prototype, and measure how much heat the system can dissipate while remaining within operating temperatures.

The results of that test were very positive; the design goal for our GN chip was a cooling system able to dissipate 250W, at which level it will produce 400 GHash/s.  The stage 3 test confirmed that the cooling system is able to dissipate significantly over 300W, which we believe will lead to significantly improved performance 

5) Our chip has been running CGminer (and mining) for months now as an FPGA.
We have created high-quality drivers for the chip.   We expect to have 3rd party confirmation of that fact out very shortly 

6) We are not designing a custom case.  Other than our chip and PCB/power stage we have not designed any other components, and intentionally so;  the only way a system of this nature can be produced in this kind of time frame is to use existing standards-based parts as far as humanly possible.  The goal is focus, focus, focus.

7) Correct.

Eduardo deCastro
Founder and CEO, HashFast



I'm at a BTC meetup in Sunnyvale, where the Hashfast VP of Engineering is giving a talk right now.

This is admittedly rather time-sensitive, but if anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to ask 'em!

Ask if they're still on schedule for shipping next week.

Not surprisingly, this was indeed one of the questions that came up last night.

And, as of a few days ago, ... ...  it looks like we're probably going to slip, by about a week.

Ironically, not because of the silicon, even though that is the part of the system that takes the longest to manufacture. That's going through the foundry smoothly. But we ran into a delay sourcing one of our other components.

We've now found an alternative source. But that delay means it'll be challenging for us to ship finished systems before the end of October.

It's disappointing, but unfortunately these things happen. I'm glad we've made it this far through the process, and are still so close to our target date.

(I'm watching every day to see how close Cointerra will come to their targeted tapeout date.)

Amy Woodward
VP Engineering

HashFast Technologies



Amy,

Thank you for directly addressing these questions in this thread. I really appreciate you giving an honest reply as to shipping dates. With that being said, as we get closer to that date, can we expect more frequent updates regarding shipping?

Thanks
DHJ/WH

Yes, we will be sure to provide frequent updates regarding shipping. We will be posting an official blog to inform customers of these updates, so be sure to check our website in the upcoming days.

Cheers,

HashFast Team

Baby Jet product page updated just now:
  • Wording changed from "Shipments begin October 20-30" to "Shipments anticipated to begin: October 20-30"
  • The stock count just jumped around 100!  Shocked
  • New single chip mock-up image

Stock count jumping was either HF testing the shopping cart and using up sales 100 times, or upping their first batch from 550 to 650 units...

Stock count: it's related to the testing scenario you mention.

There was a period where the website shop was live but hidden, and we were simultaneously doing manual sales. I reduced the "inventory" available online so that we had a pool for manual sales. Didn't want to risk selling the same units twice. Now we've put those units back in the pool.

So to confirm: We are selling a total of 550 Baby Jets.

Amy Woodward
VP Engineering
HashFast




Hi Everyone,

In addition to what Amy is saying above, the inventory will also fluctuate at times as we close out orders from buyers who started the purchase process while we were experiencing technical difficulties, and later decline to complete the purchase.  We have been trying to reach out to everyone via phone and email that attempted a purchase last week.

Our intent is be as transparent as possible, and we will continue to do our best towards this goal.

John
HashFast.com




Does the expected ship date of late October still look achievable?

Yes. We are exactly on track.

-John

Sorry if this was answered before, but do you provide hosting for BabyJets?
I can't receive any shipments from the end of October and for 2 months, that's why I upgraded to hosting with KnC. And would need hosting from HF if I were to diversify.

We are working on this, but don't yet have a solution in place.
-John

Sorry if this was answered before, but do you provide hosting for BabyJets?
I can't receive any shipments from the end of October and for 2 months, that's why I upgraded to hosting with KnC. And would need hosting from HF if I were to diversify.

We are working on this, but don't yet have a solution in place.
-John


Quoted for my incoming attorney.
Thanks, MrTeal.