Post
Topic
Board Hardware
Re: CoinTerra announces its first ASIC - Hash-Rate greater than 500 GH/s
by
iCEBREAKER
on 15/11/2013, 01:25:32 UTC
didn't everyone else do that too including your 'home team' ?  hashfast announced their 400 GH chip specs at least a month before they taped out.  How is that any different?

HashFast went from logical design, to physical design, to complete tape-out in record-breaking time.  That speaks to their engineering and managerial prowess.

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you're such a fanboy of hashfast you didn't notice they're more than a month late, even after they've got wafers back?   cointerra may have a month delayed tapeout, but they had built in some margin into their production and they say they can still meet their promised delivery schedule.  Possibly they can do this because they didn't promise an overly aggressive date, and just said late december, which they are still targetting.  They didn't over promise an early date then disappoint everyone but instead they gave a date that they believed they had a good chance of hitting.   hashfast now is in the unfortunate position of having sold their systems at october prices and will now deliver in december and beyond, making all their customers unhappy and feeling like they overpaid, whereas cointerra sold their systems significantly cheaper at december and january prices, and they're planning to deliver in december and january.  And if they deliver to those dates, their customers will get what they were promised, at prices that represent the extra time.   Its ironic that hashfast and cointerra will now deliver in the same month, yet they charged very different prices to customers.

You don't know that cointerra will deliver "in the same month" as HashFast.  Stop assuming facts not in evidence!

Of course I know about hashfast's delay.  It's funny when you dress up uncontested, widely-reported facts as some kind of argument clincher.

Sure, hashfast dropped the ball on the substrates.  That sucks but they are going to make it right.  Botching a tape-out is a far worse unforced error.

I'd rather be a day-one customer of an engineering-focused company like hashfast than a marketing-driven one like cointerra.

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Really?  designing the 2nd generation chip tells you they're not happy with their first one?   A chip that outperforms, and is lower power than any other 28nm chip?  and you think that makes them unhappy?  Can you honestly, hand on heart, tell us that your own favoured hashfast team is not already thinking about their next generation chip?  Do you think any asic companies would be so dumb as to not have started designing the 2nd chip the second the first one has been put to bed.   And if they could afford two teams, they'd be doing them in parallel (like Intel does with Tick Tock architecture!)

Absolutely everyone who has taped out their chips, is already working on the next ones.   knc already announced theirs is in the works.   avalon's already announced the next three chips.  bitfury's on the next chip etc.  Good asic design takes time, and any asic company with any sense (and they are all very smart cookies) would most definitely be architecting their next chip the second they can so that in 6+ months' time, they've got a new product to offer their customers.  And I'm quite sure they have all learned a lot from their first chips so their second ones will be wayyy better.   And you know as well as i do that in the bitcoin world, hardware gets obsolete real fast... so you need to have a follow up in development ready for when you need it.

Again you assume facts not in evidence.  Cointerra's chip is 60 days away, not running at 1 GHz.

We know from their PR Hashfast is very far along with their 2nd chip.  But unlike Cointerra, they didn't fire their incompetent original design team and bring in new guys to design it.

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They've paid expedite fees to get their chips delivered as fast as possible.  from tape-out to end of dec is less than 60 days so we'll see if they get them before end of dec.  Only time will tell but i think you're wrong that it will take more than 60 days!

Ask AMD why they decided GF's 28nm process isn't good enough for them, but TSMC's is (GF invested in the wrong 28nm tech years ago and TSMC didn't).

Just like Cointerra and Open Silicon, Global Foundries are amateurs compared to the 28nm pros at TSMC.

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had hashfast been on time, i think that might've been true... but now that they're nearly two months late, in reality hashfast's multi petahash batches may well land in the same month as cointerras so i think the entire bitcoin mining community may well benefit from hashfast's delay (especially knc's customers who are probably extremely ecstatic right now... but also even cointerra's customers, who will now have much less network hash rate to contend with when their kit arrives, than it was originally going to be!)

Just having wafers back, without substrates is a pretty unfortunate position to be in as I'm sure you realise that wafers are useless without chips to put the dies in.  announcing an expected and significant customer delivery delay was pretty shocking for all concerned.. but do you think you can with a straight face accuse cointerra of a mere four week delay (and so far at least, unaffected delivery dates) when your own professed team has similar but much bigger problems (and very unhappy customers)

Delays during the tape-out process aren't unexpected... its an uncertain time and has to be taken into account during project planning... but delays AFTER your chips come back is a more surprising (and disastrous) outcome.  i expected to be mining with my hashfast systems by now.  instead, I'm literally not sure who will deliver sooner out of hashfast and cointerra, and knc is about to announce their new and improved systems in the next few hours!  and my existing knc gear has been hashing away with much less network hashrate than anyone could've expected this month.

The substrate delay is a one time thing, completely unrelated to TSMC's unparalleled ability to pump out 28nm wafers by the truckload.

Cointerra and HashFast are both a month behind, but HashFast started with a two month lead. 


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All three of KNC, Hashfast and Cointerra are making relatively similar products with quite similar ish performance... differentiated only by price, delivery date and performance.  So far KnC has delivered on time.  Hashfast has announced substantial delays.  And Cointerra says they're still on time despite a four week tape-out slip.    Does it make you feel better about your own choice of miner's delay to try and bait another mining company  customers instead?  Perhaps you're better off placating the angry mob on your own forum before they try and storm the castle than spend your time worrying if cointerra will deliver on time.

You don't know WTF you're talking about.  HashFast's chips are three times more productive per sq. mm than KnC's.

VolcanicErupter asked a very good question on this thread, and I gave him the best answer I could.  Stop trying to control what other people say/do/think.

It's funny when you decry my post as unworthy, then write a giant wall of text strenuously attempting to debunk it.   Grin