I find that hard to believe+ fact that there were no reasons supplied. BFL had the mighty "clock buffers", HashFast had "lack of substrate", but VMC has nothing. Yes i should trust this company.
Since you are looking for their excuse here it is.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=297543.msg3782916#msg3782916Intellihash(tm)
Intellihash is our new trademark for our new Bitcoin mining software which gives up to a 20% increase in hashing speed and has the possibility to increase the speed of our mining machines as the difficulty goes up. We have had to modify the software in our chips to make it work with our new software. The chips are going to be late; however, our new Intellihash software could be a game changer for the company.
Don't ask me what Intellihash is, what "modify the software in our chips" means, I don't know nor do I care. I'm simply correcting you like usual.
I don't know if you are aware of the Danone practices on the market. They have patented a very popular bacterium found in large intestines of most mammals and they named it "Bifidus Actiregularis". It seems that you (an investor) and nobody else is aware what "Intellihash" is or what it represents. I don't see why it can't be something like in Danone's case. From what i read on the forum making a SHA-256 ASIC chip is really really easy, doable by someone in college. Also considering that they are the only company with the trademark for...actually i don't even know what is it for. Mining software in the chips???(wtf is that. i thought chips are only hardware) or simple bitcoin mining software? If is it for the software then why delay the chips? If it's for the chips then what can you trademark there?
My personal opinion of "Intellihash" is that it is a marketing gimmick. I told you that no one has any idea what it could mean and Ken did not give any insight really to draw conclusions on. We are most likely in agreeance that this particular part of that November update is bullshit.
Anyone in college that is taking a related course can write the verilog code for a SHA-256 ASIC. It's not very hard. However the backend design of an ASIC has to go to an appropriate company or someone very talented and familiar with that process. You have to use certain PLLs and Libraries specific to the Fab that you are going to be using (Hence you have to get Fab acceptance prior to starting the ASIC process which is actually very difficult to do)
Ken is an old school businessman, a lot of the way he does business I disagree with. Trademarks are nice and all but useless really in this industry. Product speaks for itself and the IP (Verilog, backend files, and mask set are all allocated to the company that purchased them only anyways).
You can trademark most anything, doesn't mean it will stick. It seems he is just trademarking the names so no one else can use them (not sure why anyone else want to)
Finally! I'm glad that in the light of the New Year's Eve and after many name calling we got to a common ground. This is one of the reasons this company seems strange to me even if i'm not so familiar with public companies and also comparing the transparency from the bitcoin hardware companies. Now considering that we got to some sort of agreement i am waiting for your January report.